PERFORMERS John Lee Hooker
BY JOHN M I L W A R D
H E BLUES ACCORDING TO John Lee Hooker is a propulsive drone of a guitar tuned to open G, a foot stomping out a beat that wouldn’t know how to quit, and a bear of a voice that knows its way around the woods. He plays big-city, big-beat blues born in the Mississippi Delta. Blame it on the boogie, and you’re blaming it on John Lee Hooker. Without the music of John Lee Hooker, Jim Morrison two dozen labels, creating one of the most confusing wouldn’t have known of crawling kingsnakes, and George discographies in blues history. Hooker employed such Thorogood wouldn’t have ordered up “One Bourbon, One pseudonyms as Texas Slim, Birmingham Sam, Delta John, Scotch, One Beer.” Van Morrison would not have influenced John Lee Booker, and Boogie Man. Most of his rhythm & generations of rock singers by personalizing the idiosyncratic blues hits appeared on Vee jay Records, including “Crawlin’ emotional landscape of Hooker’s fevered blues. Kingsnake,” "No Shoes,” and “Boom Boom”—John Lee’s sole Hooker inspired these and countless other boogie chil entry on the pop singles chart, in 1962. dren with blues that don’t In the late ’50s, Hooker adhere to a strict 12-bar T H E BLUES ALONE found a whole new audience structure, but move in re Detroit businessman Bernard Besman (in partnership with club owner Lee among the white fans of the sponse to the singer’s singu Sensation) issued John Lee Hooker’s first records in 1948 on the Sensation la folk revival. He cut electric lar urges. At his most incan bel. He cut dozens of sides with Hooker over the course of the next five years. blues for Chess, but played descent, he creates rhythm Following is an excerpt from Besman’s liner notes for the 1973 reissue, Joh n acoustic guitar on several al music that seems to stretch i Lee Hooker’s Detroit. bums for Riverside. A few time itself. Y FIRST AWAKENING to the strong, universal appeal of John years later, English R&B Born August 20,1920, MLee’s music came at one of the first concerts he did, back in his bands, like the Animals and to a sharecropping family of home city of Detroit in the late Forties. It was one of the regular Saturday the Rolling Stones, were eleven children in Clarks- night concerts held by local 4ji$c jockey Bill Randall at the Capitol The discovering Hooker’s music atre, featuring all kinds of music from be-bop to swing bands, Dixieland, dale, Mississippi, John Lee group sounds, pop, whatever. for themselves. . Hooker was taught the rudi John came on last, after all the others, and sat down in front of the 90% In the late ’60s, a white ments of Delta blues by his white audience to play. He was alone, unaccompanied, and at first he blues band, Canned Heat, stepfather, Will Moore, a could hardly be heard over the conversation and noise in the audience. turned the endless boogie Then, after a minute or so, a strange hush fell over the crowd, and contin popular local guitarist, and into their signature sound; ued until the end of the song when they erupted with roaring applause. heard Charley Patton, Blind They weren’t quite sure what they were hearing, and it took awhile to sink Hooker obligingly joined Lemon Jefferson, and Blind in, but they weren’t slow to recognize that they were witnessing some the-group on 1970’s H ooker Blake. Hooker picked up the thing very special. To see that audience respond so strongly to John Lee I® H eat. In 1972, he cut guitar at 13, and ran away to Hooker was one of the most profound experiences of my life. Never Get Out Of These Blues Memphis a year later. He A live, with Van Morrison worked as an usher at a Beale Street movie house before mov and Charlie Musselwhite among the sidemen. Throughout ing on to Cincinnati, where he sang in local gospel groups. the ’70s and ’80s, Hooker kept his foot tapping through reg In 1943, Hooker settled in Detroit. He worked in an ular recording dates and frequent tours of the U.S. and Eu auto plant by day and played the blues in the noisy clubs rope. He appeared in The Blues Brothers movie in 1980, and along Hastings Street by night. His first electric guitar was a sang