John Lee Hooker Earlier career when did his career begin? Hooker's recording career began in 1948, What was his first recording? The single, "Boogie Chillen'",
Was Boogie Chillen popular?
Was Boogie Chillen popular?
Hooker's recording career began in 1948, when Modern Records, based in Los Angeles, released a demo he had recorded for Bernie Besman in Detroit. The single, "Boogie Chillen'", became a hit and the best-selling race record of 1949. Despite being illiterate, Hooker was a prolific lyricist. In addition to adapting traditional blues lyrics, he composed original songs. In the 1950s, like many black musicians, Hooker earned little from record sales, and so he often recorded variations of his songs for different studios for an up-front fee. To evade his recording contract, he used various pseudonyms, including John Lee Booker (for Chess Records and Chance Records in 1951-1952), Johnny Lee (for De Luxe Records in 1953-1954), John Lee, John Lee Cooker, Texas Slim, Delta John, Birmingham Sam and his Magic Guitar, Johnny Williams, and the Boogie Man.  His early solo songs were recorded by Bernie Besman. Hooker rarely played with a standard beat, but instead he changed tempo to fit the needs of the song. This often made it difficult to use backing musicians, who were not accustomed to Hooker's musical vagaries. As a result, Besman recorded Hooker playing guitar, singing and stomping on a wooden pallet in time with the music.  For much of this period he recorded and toured with Eddie Kirkland. In Hooker's later sessions for Vee-Jay Records in Chicago, studio musicians accompanied him on most of his recordings, including Eddie Taylor, who could handle his musical idiosyncrasies. "Boom Boom" and "Dimples", two popular songs by Hooker, were originally released by Vee-Jay. CANNOTANSWER
The single, "Boogie Chillen'", became a hit and the best-selling race record of 1949.
John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1912 or 1917 – June 21, 2001) 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. 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. Hooker was ranked 35 in Rolling Stones 2015 list of 100 greatest guitarists.

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), Mr. Lucky (1991), Chill Out (1995), and Don't Look Back (1997), were album chart successes in the U.S. and UK. The Healer (for the song "I'm In The Mood") and Chill Out (for the album) both earned him Grammy wins as well as Don't Look Back, which went on to earn him a double-Grammy win for Best Traditional Blues Recording and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals (with Van Morrison).

Early life
Hooker's date of birth is a subject of debate; the years 1912, 1915, 1917, 1920, and 1923 have all been suggested.  Most official sources list 1917, though at times Hooker stated he was born in 1920.  Information found in the 1920 and 1930 censuses indicates that he was actually born in 1912.  In 2017, a series of events took place to celebrate the purported centenary of his birth. In the 1920 federal census, John Hooker is seven years old and one of nine children living with William and Minnie Hooker in Tutwiler, Mississippi.

It is believed that he was born in Tutwiler, in Tallahatchie County, although some sources say his birthplace was near Clarksdale, in Coahoma County. He was the youngest of the 11 children of William Hooker (born 1871, died after 1923), a sharecropper and Baptist preacher, and Minnie Ramsey (born c. 1880, date of death unknown). In the 1920 federal census, William and Minnie were recorded as being 48 and 39 years old, respectively, which implies that Minnie was born about 1880, not 1875. She was said to have been a "decade or so younger" than her husband (Boogie Man, p. 23), which gives additional credibility to this census record as evidence of Hooker's origins.

The Hooker children were homeschooled. They were permitted to listen only to religious songs; the spirituals sung in church were their earliest exposure to music. In 1921, their parents separated. The next year, their mother married William Moore, a blues singer, who provided John Lee with an introduction to the guitar (and whom he would later credit for his distinctive playing style).

Moore was his first significant blues influence. He was a local blues guitarist who, in Shreveport, Louisiana, learned to play a droning, one-chord blues that was strikingly different from the Delta blues of the time.

Another influence was Tony Hollins, who dated Hooker's sister Alice, helped teach Hooker to play, and gave him his first guitar. For the rest of his life, Hooker regarded Hollins as a formative influence on his style of playing and his career as a musician. Among the songs that Hollins reputedly taught Hooker were versions of "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Catfish Blues".

