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
The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning.
I don't play a lot of fancy guitar. I don't want to play it. The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks.
I don't think about time. You're here when you're here. I think about today, staying in tune.
I remember back in Detroit, I used to go to the Apex Bar every night after I got off work. The bartender there used to call me Boom Boom. I don't know why, but he did.
I went on to Cincinnati. I had got a taste of the big cities and them bright lights. I stayed there until I was about 18 or 19 and then I went on to Detroit.
It's never hard to sing the blues. Everyone in the world has the blues . . .
My style is all to myself.
I am a happy man. I've had a good life.
I've got enough money to live me two lifetimes so I don't have to do nothing I don't want to.
Since you knew they was goin' to cheat you anyway, I recorded under any name with all of 'em.
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.
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.
You can go to Europe, and there's no turnin' back - any parts of Europe. Wherever you are, there is no stop and go for the blues. The blues go but it don't stop.