Sunday Morning Blues - John Lee Hooker, Earl Hooker, Wynonie Harris, Screamin' Jay Hawkins

Continuing down the path of the ABC Of The Blues boxset, this week is one of my all time favorite artists, John Lee Hooker.

Volume 13 & 14

John Lee Hooker
 JL Hooker got his start in 1948 when a demo was sent to Modern Records label, his first song, Boogie Chillen', was a hit. John's style is walking blues, and closely related to delta blues. But his vocals rarely match the bars, he rarely played a standard beat. As a result one producer had him stomp the beat on a wooden pallet so other musicians could follow it. He also recorded under a number of different pseudonyms so he could make more money (black musicians weren't always paid a lot), sometimes he'd record variations on a song all over recording studios in a short time. Using John Lee Booker, John Lee Cooker, Texas Slim, Delta John, Birmingham Sam and his Magic Guitar, Johnny Williams, or The Boogie Man, depending on which label he was working with.

The selection here contains a number of hits, from the first Boogie Chillen' to the House Rent Boogie (which gained real fame as the opening section of George Thorogood's cover of One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer), and I'm In The Mood. As well as a number of songs that don't make it onto compilations normally. Missing, and I'm glad for it, is Boom Boom, possibly his most famous song that can be found anywhere and space here is better used in less known songs. How John Lee didn't warrant a disc all to himself like other artists, I don't know.

Wynonie Harris
Wynonie got his start as a performer, with a dance partner, in his native Nebraska. In 1935 he had a chance to sing the blues, eventually moved to L.A., and was discovered playing in a nightclub in the mid 1940s by Lucky Millinder (who is not featured in this box set). That lasted only a very short time, a year later he was out on his own, with a solo career, his first recording was Around The Clock, which had enough popularity to keep him recording. His lyrics were on the raunchier side of decent, most of his songs about parties, drugs, sex, and the like. Forty years later he'd probably be forming a hair metal band instead... By the 1960s his song topics became less popular and his fortune was lost.

Musically, his songs are jump and boogie style blues. With his shouted lyrics, and raucous content he certainly sounds the part of a hard drinking bluesman who parties all night long. If you need some blues to slide into a mix of jump and jive or boogie, then this is who you need to go find some music from.

Earl Hooker
A cousin of John Lee Hooker, his family moved to Chicago from Mississippi when he was one. He took after T-Bone Walker as his predominant influence of guitar playing. In 1946 he ended up in Arkansas with Robert Nighthawk for several years. He returned to Chicago in the 1950s and continued to play. It was during the 1960s that he became a house guitarist for Chess Records, working with Muddy Waters among others. He died of tuberculosis in 1970, a condition that had plagued him since his youth.

We only get four tracks here, which is a shame. It doesn't really showcase his slide guitar style. But he also didn't pursue much of a solo career, and most recordings of him were credited to other artists. His voice is good, but doesn't project as much as other blues artists.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Jay is as much R&B as traditional blues (though R&B was simply a marketing term assigned to sell records in a more friendly manner). He's very much jump and boogie style, with a great deal of showmanship. Jay wanted to be an opera singer, and his loud projected voice shows it. He ended up in the blues, and brought that same projection to that style. In the 1950s he became known for his outlandish concerts as much as for his music. He emerged from coffins, affected faux voodoo symbolism (such as a smoking skull on a stick named Henry), and other antics.

The music here, all 16 tracks of it, is classic Hawkins. Yells, grunts and, and the famous full recording of I Put A Spell On You that had been both edited and banned outright when originally recorded starts off the set. Nothing in his career matched the success of that song (which he had recorded so drunk he blacked out and had to relearn the song from the recording). There are songs like Hong Kong which sing like he was reading a menu. And an amazing a cappella rendition of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Over all, a lot of this was as much early rock and roll as it was R&B.

Next Week - Lightin' Hopkins and Howlin' Wolf.