Roots of Blues -- John Lee Hooker „ Helpless Blues"

Recorded: no details available

John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1917 -- June 21, 2001) was an influential American post-war blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter born in Coahoma County near Clarksdale, Mississippi. From a musical family, he was a cousin of Earl Hooker. John was also influenced by his stepfather, a local blues guitarist, who learned in Shreveport, Louisiana to play a droning, one-chord blues that was strikingly different from the Delta blues of the time. John developed a half-spoken style that was his trademark. Though similar to the early Delta blues, his music was rhythmically free. John Lee Hooker could be said to embody his own unique genre of the blues, often incorporating the boogie-woogie piano style and a driving rhythm into his masterful and idiosyncratic blues guitar and singing. His best known songs include "Boogie Chillen" (1948) and "Boom Boom" (1962).
Hooker's guitar playing is closely aligned with piano Boogie Woogie. He would play the walking bass pattern with his thumb, stopping to emphasize the end of a line with a series of trills, done by rapid hammer-ons and pull-offs. The songs that most epitomize his early sound are "Boogie Chillen", about being 17 and wanting to go out to dance at the Boogie clubs, "Baby Please Don't Go", a blues standard first recorded by Big Joe Williams, and "Tupelo Blues",a stunningly sad song about the flooding of Tupelo, Mississippi in April 1936.
He maintained a solo career, popular with blues and folk music fans of the early 1960s and crossed over to white audiences, giving an early opportunity to the young Bob Dylan. As he got older, he added more and more people to his band, changing his live show from simply Hooker with his guitar to a large band, with Hooker singing.
His vocal phrasing was less closely tied to specific bars than most blues singers'. This casual, rambling style had been gradually diminishing with the onset of electric blues bands from Chicago but, even when not playing solo, Hooker retained it in his sound.
Though Hooker lived in Detroit during most of his career, he is not associated with the Chicago-style blues prevalent in large northern cities, as much as he is with the southern rural blues styles, known as delta blues, country blues, folk blues, or "front porch blues". His use of an electric guitar tied together the Delta blues with the emerging post-war electric blues.
His songs have been covered by The White Stripes, MC5, The Doors, George Thorogood, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, The Yardbirds, The Animals, R. L. Burnside, the J. Geils Band and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Blues
• Roots_of_Blues
• Histroy_of_music

[Jean56k]

it has never felt so great to feel bad then with the blues of john lee hooker

[MixmasterAce]

Man I love this man RIP John Lee Hooker

[JLH250]

i think its to powerful for my computer

[Jarmo60]

@gitfiddlejim

Thanks :)

[gitfiddlejim]

Maybe Ive missed it but have not seen his classic House rent Boogie here, a very fine piece, early stuff of course, always the best, most intense.

And very few of his VJ top rankers, Maudie, Baby Lee, I wanna be your big wheel,

[gitfiddlejim]

@therath94 Have you heard Wright Holmes " Alley Blues", late 40,s recordings, bet Hendrix had.

[gitfiddlejim]

@Jarmo60

Dont know if you know but there was also a West Texas Slim, not JLH. Ill check out his real name tonight.

Recorded in LA on JR Fulbrights label..

G

[gitfiddlejim]

@funkydrummer14

Totally agree, where is the "Fire & brimstone" that the old stuff had?

[thunderscratch66]

jesus, mr hooker was born before the electric guitar. i bet he was happy when he saw one for the first time.

[nmlrecords]

A great song to start this foggy morning!!! Thank you one more time John Lee...

[funkydrummer14]

@NanaNarcotic Cool.! You're a Canadian too as I see from the profile on your channel! Right on! I'm from Nova Scotia. If you love funky blues, you gotta youtube " Garrett Mason" who is also from NS, Check out some of his stuff! Amazing!

[NanaNarcotic]

@funkydrummer14 I love it too.