At the age of 14, Hooker ran away from home, reportedly never seeing his mother or stepfather again. In the mid-1930s, he lived in Memphis, Tennessee, where he performed on Beale Street, at the New Daisy Theatre and occasionally at house parties.

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.

Earlier career
Hooker was working as janitor in a Detroit steel mill when his recording career began in 1948, when Modern Records, based in Los Angeles, released a demo he had recorded for Bernie Besman in Detroit. The single, "Boogie Chillen', became a hit and the best-selling race record of 1949. Though illiterate, Hooker was a prolific lyricist. In addition to adapting traditional blues lyrics, he composed original songs. In the 1950s, like many black musicians, Hooker earned little from record sales, and so he often recorded variations of his songs for different studios for an up-front fee. To evade his recording contract, he used various pseudonyms, including John Lee Booker (for Chess Records and Chance Records in 1951–1952), Johnny Lee (for De Luxe Records in 1953–1954), John Lee, John Lee Cooker, Texas Slim, Delta John, Birmingham Sam and his Magic Guitar, Johnny Williams, and the Boogie Man.

His early solo songs were recorded by Bernie Besman. Hooker rarely played with a standard beat, but instead he changed tempo to fit the needs of the song. This often made it difficult to use backing musicians, who were not accustomed to Hooker's musical vagaries. As a result, Besman recorded Hooker playing guitar, singing and stomping on a wooden pallet in time with the music.

For much of this period he recorded and toured with Eddie Kirkland. In Hooker's later sessions for Vee-Jay Records in Chicago, studio musicians accompanied him on most of his recordings, including Eddie Taylor, who could handle his musical idiosyncrasies. "Boom Boom" (1962) and "Dimples", two popular songs by Hooker, were originally released by Vee-Jay.

Later career

Beginning in 1962, Hooker gained greater exposure when he toured Europe in the annual American Folk Blues Festival.  His "Dimples" became a successful single on the UK Singles Charts in 1964, eight years after its first US release. Hooker began to perform and record with rock musicians.  One of his earliest collaborations was with British blues rock band the Groundhogs.  In 1970, he recorded the joint album Hooker 'n Heat, with the American blues and boogie rock group Canned Heat, whose repertoire included adaptations of Hooker songs. It became the first of Hooker's albums to reach the Billboard charts, peaking at number 78 on the Billboard 200.  Other collaboration albums soon followed, including Endless Boogie (1971) and Never Get Out of These Blues Alive (1972), which included Steve Miller, Elvin Bishop, Van Morrison, and others.

Hooker appeared in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers.  He performed "Boom Boom" in the role of a street musician.  In 1989, he recorded the album The Healer with Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, and others.  The 1990s saw additional collaboration albums: Mr. Lucky (1991), Chill Out (1995), and Don't Look Back (1997) with Morrison, Santana, Los Lobos, and additional guest musicians.  His re-recording of "Boom Boom" (the title track for his 1992 album) with guitarist Jimmie Vaughan became Hooker's highest charting single (number 16) in the UK. Come See About Me, a 2004 DVD, includes performances filmed between 1960 and 1994 and interviews with several of the musicians.

Hooker owned five houses in his later life, including houses located in Los Altos, California; Redwood City, California, Long Beach, California, and Gilroy, California.

Hooker died in his sleep on June 21, 2001, in Los Altos, California in his home. He is interred at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, California. He was survived by eight children, 19 grandchildren, and numerous great-grandchildren.

Collaborations 

 1968 with The Groundhogs: Hooker & the Hogs 
 1969 with The Doors: Hooker and Jim Morrison sing "Roadhouse Blues", published 2000 on the tribute album Stoned Immaculate: The Music of The Doors
 1971 with Canned Heat: Hooker 'n' Heat 
 1985 with Kingfish: "Put A Hand On Me" on the album Kingfish, featuring John Lee Hooker and Mike Bloomfield 
 1989 Hooker sang on the album The Iron Man by Pete Townshend, on the songs "Over the Top" and "I Eat Heavy Metal"
 1991 with Charlie Musselwhite: "Cheatin' On Me" on the album Signature
 1992 with Lightnin' Hopkins: "Katie Mae" and "Candy Kitchen" on the album It's A Sin To Be Rich
 1992 with Branford Marsalis: "Mabel" on I Heard You Twice the First Time
 1992 with John P. Hammond: "Driftin' Blues" on the album Got Love If You Want It
 1993 with Zakiya Hooker: "Loving People" and "Mean Mean World" on the album Another Generation Of The Blues
 1993 with B.B. King: "You Shook Me" on his album Blues Summit
 1993 with Van Morrison: "Gloria" on his album Too Long In Exile 
 1996 with Michael Osborn: "Shake It Down" on his album Background in the Blues
 1997 with Big Head Todd and the Monsters: "Boom Boom" on the album Beautiful World 
 2001 with Zucchero: "I Lay Down" on his album Shake

