John Lee Hooker (Coahoma County, Mississippi, August 22, 1917 – Los Altos,… Read Full Bio ↴John Lee Hooker (Coahoma County, Mississippi, August 22, 1917 – Los Altos, California, June 21, 2001) was a highly influential American blues singer, guitarist and songwriter.

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.

Good Rockin' Mama
John Lee Hooker Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

I got a good rockin' mama, yeah and the way she rock is all right
Got a good rockin' mama, and the way she rock is all right
She rock me in the mornin', she rock me late at night

Now, don't you want to rock?
Don't you want to rock?
Don't you want to rock?
Rock me, mama, rock me all night long

Yeah, good rockin' mama

We rocked last night and-a rocked the night before
We rocked last night and rocked the night before
Say, yes she rock me, rock me ev'ry night

Now, don't you want to rock?
Don't you want to rock?
Don't you want to rock?
Rock me, mama, rock me all night long
Rock it now man, oh yeah

Don't need no steam heat, yo body keeps me warm
Don't need no steam heater, her body keeps me warm
She rocks me at midnight, she rock me till the break o'day

Now, don't you want to rock?

Don't you want to rock?
Don't you want to rock?

Overall Meaning

The lyrics of John Lee Hooker's "Good Rockin' Mama" are a celebration of the singer's passionate relationship with his lover, who he describes as a good rockin' mama. He praises her ability to rock him all night long, from early morning to midnight and beyond, conveying the intensity and durability of their connection. The song is presented as a call-and-response, with Hooker urging the listener to join in and rock with him and his lady, establishing a communal sense of joy around the couple's sensual energy.

At the heart of the song is the playful eroticism that is central to many blues songs. The double entendres of the lyrics - "She rocks me at midnight, she rock me till the break o'day" - suggest a sexual relationship that is both fulfilling and exciting, with a sense of shared pleasure amplified by the rhythm and repetition of the music. The use of the word "rock" as a verb adds to this sense of physicality, conjuring a vision of bodies moving together in unison and generating heat through their movements. The lyrics are both celebratory and seductive, inviting the listener to join in the experience of the song and sharing in the intimacy of the singer's relationship.

Line by Line Meaning

I got a good rockin' mama, yeah and the way she rock is all right
I have a fantastic partner who rocks my world, and her rhythm is perfect.

Got a good rockin' mama, and the way she rock is all right
I have an amazing woman who is good at dancing, and her moves are great.

She rock me in the mornin', she rock me late at night
She dances with me early in the day, and she rocks me to sleep in the night.

Now, don't you want to rock?
Do you have the desire to dance?

Rock me, mama, rock me all night long
Dance with me, dear, throughout the night.

We rocked last night and-a rocked the night before
We danced yesterday evening, and we also danced the night before that.

Say, yes she rock me, rock me ev'ry night
She certainly dances with me every single night, and it's wonderful.

Rock it now man, oh yeah
Keep the music coming, let's dance with enthusiasm.

Don't need no steam heater, her body keeps me warm
I do not require a heater as she provides enough warmth with our dance moves.

She rocks me at midnight, she rock me till the break o'day
We dance together until midnight, and we continue until the sun rises again.

Contributed by Adam P. Suggest a correction in the comments below.