entrepreneur. A California-based transplant from the Midwest, Kappus had found himself helming an album project to make a real, proper John Lee Hooker record and facilitate ‘a paying of tribute by friends’. To this end, he had assembled a bevy of Hooker’s famous admirers – including stars like Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt, plus his own other clients like George Thorogood, the fast-rising young blues star Robert Cray, and the East Los Angeles Chicano roots-rockers Los Lobos – to co-star on a new record which would restate the fundamental values of Hooker’s music, untainted by undignified concessions to transitory pop-rock fashion, and reintroduce the frail titan to the pop mainstream. Shopping the resulting album, The Healer, to the major record companies, he had found no serious takers. It saw eventual release in the winter of 1989 via two decidedly minor independent companies: Chameleon Records in the US and Silvertone in the UK. To the surprise of just about everyone, it was a hit. First in the UK and then in the US, the album climbed the pop charts. One week, Hooker was even outselling Madonna.
By the New Year, the illiterate septuagenarian from the Mississippi Delta had become the world’s oldest and unlikeliest pop star. During the summer of 1990, Hooker and his band, their fee now jacked into the stratosphere, hit every major blues, folk and jazz festival in the northern hemisphere. By autumn, the tour had grossed a figure not unadjacent to three million dollars.
In the summer of 1991, a sequel, Mr Lucky, stood ready for release. This time, the co-stars included Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, Ry Cooder, Albert Collins, Johnny Winter and Van Morrison; and once again, Hooker was on the road, prised from his suburban California hideaway to perform three concerts on the East Coast in locations ranging from grimy New Jersey to genteel New England. In the baking heat of the hotel parking lot, Hooker’s car is ready: a rented white Buick Park Avenue with Georgia plates. His driver is a young emissary from Mike Kappus’s Rosebud Agency. Like all the Rosebuddies, he combines brisk efficiency with laid-back San Francisco cool, and an absolute devotion to Hooker’s comfort. The baggage – including Hooker’s all-important Gibson guitars – is slung into the the trunk, and Hooker creakily installs himself in the back seat with his travelling companion, the diminutive singer Vala Cupp, who serves as warm-up act with Hooker’s group, The Coast To Coast Blues Band. Chameleon have just released her solo album, nominally produced by Hooker and featuring him on the duet version of his venerable ‘Crawlin’ King Snake’ which they perform together at every show. Can the acquaintance think of any UK labels which might be interested in releasing it?
The duet has become one of the major theatrical set-pieces of Hooker’s show. The song itself, learned on the front porch of his childhood home from his earliest blues mentor Tony Hollins, is among the oldest in Hooker’s repertoire, first recorded by him in 1949 and – re-recorded in tandem with Keith Richards – one of Mr Lucky’s show-pieces. Performed with Cupp, it becomes a sensual epic: she hovers around Hooker’s chair like a butterfly, trading lines with him in a progressively more fevered exchange which culminates in a reassuringly daughterly peck on the cheek. Not surprisingly, there is a certain amount of speculation concerning the exact nature of Hooker’s relationship with Cupp, generally amongst white male rockers of what we might call ‘a certain age’, to whom the great man’s predilection for surrounding himself with attractive young women is something of an inspiration; cause for an optimistic vision of their own rapidly approaching twilight years. Hooker, wrote Dennis Hopper in the notes to the soundtrack (by Hooker and Miles Davis) for his movie The Hot Spot, ‘proves you can still make a steady diet of fried chicken well into your seventies and still try to get all of those pretty young things into a hot tub’. The nudge-nudge-wink-wink response generally received by Hooker’s own denials – ‘they ain’t my girlfriends, we just friends’ – obscures the fact that, most of the time, he’s telling the truth. There are exceptions, though. A friend of the acquaintance is fond of recounting the tale of when attending the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, he and a buddy found that the hotel room that they were sharing was kitty-corner from Hooker’s. The buddy, an obsessive Hooker fan, insisted on knocking at the great man’s door so that he could press the flesh and testify to his devotion. So he did. After a long delay, Hooker came to the door in his shirtsleeves. Visible behind him, in the bed, was this fabulous blonde; you know, really fabulous. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Hooker announced, ‘Well-uh-uh-uh, it certainly has been a pleasure meetin’ you, young man, but right now I got me some business to ’tend to.’ And then he closed the door.
