John Lee Hooker could be said to embody his own unique genre of the blues, often incorporating the boogie-woogie piano style and a driving rhythm into his masterful and idiosyncratic blues guitar and singing. His best known songs include "Boogie Chillen" (1948) and "Boom Boom" (1962).
There is some debate as to the year of John Lee Hooker's birth, 1915, 1917, 1920, and 1923 have all been cited, 1917 (the date on his grave marker in Oakland, California) is the one most commonly cited although Hooker himself claimed, at times, 1920.
Hooker was the youngest of the eleven children of William Hooker (1871–1923), a sharecropper and a Baptist preacher, and Minnie Ramsey (1875–?).
Hooker and his siblings were home-schooled. They were permitted to listen only to religious songs, with his earliest musical exposure being the spirituals sung in church.
In 1921, his parents separated. The next year, his mother married William Moore, a blues singer who provided John's first introduction to the guitar (and whom John would later credit for his distinctive playing style). The year after that (1923), John's natural father died; and at age 15, John ran away from home, never to see his mother and stepfather again.
He was a cousin of Earl Hooker,
Throughout the 1930s, Hooker lived in Memphis where he worked on Beale Street and occasionally performed at house parties. He worked in factories in various cities during World War II, drifting until he found himself in Detroit in 1948 working at Ford Motor Company. He felt right at home near the blues venues and saloons on Hastings Street, the heart of black entertainment on Detroit's east side. In a city noted for its piano players, guitar players were scarce. Performing in Detroit clubs, his popularity grew quickly, and seeking a louder instrument than his crude acoustic guitar, he bought his first electric guitar.
Though he stuttered slightly in his normal speech, he performed in a half-spoken style that became his trademark. Rhythmically, his music was free, a property common with early acoustic Delta blues musicians. His vocal phrasing was less closely tied to specific bars than most blues singers'. This casual, rambling style had been gradually diminishing with the onset of electric blues bands from Chicago but, even when not playing solo, Hooker retained it in his sound.
Hooker's recording career began in 1948 with the hit single, "Boogie Chillen" cut in a studio near Wayne State University.
Despite being illiterate, he was a prolific lyricist. In addition to adapting the occasionally traditional blues lyric (such as "if I was chief of police, I would run her right out of town"), he freely invented many of his songs from scratch. Recording studios in the 50s rarely paid black musicians more than a pittance, so Hooker would spend the night wandering from studio to studio, coming up with new songs or variations on his songs for each studio. Due to his recording contract, he would record these songs under obvious pseudonyms such as "John Lee Booker," "Johnny Hooker", or "John Cooker".
His early solo songs were recorded under Bernie Besman.
John Lee Hooker rarely played on a standard beat, changing tempo to fit the needs of the song. This made it nearly impossible to add backing tracks. As a result, Besman would record Hooker, in addition to playing guitar and singing, stomping along with the music on a wooden palette.
John Lee Hooker's guitar playing is closely aligned with piano Boogie Woogie. He would play the walking bass pattern with his thumb, stopping to emphasize the end of a line with a series of trills, done by rapid hammer-ons and pull-offs. The songs that most epitomize his early sound are "Boogie Chillen," about being 17 and wanting to go out to dance at the Boogie clubs, "Baby Please Don't Go," a more typical blues song, summed up by its title, and "Tupelo," a stunningly sad song about the flooding of Tupelo, Mississippi.
He maintained a solo career, popular with blues and folk music fans of the early 1960s and crossed over to white audiences, giving an early opportunity to the young Bob Dylan. As he got older, he added more and more people to his band, changing his live show from simply Hooker with his guitar to a large band, with Hooker singing.
In 1989 he joined with a number of musicians, including Keith Richards and Carlos Santana to record The Healer, which won a Grammy award — one of many awards.
He fell ill just before a tour of Europe in 2001 and died soon afterwards at the age of 83.
Hooker recorded over 100 albums and lived the last years of his life in San Francisco, California, where he licensed a nightclub to use the name Boom Boom Room, after one of his hits.
