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
I like dropping into a small club and playing with some people, trying to help them get a start.
If they played more blues, people would just get it - they try to hold it back but just about can't hold it back now because the blues is really going.
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'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.
I been doing the same things as in my younger days, when I was coming up, and now here I am, an old man, up there in the charts. And I say, well, what happened? Have they just thought up the real John Lee Hooker, is that it? And I think, well, I won't tell nobody else! I can't help but wonder what happened.
It don't take me no three days to record no album.
I want to play music when I want, write a song if I want or watch a baseball game if I want.