Several Hooker songs have resulted in remixes. The piece "Sure Thing" on the album Tourist (2000) by the French musician St Germain became well known. This remix is based on vocal and guitar passages from "Harry's Philosophy" from the album Hot Spot (1990). Hooker's adaptation "It Serves Me Right to Suffer" was remixed by French DJ and music producer The Avener (actually Tristan Casara) on his album "The Wanderings of the Avener" (2015).

Awards and recognition
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. He was a recipient of a 1983 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is also inducted into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame.

Two of his songs, "Boogie Chillen" and "Boom Boom", are included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. "Boogie Chillen" is also included in the Recording Industry Association of America's list of the "Songs of the Century".

In 2007, John Lee Hooker was voted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame.

Grammy Awards
 Best Traditional Blues Recording, 1990, for I'm in the Mood, with Bonnie Raitt
 Best Traditional Blues Album, 1995, for Chill Out
 Best Traditional Blues Recording, 1998, for Don't Look Back
 Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, 1998, "Don't Look Back", with Van Morrison
 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, 2000

Discography

Charting singles

Charting albums

Film
 The Blues Brothers on Maxwell Street (Chicago) outside Aretha Franklin's restaurant (1980)
 John Lee Hooker & Furry Lewis DVD (1995)
 John Lee Hooker - That's My Story DVD (2001)
 John Lee Hooker Rare Performances 1960–1984 DVD (2002)
 Come See About Me DVD (2004)
 John Lee Hooker: Bits and Pieces About … DVD and CD (2006)

Literature 
 Charles Shaar Murray: Boogie Man – The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century. Penguin Books, England 1999
 Robert Palmer: Deep Blues – A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta. Penguin Books, Toronto 1982. ISBN 978-0-14-006223-6

References

External links

 
 The Great R&B-files - The R&B Pioneers Series
 

1910s births
2001 deaths
20th-century American guitarists
Age controversies
African-American guitarists
African-American male singer-songwriters
American blues guitarists
American male guitarists
American blues singer-songwriters
Blues musicians from Mississippi
Blues musicians from Tennessee
Blues revival musicians
Charly Records artists
Chess Records artists
Country blues musicians
Detroit blues musicians
Electric blues musicians
Flair Records artists
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Kent Records artists
Modern Records artists
National Heritage Fellowship winners
Specialty Records artists
Vee-Jay Records artists
Singer-songwriters from Tennessee
Singer-songwriters from Mississippi
Guitarists from Mississippi
Guitarists from Tennessee
People from Tutwiler, Mississippi
People from Los Altos, California
Black & Blue Records artists
20th-century African-American male singers
Singer-songwriters from California
"Boogie Chillen'" or "Boogie Chillun" is a blues song first recorded by John Lee Hooker in 1948.  It is a solo performance featuring Hooker's vocal, electric guitar, and rhythmic foot stomps.  The lyrics are partly autobiographical and alternate between spoken and sung verses.  The song was his debut record release and in 1949, it became the first "down-home" electric blues song to reach number one in the R&B records chart.

Hooker's song was part of a trend in the late 1940s to a new style of urban electric blues based on earlier Delta blues idioms.  Although it is called a boogie, it resembles early North Mississippi Hill country blues rather than the boogie-woogie piano-derived style of the 1930s and 1940s.  Hooker gave credit to his stepfather, Will Moore, who taught him the rhythm of "Boogie Chillen'" ("chillen'" is a phonetic approximation of Hooker's pronunciation of "children") when he was a teenager.  Some of the song's lyrics are derived from earlier blues songs.