the title role on Pete Townshend’s 1989 concept album, personal gift from T-Bone Walker. The Iron Man. In 1948, a local record distributor, Bernard Besman, put Hooker’s 1989 album, The Healer, became the most Hooker in a recording studio. After laboring over the pre commercially successful LP of his career. It included guest sumed A-side, “Sallie Mae,” Hooker tore off “Boogie Chillun,” appearances by Robert Cray, Los Lobos, and Carlos Santana, a largely improvised solo performance that nailed the gritty, and earned its creator his first Grammy award, for a saucy ruminltiVd style that would become his musical signature. duet with Bonnie Raitt on a reprise of his 1951 smash, “I’m With his guitar cranked up loud, the lone microphone pick In The Mood.” In October 1990, Raitt, Ry Cooder, Willie ing up the stomp of his foot, and his voice drenched in echo, Dixon, and a host of other friends and admirers joined John “Boogie Chillun” was a scintillating introduction to a singular Lee for an all-star concert celebration of his music at Madison talent. When picked up by Modern Records for national dis Square Garden. tribution, it was also a major R&B hit. “What I did over the years,” Hooker said in a recent “It was ringin’ all around the country,” Hooker later told Rolling Stone interview, “is still rising high. It’s not like a pop Living Blues. “Every jukebox you went to, every drugstore you song. A pop song shoots way up there, and then if they can’t went, they were playin’ it... So I quit my job in the factory. I come back with something else, they dead. But the blues ain’t said, ‘No, I ain’t workiri no more!”’ ' like that. If I never made another record, you’d always know This non-working man went on to record for more than John Lee Hooker.”
P a g e 13 Chess Master: iVillk Dixon (center)^^|r an
The Chess Sìmdio Scene of Chicago
by Don Snowden “Those studio musicians were moving like Chess mirrored the changing times Chess sessions from 1955 to 1960. with its output of jump blues, mod “There is the producer in the theatri em jazz, gospel, Delta-rooted Ckt- , cal sense, who puts together the cago blues, vocal-group R&B, classic money and hires the musicians. rock & roll, comedy, and soul music. There’s the producer on the session Chess’ dominance in Chicago who says, ‘The tempo’s wrong, we’re over the years allowed the company going to do it a little faster.’ And to recmit session players from the there’s the producer who says, ‘Okay, cream of the Windy City’s freelance that’s it, next case.’ musicians. Drummer A1 Duncan and “Leonard Chess functioned fre bassist Louis Satterfield were regulars quently and very well as the theatrical in the pit band of the Regal Theater form of producer. He was then per in the early ’60s. Phil Upchurch was fectly content to let the people on the high school buddies with Curtis floor do the job. .Will [Dixon] would Mayfield, played on many early Im run ’em off in a comer somewhere pressions tracks, and handled the and rehearse them a bit, and we’d do guitar when the Motown rhythm sec the session. tion rolled into Veejay to cut John ■ “We just continued to churn out Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom.” Gene this stuff year after year, including “Daddy G” Barge brought his saxo- some of the most horrible stuff, to my phonic legacy (including Chuck taste, I’ve ever m n across, and some Willis’ “The Stroll” and all of Gary stuff that was absolutely wonderful. U.S. Bonds’s hits) from Norfolk, Vir There are things like ‘Back In The. ginia to produce, arrange, and per ¡USA and ‘I’m A Man’ that you know form on Chess sides by Little Milton are classics when you cut them. You and Etta James. Phil Chess don’t know if it’s going to sell, but you know you’re doing somethingjisefulS UT CHESS WAS AN EVOLU- In May, 1 9 5 ^ Chess moved again, to 2 1 2 0 South ' tionary process that endured five Michigan Ayeupe in the heart of Chicago’s Record Row. I locations and multiple sonic per This new Ter-Mar studio housed administrative offices mutations beginning in 1947 at and a small rehearsal room cu m demo studio on its first its original storefront