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.
Dirty Ground Hog
John Lee Hooker Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Yes if I catch him there rootin' well he won't root there no more.
Yes he stands and he watches, a morning when I leave home. (2)
Then when I leave home in the morning he hang around all day long.
Give me some toads 'n' frogs hips, I'm gonna put it all together, gonna mix 'em up together,
Whup 'em up together, gonna kill that dirty Groundhog.
I bet'cha my bottom dollar he won' root there no more.
I said goodbye baby, lawd I'm leavin' you now.
I done did what I want to 'n' done killed that dirty ground hog.
Yes he's through.
John Lee Hooker's Dirty Ground Hog is a blues song, quite popular among his fans. The song begins with the singer talking about a dirty groundhog, a creature that keeps rooting around his back door. Hooker wants to catch the groundhog, and he says that if he successfully catches it, the animal will never return again. The groundhog is portrayed as a low-life creature that causes mischief, and Hooker is determined to get rid of it. In the second verse, Hooker narrates how the groundhog stands and watches him leave home every morning. And when he returns home in the evening, the groundhog still roams around.
In verse three, Hooker describes how he plans to kill the groundhog. He asks for some "toads 'n' frogs hips" and promises to mix them up and "whup 'em up" together. Then declares the plan is to kill the dirty groundhog with the mixture. The song's tempo increases, showcasing Hooker's skills on his guitar. In the final verse, Hooker declares that he is leaving, having accomplished what he wanted to do; he has killed the groundhog. He tells his departing lover that the groundhog won't ever return, and the song ends abruptly—Hooker's voice sounding like he's picking himself up and walking away.
Line by Line Meaning
It's a low-down dog, a dirty Groundhog that rootin' round my back door,
There is a filthy, deceitful Groundhog that keeps digging around my back door.
Yes if I catch him there rootin' well he won't root there no more.
If I catch the Groundhog digging, I will make sure he never comes back.
Yes he stands and he watches, a morning when I leave home. (2)
In the morning, when I leave for the day, the Groundhog stands there and watches me.
Then when I leave home in the morning he hang around all day long.
The Groundhog stays around my property all day after I leave.
Give me some toads 'n' frogs hips, I'm gonna put it all together, gonna mix 'em up together,
I am going to gather some specific parts of toads and frogs to create a poisonous mixture.
Whup 'em up together, gonna kill that dirty Groundhog.
I will mix the ingredients together to make a deadly poison and use it to kill the Groundhog.
I bet'cha my bottom dollar he won' root there no more.
I am confident that the Groundhog will never come back again.
I said goodbye baby, lawd I'm leavin' you now.
I am leaving this situation for good.
I done did what I want to 'n' done killed that dirty ground hog.
I have successfully accomplished what I set out to do - kill the Groundhog.
Yes he's through.
The Groundhog is completely finished and will never be a problem again.
Contributed by Benjamin I. Suggest a correction in the comments below.