Hooker's guitar work on the song inspired several well-known guitarists to take up the instrument.  With its driving style and focus on rhythm, it is also considered a forerunner of rock and roll.  Music critic Cub Koda calls the guitar figure from "Boogie Chillen'" "the riff that launched a million songs".  Several rock musicians have patterned successful songs either directly or indirectly on Hooker's many versions of "Boogie Chillen'".  These include songs by boogie rock band Canned Heat, who also recorded a well-received version with Hooker.  One of ZZ Top's best-known hits, "La Grange", allegedly uses elements of the song, which led to legal action by the song's publisher and resulted in changes to American copyright law.

Background
In 1943, Hooker moved to Detroit, Michigan, for employment opportunities in the city's wartime vehicle manufacturing factories.  There he was attracted to the music clubs along Hastings Street in Black Bottom/Paradise Valley, the cultural center of the city's black community. He recounts his experience in the narrative to "Boogie Chillen'":

By 1948, Hooker came to the attention of Elmer Barbee, a local record shop owner.  Barbee arranged to have several demos recorded.  He or Hooker later presented them to Bernard Besman, who ran the Detroit area's only professional record company.  Although Hooker had played mostly with an ensemble at that time, Besman decided to record him solo.  This put the attention solely on the singer/guitarist, in contrast to the prevailing jump blues style, which emphasized ensemble instrumentation.  Recent hit singles by Muddy Waters and Lightnin' Hopkins had also used this stripped-down, electrified Delta blues-inspired approach.

Composition and lyrics
"Boogie Chillen'" is described by music critic Bill Dahl as "blues as primitive as anything then on the market; Hooker's dark, ruminative vocals were backed only by his own ringing, heavily amplified guitar and insistently pounding foot".  In an interview, Hooker shared how he came up with "Boogie Chillen'":

He performed the song in clubs before recording it and called it "Boogie Woogie" before settling on "Boogie Chillen'".  According to musicologist Robert Palmer, "The closest thing to it on records is 'Cottonfield Blues', recorded by Garfield Akers and Joe Callicott, two guitarists from the hill country of northern Mississippi, in 1929.  Essentially, it was a backcountry, pre-blues sort of music—a droning, open-ended stomp without a fixed verse form that lent itself to building up to a cumulative, trancelike effect".

Hooker's vocal alternates between sung and spoken sections.  Commenting on Hooker's vocal sections, music historian Ted Gioia notes, "The song has almost no melody.  Even less harmony.  In fact, it is hard to call it a song.  It's more like a bit of jive stream of consciousness in 4/4 time."  Some of the lyrics are borrowed from earlier songs that date back to the beginning of the blues.  The opening line "My mama she didn't allow me to stay out all night long" has origins in "Mama Don't Allow", an old dance song.  Several songs were recorded in the 1920s with similar titles. "Boogie No. 3" by boogie-woogie pianist Cow Cow Davenport has sung and spoken sections and includes the lines, "I don't care what Grandma don't allow, play my music anyhow, Grandma's don't 'llow no music playin' in here". Hooker's first and second takes of the song include similar verses and the narrative about Henry's Swing Club, but do not include the crucial mid-song hook "Boogie, chillen'!" before the guitar break, which gives the song its lyrical identity.

A key feature of the song is the driving guitar rhythmic figure centered on one chord, with "accents that fell fractionally ahead of the beat".  Music journalist Charles Shaar Murray describes it as a "rocking dance piece ... its structure is utterly free-form, its basic beat is the jumping, polyrhythmic groove which he [Hooker] learned in the Delta".  In an interview with B.B. King, Hooker confirmed that he used an open G guitar tuning technique for his guitar, although he usually used a capo, raising the pitch to B (1948), A (1959), or A (1970).  He also employed hammer-on and pull-off techniques, which are described as "a slurred ascending bass line played on the fifth string [tonic]" by music writer Lenny Carlson.  Although it is titled a "boogie", it does not resemble the earlier boogie-woogie style.  Boogie-woogie is based on a left-hand piano ostinato or walking-bass line and, as performed on guitar, forms the popular 1940s instrumental "Guitar Boogie".  Rather than being derivative, Hooker's boogie becomes "as overwhelmingly personal a piece as anything ever done in the blues".

