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.
Boogie Rambler
John Lee Hooker Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Boogie night and day
Oh baby, boogie night and day
My father was a rambler
And my mother too
Oh baby, boogie all night long
Oh baby, boogie all night long
I'm a boogie rambler
Boogie all the time
My dang ol' mother, she boogie too
Oh yeah, yeah she boogie too
She boogie so long, boogied all the time
Oh baby, chop me all the time
Oh baby, chop me all the time
Want you to chop me, baby
Chop me all night long
The lyrics of John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Rambler" describe the singer himself as a restless wanderer who never stops boogying. Hooker compares himself to his parents, describing them as ramblers who, like him, loved to keep moving and dancing. The song emphasizes the importance of dancing and enjoying life, as evidenced by the repeated refrain of "boogie all night long."
The lyrics also emphasize the power of music to bring people together and guide them through life's ups and downs. By incorporating his family into the song, Hooker suggests that dancing and music were an important part of his upbringing and identity. The repetition of the phrase "chop me" underscores this idea, as it suggests the steady rhythm of chopping wood or dancing to the beat of a song. Overall, "Boogie Rambler" is a joyful expression of the importance of dancing, music, and community in the human experience.
Line by Line Meaning
I'm a boogie rambler
I enjoy dancing and moving to boogie music
Boogie night and day
I love boogie music so much that I can dance to it at any time, day or night
Oh baby, boogie night and day
I'm telling my partner that I want to keep dancing to boogie music with them all the time
My father was a rambler
My dad was someone who didn't stick around in one place for too long
And my mother too
Just like my father, my mother also liked to move around and not stay in one place
Oh baby, boogie all night long
I'm asking my partner to dance to boogie music with me all night long
Boogie all the time
I can't get enough of boogie music and I want to dance to it constantly
My dang ol' mother, she boogie too
Even my mother loved to boogie to the music
Oh yeah, yeah she boogie too
I'm acknowledging how much my mother loved to dance to boogie music
She boogie so long, boogied all the time
My mother would dance to boogie music for an extended period of time without stopping
Oh baby, chop me all the time
I want my partner to continue dancing with me all the time
Oh baby, chop me all the time
I want my partner to continue dancing with me all the time
Want you to chop me, baby
I'm inviting my partner to dance with me in a specific way
Chop me all night long
I want my partner to keep dancing with me all night long in that specific way
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: HOOKER
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
mike 56
wow, great history, thanks for posting
randal godfrey
Boogie all the time!!!!!
randal godfrey
Boogie all the time!! bad ass!!!!!