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.
PROCESS
John Lee Hooker Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I don't want no woman, crazy 'bout a process head
She a process head; it's almost simple head
Ain't got no money, only got a hair-do fare
Ain't got no money, only got a hair-do fare
Ain't got a dime; enough to your hair did right
Been a fool one time, crazy over process head
That no-good woman almost drove me insane
Have mercy, she begged
Lord, have mercy on this processing fool
Lord, have mercy on, on this processing fool
She won't have a process head, she's seen
Walking up and down the street
Have mercy, have mercy, with a processing fool
John Lee Hooker's song "Process" is a blues tune that speaks of an experience the singer had with a woman who was obsessed with maintaining her processed hair. The lyrics convey a sense of frustration with this woman's obsession which the singer dismisses as "almost simple". The singer laments that he doesn't want a woman who is crazy about her hairdo because it's not worth the money she spends on it, saying that he has enough money to get his hair did up nice. He admits that he had been foolish once and pursued a woman who was crazy about her processed hair, and that she almost drove him insane. He then calls on the Lord to have mercy on "this processing fool", referring to himself.
The theme of "Process" speaks to the beauty standards prevalent in society at the time and the lengths to which people would go to conform. It also suggests a certain level of disdain for those standards from the perspective of John Lee Hooker, who uses the song to express his frustration with the obsession over hair processing.
Line by Line Meaning
I don't want no woman, crazy 'bout a process head
I don't want a woman obsessed with hair processing
She a process head; it's almost simple head
Her obsession with processing hair is almost foolish
Ain't got no money, only got a hair-do fare
I have no money, just enough to get my hair done
Ain't got a dime; enough to your hair did right
I don't have much money, but enough to make my hair look good
Been a fool one time, crazy over process head
I was foolishly obsessed with a woman who cared too much about hair processing
That no-good woman almost drove me insane
That woman who cared too much about hair processing almost drove me crazy
Lord, have mercy on, on this processing fool
God, please forgive me for being obsessed with hair processing
She won't have a process head, she's seen walking up and down the street
She won't care too much about hair processing, she's seen walking around casually
Have mercy, have mercy, with a processing fool
Forgive me for being foolishly obsessed with hair processing
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC
Written by: JOHN LEE HOOKER
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Perry Szarka
John Lee Hooker, What a talent; surely missed GOD Bless!
Mark Hubbell
Good one! Thanks Madeline!
Greg Gauthier
This man was seriously Agile. People over process! :D
michael wenzel
this song reminds me of Bart Simpson