Recording and release
In September 1948, Besman arranged recording sessions for Hooker at United Sound studios in Detroit.  Several songs were recorded with Hooker's vocals and amplified guitar.  To make the sound fuller, a microphone was set up in a pallet that was placed under Hooker's foot.  According to Besman's account, a primitive echo-chamber effect was created by feeding Hooker's foot-stomp rhythm into a speaker in a toilet bowl, which in turn was miked and returned to a speaker in the studio in front of Hooker's guitar, thus giving it a "big" or more ambient sound. Three takes of Hooker's performance were recorded, the last providing the master for "Boogie Chillen'".

Even though Besman had his own record label, Sensation Records, he licensed "Boogie Chillen'" to Los Angeles-based Modern Records.  On November 3, 1948, it was released nationally and Hooker commented on its immediate appeal: "The thing caught afire.  It was ringin' all around the country.  When it come out, every juke box you went to, every place you went to ... they were playing it there".  Because of the response, Nashville, Tennessee, radio station WLAC, a 50,000 watt clear-channel station that reached fifteen states and Canada, played the song ten times in a row during one broadcast night. "Boogie Chillen'" entered the Billboard Race Records chart on January 8, 1949, where it remained for eighteen weeks, and reached number one on February 19, 1949. 

The Detroit Free Press, Hooker's hometown newspaper, published a favorable review on January 22, 1949:

"Boogie Chillen'" became the most popular race record of 1949 and reportedly sold "several hundred thousand" to one million copies.  In an experience similar to Muddy Waters' 1950 hit "Rollin' Stone", the song's popularity allowed Hooker to give up his factory job and concentrate on music.

Early influence
Besides its commercial success, "Boogie Chillen'" had a big impact on blues and R&B musicians.  B.B. King, who was a disc jockey at Memphis, Tennessee, radio station WDIA at the time, regularly featured Hooker's song.  He recalled:  

Murray likens the song to "the R&B equivalent of punk rock" or superficially simple enough not to intimidate beginners.  It interested the young Bo Diddley:  "I think the first record I paid attention to was John Lee Hooker's 'Boogie Chillen,' ... When I found John Lee Hooker on the radio, I said, 'If that guy can play, I know I can.'  I mean John Lee's got a hell of a style".  In an interview, Buddy Guy described learning to play "Boogie Chillen'" at age thirteen: "that was the first thing I thought I learned how to play that I knew sounded right when someone would listen."  Guy later recorded a version with Junior Wells for their 1981 album Alone & Acoustic.  Albert Collins also recalled that it was the first song he learned to play.

The success of "Boogie Chillen'" brought numerous offers for John Lee Hooker to record for other record companies.  Because he received little remuneration from the sales of his record, Hooker readily accepted the opportunities to generate income. This led to his recording using a variety of pseudonyms, including Texas Slim, Little Pork Chops, Delta John, Birmingham Sam, the Boogie Man, Johnny Williams, John Lee Booker, John Lee Cooker, and others for such labels as King, Danceland, Regent, Savoy, Acorn, Prize, Staff, Gotham, Gone, Chess, and Swing Time.

Later Hooker versions
The demand for "Boogie Chillen'" remained high enough for Hooker to re-record the song several times.  In 1950, he recorded a faster version with different lyrics as "Boogie Chillen' #2" for Bernie Besman's Sensation label (also issued by Regal).  Modern Records released an edited version in 1952 titled "New Boogie Chillun".  After Hooker began his association with Vee-Jay Records, he recorded "Boogie Chillun" in 1959, which closely follows the original single.  Because of the similarity, the 1959 version is sometimes misidentified as the 1948 version and vice versa (at 2:36, the Vee-Jay version is about a half a minute shorter than the original). The first two takes from the September 1948 Detroit recording session began appearing on various compilation albums in the 1970s, sometimes with the titles "John Lee's Original Boogie" and "Henry's Swing Club".  Meanwhile, Modern and its associated labels including Kent and Crown reissued the song several times.

From the 1960s onwards, Hooker recorded several studio and live renditions of "Boogie Chillen'", with guest musicians such as Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones.  In 1970, he recorded an updated version of the song, titled "Boogie Chillen' No. 2", with the blues rock group Canned Heat for their joint album, Hooker 'n Heat.  Blues historian Gerard Herzhaft describes the performance as a "memorable one".  It combines Hooker's vocal and Canned Heat's signature boogie rock backing, as heard in the group's jam song "Fried Hockey Boogie" (itself an adaptation of "Boogie Chillen'").  Despite being over eleven minutes long with extended guitar and harmonica solos, it remains as "full of the same swagger as the original".

Recognition and legacy
In 1985, Hooker's 1948 recording of "Boogie Chillen'" was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame.  Writing for the Foundation, blues historian Jim O'Neal noted it was "the first down-home electric blues record to achieve No. 1 chart status and its success, together with that of the Hooker hits that followed, inspired record companies to search out the new electric generation of country bluesmen".  In 1999, it received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award and is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame list of the "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll".  "Boogie Chillen'" was added to the U.S. National Recording Registry in 2008, which noted that "the driving rhythm and confessional lyrics have guaranteed its place as an influential and enduring blues classic".  Authors Jim Dawson and Steve Propes included it in their 1992 book What Was the First Rock 'n' Roll Record?, identifying it among the precursors of rock and roll.

"Boogie Chillen'" has inspired several songs, beginning in 1953, when  Junior Parker recorded his interpretation titled "Feelin' Good".  It became Parker's first hit for Sun Records and was subsequently recorded by James Cotton in 1967 and by Magic Sam as "I Feel So Good (I Wanna Boogie)" for his influential 1967 album West Side Soul.  A version by Slim Harpo, titled "Boogie Chillun", appeared on his 1970 album Slim Harpo Knew the Blues using a similar arrangement to his 1966 hit "Shake Your Hips".

Other songs that borrow from "Boogie Chillen'" or "Boogie Chillen' No. 2", either directly or indirectly, include the radio hits "On the Road Again" by Canned Heat in 1968, "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum in 1970, and  "La Grange" by ZZ Top in 1973.

Copyright issues
In 1991, Bernie Besman, as the song's publisher, La Cienega Music, brought legal action against ZZ Top for copyright infringement for their song "La Grange". Writer Timothy English notes that of the various Hooker recordings of "Boogie Chillen'", the one released in 1971 with Canned Heat "has the most elements in common with 'La Grange', including the guitar pattern and the 'howl, howl, howl' vocal line".  The case wound its way through the American legal system (including an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court). When the ruling did not favor the publisher, the U.S. Congress was persuaded to amend the Copyright Act in 1998 to protect many songs recorded before 1978 from entering the public domain. ZZ Top settled out of court in 1997, but Hooker again gained no financial reward from his song—Besman had obtained Hooker's rights to the song years earlier. However, Gioia noted, "Nonetheless, his [John Lee Hooker's 1948] spontaneous performance in a recording studio had led to a substantial change in U.S. intellectual property law".

Notes

Footnotes

Citations

References

1948 songs
1959 singles
Blues songs
Canned Heat songs
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
John Lee Hooker songs
Modern Records singles
Songs written by John Lee Hooker
Van Morrison songs
United States National Recording Registry recordings Boogie rock is a style of blues rock music that developed in the late 1960s. Its key feature is a repetitive driving rhythm, which emphasizes the groove.  Boogie rock is distinct from the piano-driven boogie-woogie music popular during the 1920s to 1940s, which was adapted for many early rock and roll and rockabilly songs.

History
In 1948, American blues artist John Lee Hooker recorded "Boogie Chillen'", an urban electric blues tune derived from early North Mississippi Hill country blues. Musicologist Robert Palmer notes "Hooker wasn't copying piano boogie. He was playing something else—a rocking one-chord ostinato with accents that fell fractionally ahead of the beat." By contrast Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith's popular 1945 instrumental "Guitar Boogie", later dubbed a "hillbilly boogie", was based on the earlier style.

Hooker's "repeated monochord riff" on guitar was adapted by the American rock group Canned Heat for "Fried Hockey Boogie", first released in 1968 on their Boogie with Canned Heat album. Other artists soon followed, with Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" (1969, Spirit in the Sky) and ZZ Top's "La Grange" (1973, Tres Hombres) being two of the more popular songs in the style.

Malcolm Young explained its influence on AC/DC:

References

Bibliography

20th-century music genres
American rock music genres
British rock music genres