on 71st and Phillips. By 1950, the floor and the main recording, facility on the second. The Chess brothers had shifted their primary focus to Delta- new room “w^S good for its day because it was 3ive-er,’|| bred blues (following Muddy Waters’ seminal 1948 hit, says Ron Malo, the engineer who took over from Chis “I Can’t Be Satisfied”), changed their label’s name from holm in early i960 and ran Chess sessions for the next Aristocrat to Chess, and moved to new quarters at 49th ten years. “We had to deaden it down when we went to. and Cottage Grove. In 1951, Willie Dixon was lured four-track and eight-track to get more separation. It had away from his Big Three Trio with the offer of a Chess, angled walls and adjustable louvers in the walls. staff job. Over the next five years, recording in their “The musicians and singers were ready to perform own back room or at other Chicago studios, like Univer — when that red light went on, that was ‘money time’ sal, Chess cut a string of some 60 R&B chart hits by and they p e r fo r m e d . We didn’t have earphones, baffles, such future icons as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Lit or separators. BSjly Stewart’s S u m m ertim e albuin was to tle Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Chuck Berry, and Bo tally live,, no.overdub^, Billy Stewart was standing in the Diddley— with Willie Dixon as the brothers’ right-hand middle of the band, singing live and conducting the or man on the studio floor. The supporting cast included chestra. 1 remixed the four-track—just doing the fades Jimmy Rogers, Robert Jr. Lockwood, David Myers, and adding a little echo— in 45 minutes, an album with Louis Myers, and Luther Tucker (guitars); Dixon and 32 minutes of music.” Ransom Knowling (basses); Fred Below, Odie Payne,, New faces arrived at 2120— veteran R&B producer Clifton James, and A1 Duncan (drums); Little Walter, Ralph Bass and soul queen Etta James, and younger Sonny Èoy, and Big Walter Horton (harp); Harold blues players Buddy Guy and Otis Rush. Willie Dixon Ashby (tenor); and Lafayette Leake (piano). returned to Chess after a brief late-’50s stint with Co At the same time, Chess was recording urbane bra, though now Chess blues sessions drew on a differ bluesmen like Jimmy Witherspoon and Lowell Fulson, ent pool of musicians and were as likely to feature or and branching into gospel (including 14-year-old gan and horns as the traditional piano and harp. The Aretha Franklin’s first album) and jazz (with pianists early-’60s success of Etta James pointed Chess in a new Ahmad Jamal and Ramsey Lewis). The company also direction, one that became the label’s principal focus launched its Checker and Argo subsidaries, in 1952 when Billy Davis became head of A&R in late 1963. and 1956 respectively, and established an in-house “Billy Davis.. .organized the creative staff to some publishing company, Arc Music, in 1954... degree, whereby the system he put in kind of cloned “There are three producers on every session,” main the system Berry Gordy had,” recalls Gene Barge. “Billy tains Malcolm Chisholm, the engineer on innumerable wanted to go more R&B, and Chess prior to that was principally a blues/ j mm, company. tion center, recording studios, of “We could do three tunes in three fices for administrators, writers, and hours if you had everything scripted. I producers— in one locale. had written everything out and had “We’d go in around noon, the rhythm section and background maybe as early as ten o’clock, and be singers well-rehearsed so all they had out of there by six or seven,” says to do was execute. It was not a matter Phil Upchurch. “We’d do the de of going into the studio totally unpre mos— a two-track, basically, of mu pared and working premium time at sicians live getting the basic groove premium rates. W hen you went up to happening. From there they’d get Studio A, you just fine-tuned.” approved by the front office and In line with Davis’ philosophy we’d go over to the other side of the Chess’ first full-fledged studio band building and record them in the was hired early in 11164. It included morning. They’d press the