 John Lee Hooker is one of the original innovators and kings of African American popular music, commonly called the blues.
He was born on August 22, 1917, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, to a Baptist minister.
Later John Lee Hooker became the stepson of William Moore, a guitarist.
At the age of 14, he started singing with spiritual groups.
John Lee Hooker learned his style of guitar playing from his stepfather. He also learned to play from his colleagues, James Smith and Coot Harris.
John Lee Hooker's style of guitar playing is known as two-finger picking. His two-finger picking style is known as "Deltalick"
John Lee Hooker introduced a style to which every white blues band since 1962 must trace at least half their roots.
His guitar talks in snaky lines, in sitar quivers, in sudden shocks, and in hilly phrases.
John Lee Hooker's songs are a monologue that retells a story of emotional pain that requires a unique verbal pattern.
He was the first great recorded practioner of the electric blues-rock-funk and stream of consciousness boogie.
John Lee Hooker likes to keep things simple. He rarely strays from a couple of cords and delivers his autobiographical blues with growing menace and much vibrato. He is a completely closed-in performer who accents the rhythmic drive of his performance, according to "Quallette", by "chopping off the ends of his rhythmic lines ".
When John Lee Hooker cut his first single, a stomping guitar boogie called, "Boogie Chillen" in 1948, the Mississippi native was working as a janitor in a Detroit steel mill. The song became a hit, and John Lee Hooker quit his job to play full-time the hypnotic one chord country blues - sung in his preternatural growl - that he had learned from his stepfather.
In 1962, John Lee Hooker brought out another smashing hit, entitled "Boom Boom", which is, according to "Puterbaugh", "a rough uncut Hooker".
John Lee Hooker also has as an album on the market entitled "Boom Boom".
John Lee Hooker released this album in 1993.
In the late 70's, John Lee Hooker appeared in the hit movie "Blues Brothers". In the movie Hooker sang the smashing hit "Boom Boom".
John Lee Hooker has made many appearances in big places.
In 1960, he performed at the Newport Folk Festival.
In 1973, he was in a concert at the Lincoln Center.
Hooker still also plays in many average clubs, but he has had the chance to work with numerous well-known people. To name a few, he's worked with Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Albert King, Peg Leg Sam, Ginger Baker, and Chris Wood.
He's worked with a few rock groups such as "The Rolling Stones" and "Animals".
John Lee Hooker, who is now 83 years old, has now made his home in Long Beach, California.
His voice has deepened into a "throaty, lubricious vehicle for conveying pain, trouble desire, and wicked irony" His guitar playing is "tangled and gnarly, the sound of a man groping for an honest expression of deep, disturbing feelings".
Until recently he sometimes grabbed the mike to perform when he's just at the club having a night out. John Lee Hooker is, however, in poor health now and has stopped making public appearances.
Nobody sound like John Lee Hooker. Mississippi's John Lee Hooker is different. He is the king of the blues.
John Lee Hooker, the great bluesmen, passed away in his sleepon June 21, 2001, at his home in the San Francisco Bay area at the age of 83.
John Lee Hooker influenced countless generations of musicians and inspired music fans around the world during his sixty-year career.
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