John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hookerwas an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth22 August 1917
CountryUnited States of America
I am a happy man. I've had a good life.
I been doing the same things as in my younger days, when I was coming up, and now here I am, an old man, up there in the charts. And I say, well, what happened? Have they just thought up the real John Lee Hooker, is that it? And I think, well, I won't tell nobody else! I can't help but wonder what happened.
I don't do nothing I don't want to do.
I've got enough money to live me two lifetimes so I don't have to do nothing I don't want to.
I just get an idea and then all of a sudden I've got a song.
The way Will Moore taught me, and the way I play it, the blues is just something different.
Since you knew they was goin' to cheat you anyway, I recorded under any name with all of 'em.
They wasn't gonna give you nothin'. I didn't care as long as they let me play my music. Cash on the spot... You cheat me and I'm gonna get me some money, too.
Groups are corporations now. They have pension plans. Musicians have saw the daylight.
I have heartaches, I have blues. No matter what you got, the blues is there. 'Cause that's all I know - the blues. And I can sing the blues so deep until you can have this room full of money and I can give you the blues.
I'm even afraid to lay down with you at night, because when you go to bed at night, mean woman, you got an ice pick in your hand.
In my career, people in the record business have been rockin' in the same ol' boat. They all crooks - I'll say it clear and loud - especially the big ones.
That girl has a special talent
I hitchhiked, took trucks 'n' trains - anything that would pick me up. I stopped in Memphis for about six months and they found me and come got me. Stayed about a month an' split again.