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.
Catfish Blues
John Lee Hooker Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Swimmin' in the, the deep blue sea
I have all you pretty women
Fishin' after me
Showin' up after me
Oh, well
Oh, well
Oh, yeah
Well, I went down
To my girlfriend's house
And I sat alone on her front step
And she said a-come in outcha man and just your love
I just now left
I just now left
And I say
Who, yeah?
She said sure enough you did
Who, yeah?
Who, yeah?
Who, yeah?
Oh, yeah
Yeah
Well, there's two
Two trains runnin'
But there's not a one that's goin' my way
You know there's a-one train running at midnight
The other one leave just for day
Leave just for day
Oh, well
Yeah
I role and I tumble
Practically all night long
I role and I tumble
Practically all night long
Well, my baby don't treat me well
Yeah
The lyrics of John Lee Hooker's song Catfish Blues feature a man who wishes he was a catfish swimming in the deep blue sea, with all the pretty women fishing after him. The man is feeling down as he visits his girlfriend's house, only to find out that she has just left. With nothing else to do, he wanders around aimlessly before realizing that he is going nowhere, much like the two trains running that aren't going his way. The song concludes with the man indicating that he rolls and tumbles practically all night long because his baby does not treat him well.
The lyrics of Catfish Blues are open to interpretation, with some suggesting that the man in the song is feeling lonely and depressed and desires a life where he can escape all of his troubles. With his lines about the deep blue sea and pretty women fishing after him, it is also possible that he is seeking the attention and love that he believes he lacks in his real life. The recurring "Oh, well" and "Oh yeah" lyrics in the chorus suggest both resignation and wistfulness towards the circumstances of his life.
Line by Line Meaning
Well, I wish I was a catfish
I desire to become a fish that swims in the vast and endless sea
Swimmin' in the, the deep blue sea
I long to swim in the deep and serene blue-colored sea
I have all you pretty women
I possess the love and attention of all the beautiful women out there
Fishin' after me
All these women desire to catch and be with me
Oh, well
Expressing a sense of resignation or acceptance
Oh, yeah
Expressing an affirmation or agreement
Well, I went down
I went to
To my girlfriend's house
The residence of my female lover
And I sat alone on her front step
I sat by myself on the porch of her house
And she said a-come in outcha man and just your love
She invited me to come inside and share my love with her
I just now left
I just departed
Who, yeah?
Expressing surprise, disbelief, or confusion
She said sure enough you did
She confirmed that I indeed left earlier
Well, there's two
There are two
Two trains runnin'
Two locomotives are running
But there's not a one that's goin' my way
Unfortunately, neither of them goes in my direction
You know there's a-one train running at midnight
There exists a train that runs at 12 AM
The other one leave just for day
Another train leaves exclusively during the day
Leave just for day
Departs only during the daytime
Oh, well
Expressing a sense of resignation or acceptance
Yeah
Expressing agreement or affirmation
I role and I tumble
I roll and toss around
Practically all night long
For almost the entire night
Well, my baby don't treat me well
My lover does not treat me with kindness or affection
Lyrics © Wixen Music Publishing
Written by: John Lee Hooker
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind