John Lee Hooker

United States, 1948. A janitor working at a Detroit factory manages to record a blues single with an unusual, driving rhythm ("Boogie Chillen"). This is John Lee Hooker, roughly thirty-five years old at the time (his date of birth is uncertain, but falls somewhere between 1913 and 1917). The track is quickly embraced by the American charts dedicated to Black music.

Starting out in Mississippi, Hooker had followed the great migration of the 1940s that carried hundreds of thousands of agricultural workers from the deep South to the North in search of factory jobs. The bluesman quickly makes his mark within this flow of impoverished humanity, one that nonetheless carried a music of enormous importance and allure: country blues (the primal, traditional form of the blues). It relies on voice and acoustic guitar (played with various techniques) to express the everyday hardships faced by Black Americans in the southern states.

Hooker begins engaging with this intense, emotionally charged music from a young age, but once he arrives in Detroit he adds a new element to it: electric amplification of the guitar.

Following the success of "Boogie Chillen," in the first half of the 1950s, he records numerous other tracks, most of which are released as 45s. Precious material that would later be revisited at the start of the following decade, by which point Hooker was already an established name and the blues revival was underway, extending the genre's audience to white listeners as well.

Against this backdrop, in 1961, "John Lee Hooker Plays And Sings The Blues" is released on the Chess label: twelve songs drawn from material recorded between 1950 and 1952. The album, made up largely of original compositions, brings together two fundamental periods in the history of the blues, merging one into the other to convey a single message charged with great innovation and emotional force. The first element is, as already noted, country blues, which springs from the work songs and spirituals of Black communities and developed over the first three decades of the 20th century. From it, Hooker draws the visceral intensity of the vocals and the simple, direct force of the guitar style. He also retains its austere instrumentation: voice and guitar.

The second element comes instead from the electric turn taken by the blues in the second half of the 1940s, which gave rise to the Chicago blues. From this musical world, the bluesman picks up the electrification of the guitar and the amplified, sturdier sonic impact that comes with it.

Just as he had already done with his own life story (crossing the US from Mississippi to Detroit), in the music on "John Lee Hooker Plays And Sings The Blues," Hooker fuses tradition and modernity within the blues genre. Following this particular musical path, he brilliantly resolves the tension between the solitary acoustic bluesmen of the 1920s and '30s and the new direction taken by electric blues played by multi-piece bands. At the crossroads of these two eras of the blues, Hooker builds a bridge out of the solid, sturdy material of simple, dry, repeated chords, rarely subject to change and reiterated until they generate a hypnotic groove, at once brooding and rhythmic. The listener is thus carried through the twists of the Mississippi River, along which Hooker was born and artistically raised, while on the horizon the gleaming electric flashes with which Chicago blues altered the course of music history are clearly visible.

The structure of the blues tracks we hear on "John Lee Hooker Plays And Sings The Blues" is often classic (verse-verse-chorus), with a few variations still rooted in traditional country blues style (for instance, intro-verse-chorus). The songs' constructions are relentlessly steeped in the constant flow of deep, steady riffs that characterize this early phase of Hooker's career. The result is musical phrases that are at once dark and dynamic, letting the rhythmic impact of the chords take precedence over the articulation of melodic themes. What emerges thus weaves direct connections with leading figures of country blues such as Mississippi Fred McDowell, Ruben Lacy and Lightnin' Hopkins.

Here Hooker plays two types of amplified guitar: the acoustic fitted with a specially applied pickup (for instance, on his cover of Big Joe Williams' "Baby Please Don't Go") and the slightly distorted electric (for instance, on "Dreamin' Blues"). In addition to the chords and riffs already mentioned, the guitarist's brief, deeply evocative phrasing deserves particular attention. It freely fills the spaces between one verse and the next, or between the chorus and the return of the verse (another element drawn from country blues). It does so with a tone that is never sharp or piercing, but instead favors a warm, rounded sonic thickness, albeit one that remains quite incisive and penetrating.

The musician also sketches out a few genuine solos with a dry, angular shape: concise sonic ornaments that, punctuated by brief, tense silences, complete and reaffirm in notes the emotions expressed in the lyrics.

Amid repeated notes and terse yet vibrant guitar remarks following the vocal lines, Hooker's fingerpicking blues anticipates (for instance, on "Lonely Boy Boogie") the style that would be popularized a few years later through the guitar work of Chuck Berry.

We shouldn't overlook the percussive role of Hooker's foot, rhythmically stomping on a box or on the studio floor (a technique found on every track of the record, sometimes slow, sometimes faster). In this way the bluesman spontaneously and instinctively fills the role that drums and upright bass had recently taken on in electric blues.

It's his voice, moreover, that makes the LP's twelve tracks so magnetic and utterly gripping. Still closely tied to the country blues style of his roots, it ranges through dark, deep colors, using them to paint the heartfelt stirrings of the soul, laden with tormented passion.

The lyrics deal with love lost or thwarted, along with loneliness and the suffering brought on by life's hardships. Here, more than the words themselves, it's the overall meaning of the lyrics that matters: gripping urges and painful human events laid out in a frank, direct way.

To seal everything described so far, we should mention the ambient reverb enveloping voice, electric guitar and foot-stomp (as on "Apologize"): a studio effect that adds emotion to the performances and a period charm to the record.

Among the album's most notable tracks, we should mention:

• "Just Me And My Telephone," which practically served as the musical blueprint for the Rolling Stones' "Parachute Woman" (solo included).
• "Hey Boogie" and "Mad Man Blues": two personal and extremely original takes on the origins of boogie woogie (in its sense as a traditional dance style derived from country blues, popular in the early 20th century).
• "The Journey" and "I Don't Want Your Money," the tracks most representative of the electric country blues that defines the album.

"John Lee Hooker Plays And Sings The Blues" is an essential LP for fans of the genre and beyond, offering listeners the best side of this great bluesman (whom many will perhaps remember from a scene in the film "The Blues Brothers", where he appears on Maxwell Street in Chicago, with his inseparable guitar). An aspect of his music often overlooked, made up as it is mostly of lesser-known blues tracks, belonging to the first, most innovative, thrilling and authentic period of his career.

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27/03/2026