John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hookerwas 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth22 August 1917
CountryUnited States of America
They wasn't gonna give you nothin'. I didn't care as long as they let me play my music. Cash on the spot... You cheat me and I'm gonna get me some money, too.
The way Will Moore taught me, and the way I play it, the blues is just something different.
I don't like no fancy chords. Just the boogie. The drive. The feeling. A lot of people play fancy but they don't have no style. It's a deep feeling-you just can't stop listening to that sad blues sound. My sound.
I don't play a lot of fancy guitar. I don't want to play it. The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks.
Oh, I still like to play and I still play when I want to.
You can go to Europe, and there's no turnin' back - any parts of Europe. Wherever you are, there is no stop and go for the blues. The blues go but it don't stop.
My style is all to myself.
Groups are corporations now. They have pension plans. Musicians have saw the daylight.
I like dropping into a small club and playing with some people, trying to help them get a start.
I've got enough money to live me two lifetimes so I don't have to do nothing I don't want to.
I don't do nothing I don't want to do.
I do benefits. I do them all the time. There's so many people out there that needs help that I can't say I won't help them.
I'm even afraid to lay down with you at night, because when you go to bed at night, mean woman, you got an ice pick in your hand.
Since you knew they was goin' to cheat you anyway, I recorded under any name with all of 'em.