Among his many awards, John Lee Hooker has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 1991 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Two of his songs, "Boogie Chillen" and "Boom Boom" were named to the list of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
John Lee recorded several songs with Van Morrison, including "Never Get Out of These Blues Alive", "The Healing Game" and "I Cover the Waterfront". He also appeared on stage with Van Morrison several times, some of which was released on the live album "A Night in San Francisco".
John Lee also recorded in the sixties with british blues band The Groundhogs. These recordings are still available as a CD "John Lee Hooker with The Groundhogs". More importantly, Hooker recorded with the Blues-rock outfit Canned Heat, delivering the album 'Hooker N' Heat' in 1971. Hooker was influential and topical even in his lifetime, as evidenced in the MC5 cover of "Motor City's Burning" on their first album, recorded almost immediately after the riots which are the song's topic.
Bluebird
John Lee Hooker Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Please, take this letter down south for me
Oh, bluebird
Take this letter down south for me
Don't you two stop flyin'
Till you find little Liza Belle for me
Lord, she way down
She's way down in Jackson, Tennessee
Bluebird, she's way down
She's way down in Jackson, Tennessee
She may not be at home
But, please, knock upon her door
Bluebird, bluebird
Please, do this for me
Ooh, bluebird
Please, do this for me
You see my baby
Tell her I want her to come back home to me
Ooh
Please, tell her to come back home
The song 'Bluebird' by John Lee Hooker tells the story of a man who longs for his woman who is far away from him. In this song, he implores a bluebird to take a letter to his love who is living in Jackson, Tennessee. The man is desperate for his partner's return; he asks that the bluebird never stops flying until it finds her. The notion of the bluebird acting as a messenger is both romantic and poetic, and suggests that the man is so in love that he sees connections in nature that relate to his feelings of longing and desire.
Throughout the song, the man reveals his emotional need for his love, and it is clear he wants to reunite with her. The repetitive lines and blues-style guitar strumming adds to the song's sense of desperation and longing. The repetition of the chorus adds to the pained and repeated nature of the man's plea for the bluebird to find his lost love.
In essence, this song serves as a tribute to the beauty of love, and the desperate desire to have it close. The imagery of the bluebird and the delivery of letters serves as an enchanting metaphor for the power of love to connect people separated by distance.
Line by Line Meaning
Bluebird
Addressing the bluebird to deliver the message
Please, take this letter down south for me
Requesting the bird to fly south and deliver the letter
Oh, bluebird
Emphasizing on the bluebird
Take this letter down south for me
Repeating the request for the bird to deliver the letter
Don't you two stop flyin'
Instructing the bird not to stop until the destination is reached
Till you find little Liza Belle for me
Providing specific instructions to find Liza Belle
Lord, she way down
Expressing sadness for Liza Belle's distant location
She's way down in Jackson, Tennessee
Providing the location where Liza Belle is
Bluebird, she's way down
Reiterating the location of Liza Belle
She may not be at home
Acknowledging that Liza Belle may not be home
But, please, knock upon her door
Still requesting the bird to go to Liza Belle's residence
Bluebird, bluebird
Repeating the address to the bluebird
Please, do this for me
Requesting the bird to complete the task
Ooh, bluebird
Expressing an inner plea to the bluebird
Please, do this for me
Repeating the request in a desperate manner
You see my baby
Asking the bird to visually recognize the intended recipient
Tell her I want her to come back home to me
Instructing the bird to convey a message to Liza Belle about returning home
Ooh
Expressing distress and sadness
Please, tell her to come back home
Reiterating the message to Liza Belle for her to come back home
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management
Written by: John Lee Hooker
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Bosna Hercegovina
The best Blues singer ever...
Mariano Som
Estes caras são demais !!!
RAMLIA1
Masterpiece!
redclaytanto
Took me 12 years to find this song. I remember listening to it on a cassette in Dad's Lincoln growing up.
Timmy G
you musin't have looked too hard
Daniel Smith
redclaytanto
That’s cool 🖖🏽
Andre Clay
@Maximiliano Rey Instablaster =)
Carlos Nells
Musical poetry...he always has this huge beat pounding in your belly.
Stana 🌻Vasant
Un genio ! 👏🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰
michel delage
Très très grand personnage du Blue . Souvenirs !!!