Boogie Chillen
John Lee Hooker (1948). Excerpt from "The 50 Songs that Gave Birth to Rock and Roll"
Blues legend John Lee Hooker was born in the Mississippi Delta, but the musical revolution he touched off might well be called the “urbanization of the blues.” Born in 1917 and learning his craft under the mentorship of his stepfather, the bluesman William Moore, Hooker ran away from home at age 14 and found work as a musician on the famous Beale Street in Memphis. Drifting north in search of gigs during World War II, Hooker landed in Detroit, where he purchased his first electric guitar.
The vibrant metropolitan music scene around him and the resonant power of his new instrument inspired Hooker’s first major recording. With 1948’s “Boogie Chillen,” Hooker adapted a primitive, droning style of play, learned from his stepfather, into an electric guitar boogie. Uttering improvised lyrics about getting down on Detroit’s happening Hastings Street, Hooker produced a recording unlike anything that had come before it.
“Boogie Chillen’” is basically electrified Mississippi hill country blues. But it made Hooker became an immediate sensation. His was the first electric tune to reach the top of the Race Record chart and—in Hooker’s own mind—was intended to signal the start of something new.
The one-man-band performance and the raw, stripped-down arrangement offered something stark and startling to listeners, so much so that legendary R&B DJ Gene Nobles, of Nashville’s powerful WLAC radio signal, played the song 10 times in a row upon first hearing it.
The riffage at the heart of “Boogie Chillen” made it a table-setter for the electric innovations that were yet to come, and initiated a brilliant career. Hooker would tour and perform constantly right up until his death in 2001, at age 83.
See the full list of 50 Songs that Gave Birth to Rock and Roll
John Lee was THE MAN. His sound and voice were very unique and extremely hypnotic, taking the blues back to its African roots. And the influence he had on an enormous number of musicians from Bonnie Raitt to Van Morrison (who both recorded with him) is astonishing.