records at Maurice White (later replaced by Mor noon and in the evening they were ris Jennings) on drums, Louis Satter playing them on the radio. ” field on bass, Bfyce Robertson and The larger studio at this ex Gerald Sims on guitars, and Leonard panded facility became famous for Castori and Raynard Miner on key large-scale orchestral arrangements boards. Phil Upchurch entered the pic when the Dells made their hit ture in 1967, doubling on bass and reprise of “Oh, What A Night” and guitar. Gerald Sims, the current owner fhe first Rotary Connection album of 2120, left Chess in 1965 and was launched a career for Chess recep replaced by Pete Cosey. tionist Minnie Ripperton. But the “Those studio musicians were ' bulk of the blues, gospel, and R&B moving like ants up theie,” recalls Leonard Chess releases— -to the musicians’ near- Cash McCall, part of a nascent Chess unanimous relief— were cut in the songwriting stai along with Raynard Miner, Sonny more intimate confines of Studio B. Thompson, Sugar Pie DéSanto, and Sheria DeMell, Momentum slowed after Chess was sold to GRT in among others. “As a songwriter, you wèritin there with 1969 and fell rapidly when Leonard Chess died of a the rhythm section and made the demo. Then word heart attack later that year at the age of 52. Restrictive would get passed down that maybe Mitty Collier or Lit corporate policies wreaked havoc on the freewheeling'" • tle Milton or Etta James was coming in, and ftfen you creativity of the label’s salad & | Jk and most of the key had to hustle to get your sbng to thè artist. session players and engineers were long gone by the “There was a kind of hierarchy there and if you time of Chess’ demise in 1974. Were new, you had to really hustle to get one of yòùr Gene Barge won a Grammy for co-producing Na songs cut. It was definitely high competition, and if you talie Cole’s “Sophisticated Lady” and toured Europe wore your feelings onybtir shoulder, ft didn’t get you with the Rolling Stones. Phil Upchurch moved to L.A. too much. Most òf the artists that came around Chess and played rhythm guitar on several of George Benson! weren’t taking any prisoners because they wanted their best-selling albums. Willie Dixon established himself as records to sound good and wanted them to s .fusolo artist and roving ambassador of the blues. Mau rice White and Louis Satterfield went oil to massive Y 1964, SLUES RECORDING ' pop success with Earth, Wind & Fire; Satterfield has was in decline, later aggravated spent the past nine years playing behind Phil Collins in by the deaths hf Sonny Boy the Phenix Homs. But all have fond memories of thè Williamson, Elmore James, and Chess studio scene. Little Walter. Muddy and Wolf were still recorded regu “There was a lot of give-and-take and passing ideas larly, and other blues sessions occasionally brought the around,” says Phil Upchurch. “You always looked for Chess brothers up to the control booth. “Phil and ward to doing the gigs. We were proud of what we were Leonard never came up to the studios u n less it was a doing— making monèy and having fun— you couldn’t blues sèssion,” McCall insists. ask for much more than that. We didn’t have any idea The 2 j| jl Studiò began to attract a new breed of that thempsic was as important as it turned out to be.” ; British rockers who had teethed ori Chess vinyl and now dutifully trooped to the source. The Stones rolled I# to cut 21 songs in three separate sessions, in ’64 and ’65; the Yardbirds touched down to Cut their ground (Portions o f this article were adaptedfirom I Am The Blues: breaking “Shapes Of Things” single. Toward the end of The W illie Dixon Story, by W illie Dixon with Don Snowden, 1965, Chess gradually moved its base of operations available from DaCapo Press. Thanks to Cash McCall, Ron around the comer to 520 fitòt 21st Street. The shift to Malo, Malcolm Chisholm, W illie Dixon, Al Duncan, Louis this six-story warehouse enabled Leonard Chess to con Satterfield, Gene Barge and Dick LaPalm for their help in solidate his m $ m operation— pressing plant, distribu re sea rc h .)
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