The reality of Cupp’s situation, though, is simply that he enjoys her company. When they check into hotels, her room adjoins his: she keeps track of his possessions and talks to room service for him. Plus her presence – neat figure, ready smile, cascading brown hair – fuels his legend.
Once ensconced, Hooker removes his hat and shades, and wriggles into the most comfortable position. His hair, apart from a bald spot on his crown and the widow’s peak which runs in his family, is still thick and healthy: it is dyed a rich reddish black and left nappy and uncombed beneath the trademark Homburg. Silver stubble gleams against his mahogany cheeks and jaw. His left eyelid droops slightly, leaving one eye wide and guileless, the other hooded and watchful. Without the dentures which he wears for video shoots and major photo sessions, his remaining upper and lower teeth are an almost exact mirror-image, requiring him to sling his jaw to one side in order to chew his food. As the Buick noses out to the freeway, the one-time Detroit auto-factory worker disapprovingly notes the number of Japanese cars on the road. The Chevrolet, now that was a fine car. Made of US steel, real steel. You get into an accident in one of them, you can get out and walk a-way. Mm-hm. Not like now. You get in an accident in one of them Japanese cars, you get hurt.
For most of the journey to the first show, Hooker is asleep. He can sleep just about anywhere, just doze right off like an old tomcat in front of a warm fire. The night’s concert is to be held at a 7,000-seater auditorium set in the grounds of a lush, wooded park; he is to share the bill with fellow Rosebud stars Los Lobos and Robert Cray. When on tour, Hooker rarely headlines a show if he can avoid it. He prefers the middle spot on the bill: this facilitates the quick getaways he favours whenever there’s a long drive between his show and his bed. As Hooker’s Buick pulls in, Los Lobos are in the home stretch of their set. By the time Hooker has found the most comfortable sofa in his dressing room, popped a can of lite beer and issued instructions for the precise constitution of his plateful of cold cuts from the buffet, Los Lobos’ vocalists David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas are in the dressing room to pay their respects. ‘Hello, John,’ they say, their voices soft and their eyes shining. Hooker extends a regal flipper. ‘Huh-huh-how you doin’, young man,’ he replies.
The Coast To Coast Blues Band have already arrived in the rather less luxurious circumstances of a collective van, and have already established themselves next door in a welter of guitar and saxophone cases. There is a minor crisis within their ranks: one of the band’s mainstays, organist and master of ceremonies Deacon Jones, has opted to stay home in San Francisco to play a series of shows with his own band for rather more money than a Coast To Coast sideman’s wage. His replacement is pianist Lizz Fischer, a sinewy pixie with a Rapunzelesque blonde braid, formidable jazz chops and one of Coast To Coast’s only two clean driving licences. Her other qualification is that she looks absolutely stunning in stiletto heels and a little black dress; Hooker, murmurs one of the male Coast To Coasters, would be happy to have an entire band of attractive female musicians.
As the band gather sidestage, quiet comments are passed concerning the forest of guitars awaiting the attentions of The Robert Cray Band. Hooker carries two (one in standard tuning, one in the open ‘Spanish’ tuning in which he plays his show’s boogie finale) and the rest of the band’s guitarists – stocky, snubnosed Mike Osborn on lead; gaunt, hirsute Rich Kirch on rhythm; spiky, nuevo-wavo Jim Guyett on bass – make do with one each. They have, after all, flown in from California, travelling light: the drums, amplifiers and piano are rented. They hit the stage with a slow blues: ‘Cold Cold Feeling’, originated by T-Bone Walker, who more or less invented modern blues guitar and who, back in the Detroit of the late ’40s, gave Hooker his first electric instrument. It’s sparked
