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.
Kiddio
John Lee Hooker Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
One word can close this deal
Baby, be my queen of hearts
Please, gimme that love you've got
A-won't ya say yes? Don't ya say no
Make me feel good, Kiddio
Maybe I'm just wastin' time
You could make me feel so good
I know you could if you only would
A-won't ya say yes? Don't ya say no
Make me feel good, Kiddio
I wrote you a six-page letter
I called you on the phone
But you started talkin' 'bout the weather
Kiddio, don'tcha know that's wrong?
I can't stand this playin' 'round
Help me up; don't let me down
Kiss me, baby; tell me so
If you love me, let me know
A-won't ya say yes? Don't ya say no
Make me feel good, Kiddio
I wrote you a six-page letter
I even called you on the phone
But you started talkin' 'bout the weather
Kiddio, don'tcha know that's wrong?
I can't stand this playin' 'round
Help me up; don't let me down
A-kiss me, baby; tell me so
If you love me, let me know
A-won't ya say yes? Don't ya say no
Make me feel good, Kiddio
Make me feel so uh, oh, oh, good, so, so good, Kiddio
The song "Kiddio" by John Lee Hooker is a ballad about a man who is desperately trying to win the affection of a woman named Kiddio. In the lyrics, he expresses his love for her and begs her to reciprocate his feelings. He tells her that she could be his queen of hearts if she would just give him a chance. He pleads with her to say yes and make him feel good.
The song also expresses the singer's frustration with his attempts to win Kiddio's love. He has written her a six-page letter and called her on the phone, but she seems more interested in talking about the weather than developing a relationship with him. He implores her to stop playing games and to tell him how she really feels.
Overall, the lyrics convey a sense of desperation and longing. The singer is willing to do anything to win Kiddio's love, but he is also aware that he may be wasting his time. The repetition of the phrase "won't ya say yes? Don't ya say no / Make me feel good, Kiddio" emphasizes the singer's desire for Kiddio's affection and creates a sense of urgency in the song.
Line by Line Meaning
I told you, baby, how I feel
I've already expressed to you how much you mean to me
One word can close this deal
Just one word from you would make all the difference
Baby, be my queen of hearts
I want you to be the love of my life
Please, gimme that love you've got
Give me the love that I know you're capable of giving
A-won't ya say yes? Don't ya say no
Please say yes and don't turn me down
Make me feel good, Kiddio
Bring some joy to my life, Kiddio
Maybe I'm just wastin' time
I'm starting to think that maybe I'm just wasting my time
Can't get you off my mind
I can't stop thinking about you
You could make me feel so good
I know that you have the power to make me happy
I know you could if you only would
I believe that you're capable of loving me if you just gave us a chance
I wrote you a six-page letter
I went through the effort of writing a long letter expressing my feelings
I called you on the phone
I even tried to reach out to you through a phone call
But you started talkin' 'bout the weather
But you didn't seem interested and just talked about something mundane like the weather
Kiddio, don'tcha know that's wrong?
Why would you talk about something so unimportant when I'm trying to express my love to you?
I can't stand this playin' 'round
I'm tired of this game of back and forth, it's time to make a decision
Help me up; don't let me down
Help me reach this level of love, don't let me down with rejection
Kiss me, baby; tell me so
Show me your love with a romantic kiss and tell me that you love me
If you love me, let me know
If you truly love me, don't keep it a secret and let me know
Make me feel good, Kiddio
Make me feel happy and loved, Kiddio
Make me feel so uh, oh, oh, good, so, so good, Kiddio
Bring me so much happiness that I feel like I'm on top of the world, Kiddio
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: BROOK BENTON, CLYDE LOVERN OTIS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Raellives
Miss this album. Thanks for sharing.
J L
Nice