John Lee Hooker 1964

John Lee Hooker 1964, hand-drawn portrait of the famous bluesman with his E312T Epiphone Zephyr at The Roadhouse, North London in 1964, age 52.

Hooker was 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 that he developed in Detroit.
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.

Born in 1912 and growing up in Mississippi, he ran away from home at the age of 14.
He worked in factories in various cities during World War II, eventually getting a job with the Ford Motor Company in Detroit in 1943.
He frequented the blues clubs and bars on Hastings Street, the heart of the black entertainment district, on Detroit’s east side. In a city noted for its pianists, guitar players were scarce.
Hooker’s popularity grew quickly as he performed in Detroit clubs, and, seeking an instrument louder than his acoustic guitar, he bought his first electric guitar.

Some of his best known songs include “Boogie Chillen'” (1948), “Crawling King Snake” (1949), “Dimples” (1956), “Boom Boom” (1962), and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” (1966).
Several of his later albums, including The Healer (1989) Grammy winner, Mr. Lucky (1991), Chill Out (1995) Grammy winner, and Don’t Look Back (1997), were album chart successes in the U.S. and UK.

Among his many awards, Hooker was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.

On June 21, 2001, Hooker died in his sleep at home in Los Altos, CA at age 88.

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