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.
It's My Own Fault
John Lee Hooker Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
It's my own fault, darlin', caused you treat me the way you do
When you left me, darlin', I was callin' from town to town
Oh, won't you give me one more chance?
Oh, baby, won't you give me one more chance?
Baby, I'll prove that I'm in love with you; you know I'll be travelin' no more
It's my own fault, darlin'--I made you treat me the way you do
Baby, I go alone; I just realized all I did
Oh, goodbye, baby; I know we may never meet again
Oh, goodbye, baby; I know we may never meet again
But it's my own fault, darlin'--I made you treat me the way you did
John Lee Hooker's It's My Own Fault is a blues song from his album Burnin' that takes a strong introspective look at a relationship that has already collapsed. Hooker acknowledges that the way his partner treats him is his responsibility, as he caused her to treat him the way she does. He further acknowledges that he was calling her from one town to another when she left him, indicating that he was not treating her well either.
In the chorus, Hooker pleads for a second chance, promising that he loves her and will not continue to travel around anymore. In the last verse, he realizes that it is his fault that the relationship is over, and that he is the reason why his partner treats him the way she does. As he bids farewell to his lover, Hooker expresses his understanding that they may not meet again, but he takes responsibility for his behavior that led to the relationship's downfall.
Overall, this song speaks to the importance of self-reflection and taking responsibility in failing relationships. Rather than blaming the other person for the relationship's demise, Hooker acknowledges his own faults and mistakes that contributed to its failure.
Line by Line Meaning
It's my own fault, darlin', that you treat me the way you do
I acknowledge that I am to blame for the way you treat me, my love
It's my own fault, darlin', caused you treat me the way you do
I caused you to treat me the way you do, my love
When you left me, darlin', I was callin' from town to town
When you left me, my love, I was desperately searching for you in town after town
Oh, won't you give me one more chance?
Please, my love, give me another opportunity to make things right
Oh, baby, won't you give me one more chance?
Oh, my dear, please give me another chance to prove my love
Baby, I'll prove that I'm in love with you; you know I'll be travelin' no more
I promise to show you that I truly love you and will not wander anymore
It's my own fault, darlin'--I made you treat me the way you do
I am responsible for the way you treat me, my love
It's my own fault, darlin'--I made you treat me the way you do
I deserve the way you treat me, my love; it is my doing
Baby, I go alone; I just realized all I did
I will go on my own because I now realize my mistakes
Oh, goodbye, baby; I know we may never meet again
Farewell, my love; I understand that this may be the end for us
But it's my own fault, darlin'--I made you treat me the way you did
I accept that I brought upon myself the treatment you gave me, my love
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC
Written by: AHMET ERTEGUN
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
gerg rev g
It's harder than ANY music and it has more soul than anyone could possibly give.GOAT.