could’ve gotten to Detroit a few years earlier than he claimed in our interviews: some other sources have placed his arrival in his adopted hometown as early as 1937. It would also invalidate John Lee’s own account of his military service (which you’ll find in Chapter 5) because, obviously, if he had been five years older he wouldn’t have been underage, and therefore the entire anecdote would be ceremonially blown out of the water. A promising Google link tantalisingly offers the snippet that ‘later he avoided military service in World War II due to a stabbing wound’, but the site in question (Nothin’ But The Blues at http://www.t4p.com/blues/artists.html) offers no further elucidation. If this was indeed the case, the wound in question may well have been the hand-tendon injury inflicted by his then-wife Maude and mentioned by Zakiya Hooker in Chapter 8.
Also . . . when John Lee made his triumphant return to the cultural forefront in 1989 with The Healer, his ‘official’ birthdate was given in contemporary press releases as 1920, which would’ve made him 69 years old. Even with the ‘revised official’ birthdate of 1917, he would’ve been 72 . . . and if my correspondent’s information could be properly verified and authenticated, John Lee would have been all of 77 at the time, which makes his achievement all the more astonishing and impressive. So when he eventually passed away in 2001 – having outlived, among others, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon and two (Albert and Freddie) of the Three Kings – he had reached the seriously impressive age of 89: still performing, still able to rock a house to the bone and raise the spirits and consciousness of an audience at a time in life when most of his few surviving contemporaries could, sadly, barely lift a spoon. He would also have been a fractionally closer contemporary of Robert Johnson, T-Bone Walker and Howlin’ Wolf than of Muddy Waters or Willie Dixon, let alone B.B. King.
Well . . . I replied to my correspondent, requesting his permission to reproduce the relevant portions of his communication in this new edition and credit him fully for his research. Literally days before our final production deadline, he got back in touch to tell me that he had been unable to verify his preliminary findings to his own satisfaction, and was therefore unwilling to commit himself (or me!) to them.
So there the matter rests, so to speak. Good old John . . . a man of mystery to the last, and beyond.
I mentioned two things. The other is that, on 27 February 2011, Hooker’s former collaborator and running buddy Eddie Kirkland died in Florida after a Greyhound bus smashed into his Ford Taurus. True to form, the Road Warrior was driving himself to a gig. He was 87 years old.
That was one tough generation.
‘I’ll be here forever, but my body won’t.’ About that, at least, John Lee was entirely right. His art was indeed immortal, and he is still here: or, to be precise, his voice and his songs are still very much with us, as is his brooding image on film. What isn’t here anymore is his sheer physical presence: hugely impressive but never imposing; towering but never overbearing. I’m thinking both of his physical presence in a room during our many hours of conversation (both on- and off-tape) and socialising, and the presence he could bring to a stage, be it in blazing afternoon sunshine at open-air festivals or under the late-night mood lighting of intimate clubs and theatres.
As I’ve said, here and elsewhere, John Lee Hooker was deeply mysterious. Not the ersatz trick-lighting-smoke-and-mirrors mysteriousness of a stage magician, but the genuine broad-daylight mysteriousness of a real magician. He could, and did, explain exactly what he was doing and how he was doing it . . . and not one iota of the mystery would be dispelled.
Now, because my agent tells me that folks love lists, allow me to leave you with my own entirely personal and infinitely subjective mini-list of my half-dozen favourite covers and reinterpretations of John Lee Hooker’s songs.
Covering his compositions is a tricky business, to be sure. Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, let alone the simultaneously sainted and damned Robert Johnson, were also hugely distinctive performers as well as gifted and eloquent songwriters – hell, while we’re at it we could also toss in Bob Dylan, Lennon & McCartney and a regiment more – but hundreds, if not thousands, of performers have managed to sing their songs without having to travel deep into their musical landscapes and specifically engage with the spirit of the originals.
Hooker is different. With the exception of a few bar-band staples which can be rocked-up a treat by any halfway-competent group (‘Boom Boom’ and ‘Dimples’ come immediately to mind), composition and performance are virtually indivisible. The only real options open to most performers would be either to mimic Hooker (which sounds ridiculous) or to obliterate him (which reduces the songs to generic boogies with cute lyrics). The only way it can work is for the performer to delve deep within him- (or her-)self to find an aspect of that self which can connect with some aspect of Hooker. The easiest to reach is his dark, ominous, brooding side, with its undercurrents of lust and anger. The hardest, and most elusive, is his warmth, compassion and humour.
Six, therefore, of the very, very best.
JUNIOR PARKER & THE BLUE FLAMES: ‘Feelin’ Good’ (1953)
Not so much a ‘cover’ as an audacious ‘Parkerising’ of Hooker’s ‘Boogie Chillen’, this primo example of pre-Elvis Sun Records Memphis R&B speeds the sensuous, hip-twitching lope of Hooker’s original groove up to a faster-rocking itchy-foot kind of boogie messaround which still preserves the ethos of the original.
THE ANIMALS: ‘I’m Mad Again’ (1964)
For a chubby kid from Newcastle to attempt not only to sing John Lee Hooker songs but also to redeliver one of his most idiosyncratic dramatic monologues would’ve been a spectacular act of hubris if Eric Burdon hadn’t pulled off this variation on the ‘Bad Like Jesse James’ theme so impressively. This bravura performance appeared on The Animals’ very first album as one of no less than three Hooker reinterpretations, alongside rocking covers of both ‘Boom Boom’ (with which they enjoyed a medium-sized US hit single) and ‘Dimples’. The latter also served as Steve Winwood’s pro recording debut (albeit medleyed up with ‘Boom Boom’) on the very first single by The Spencer Davis Group. In a rare triumph for natural justice, it was Hooker’s own original and timeless 1956 recording ‘Dimples’ which came out on top in the UK singles chart.
MC5: ‘Motor City Is Burning’ (1968)
Don’t forget the Motor City! The year after the Detroit riots and JLH’s own release of this mordant commentary, the song received this incendiary, incandescent in-concert hot-rodding from the composer’s fellow Detroiters, the insurrectionary activist band whose brief career helped lay a powder trail for what erupted only a few years later as punk. Almost a decade further on, the title was obliquely referenced by The Clash in one of their most powerful early songs, ‘London’s Burning’.
POP STAPLES with STEVE CROPPER and ALBERT KING: ‘Tupelo’ (1969)
Where Hooker’s baritone is dark and heavy, the unassuming, understated tenor of Roebuck ‘Pop’ Staples, the founding patriarch of The Staple Singers, is light in both senses of the term. A fellow Mississippian and contemporary of Hooker’s, he explores this incantatory account of the apocalyptic flood of 1927 (which also inspired classic songs by Charley Patton and Bessie Smith, not to mention – many years later – by Randy Newman) from the inside: the trademark vibrato pulse and throb of his ominous guitar subtly coloured and decorated with truly exquisite restraint by Cropper and King. Bob Dylan reworked and deconstructed ‘Tupelo’ as ‘The Big Flood’ in one of the still-unofficial stretches of The Basement Tapes, along with ‘I’m In The Mood’.
THE DOORS: ‘Crawlin’ King Snake’
