Table Of ContentCharles Shaar Murray is an award-winning author, journalist, musician and
cultural infidel: ‘the rock critic’s rock critic’ (Q Magazine), ‘front-line cultural
warrior’ and ‘original gunslinger’ (Independent on Sunday). He first appeared in
print in 1970 in the notorious ‘School-kids’ issue of OZ magazine. By 1972, he
was working for NME, subsequently becoming Associate Editor. Crosstown
Traffic, his acclaimed study of Jimi Hendrix, won the prestigious Ralph J.
Gleason Music Book Award in 1990: a decade later, Boogie Man was shortlisted
for the same award. The first two decades of his ‘journalism, criticism and
vulgar abuse’, to use his own description, were collected in Shots from the Hip.
In 2010 he received a Record Of The Day for his contributions to music
journalism and a novel, The Hellhound Sample, appeared in 2011. He is
currently at work on a ‘somewhat unconventional’ book about The Clash and
playing blues guitar with his band Crosstown Lightnin’. He aspires to be the
missing link between George Orwell and Robert Johnson.
http://charlesshaarmurray.com/
This edition published in 2011 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
Copyright © Charles Shaar Murray, 1999, 2011
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in Great Britain in 2000 by the Penguin Group www.canongate.tv
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library ISBN 978 0 85786 203 7
eISBN 978 0 85786 204 4
This digital edition first published by Canongate in 2011
Join the discussion:
#boogieman or follow Charles Shaar Murray on @CharlesSMurray
Dedicated to the Memory of
KATHY ACKER
(1947–1997)
and
AGNES SCHAAR MURRAY
(1912–1997)
and to
ANNA CHEN
Here’s looking at you, comrade . . .
forever, babes
CONTENTS
Foreword
Intro
1. They Don’t Give This Old Boy Nuthin’
2. Bluebird, Bluebird, Take a Letter Down South for Me
3. The Real Folk Blues?
4. Frisco Blues
5. When I First Come to Town, People
6. ‘Boogie Chillen’ Came Out Burnin’
7. Ghostses on the Highway
8. Time is Marchin’ On
9. Folk Boom . . .
10. . . . Blues Boom
11. Motor City is Burning
12. Interlude – Dark Room
13. Into the Mythic
14. Hey, You Just Gotta Make the Change: Iron John and the Healing Game
Afterword: Saharan Boogie
Don’t Look Back
Acknowledgements: Thank you, fellas
Appendix: Nuthin’ But the Best ’n’ Later for the Garbage
Index
FOREWORD
I Fought The Lore And The Lore Won
In the months immediately preceding the preparation of this new edition of
Boogie Man, two things happened. The first was that I received a
communication from a reader in the US which reopened questions I’d previously
considered settled.
It suggested that newly discovered documentary information implied that the
birthdate I’d been given for John Lee Hooker was inaccurate, and that he had
been born in 1911 or 1912, rather than 1917 – and was therefore actually five or
six years older than previously thought. This would radically reshape the
chronology of my narrative – the primary source for which was, of course, John
Lee Hooker himself and members of his immediate family – thereby overturning
quite a few applecarts, since, as part of the agreement struck with John Lee’s
then-manager, Mike Kappus, when this project was first mooted, I had made a
commitment to construct the narrative around John Lee’s own version of events
unless I could come up with solid evidence to the contrary.
This fresh revelation would mean that John Lee could’ve gotten to Detroit a
few years earlier than he claimed in our interviews: some other sources have
placed his arrival in his adopted hometown as early as 1937. It would also
invalidate John Lee’s own account of his military service (which you’ll find in
Chapter 5) because, obviously, if he had been five years older he wouldn’t have
been underage, and therefore the entire anecdote would be ceremonially blown
out of the water. A promising Google link tantalisingly offers the snippet that
‘later he avoided military service in World War II due to a stabbing wound’, but
the site in question (Nothin’ But The Blues at
http://www.t4p.com/blues/artists.html) offers no further elucidation. If this was
indeed the case, the wound in question may well have been the hand-tendon
injury inflicted by his then-wife Maude and mentioned by Zakiya Hooker in
Chapter 8.
Also . . . when John Lee made his triumphant return to the cultural forefront in
1989 with The Healer, his ‘official’ birthdate was given in contemporary press
releases as 1920, which would’ve made him 69 years old. Even with the ‘revised
official’ birthdate of 1917, he would’ve been 72 . . . and if my correspondent’s
information could be properly verified and authenticated, John Lee would have
been all of 77 at the time, which makes his achievement all the more astonishing
and impressive. So when he eventually passed away in 2001 – having outlived,
among others, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon and two (Albert and
Freddie) of the Three Kings – he had reached the seriously impressive age of 89:
still performing, still able to rock a house to the bone and raise the spirits and
consciousness of an audience at a time in life when most of his few surviving
contemporaries could, sadly, barely lift a spoon. He would also have been a
fractionally closer contemporary of Robert Johnson, T-Bone Walker and
Howlin’ Wolf than of Muddy Waters or Willie Dixon, let alone B.B. King.
Well . . . I replied to my correspondent, requesting his permission to
reproduce the relevant portions of his communication in this new edition and
credit him fully for his research. Literally days before our final production
deadline, he got back in touch to tell me that he had been unable to verify his
preliminary findings to his own satisfaction, and was therefore unwilling to
commit himself (or me!) to them.
So there the matter rests, so to speak. Good old John . . . a man of mystery to
the last, and beyond.
I mentioned two things. The other is that, on 27 February 2011, Hooker’s
former collaborator and running buddy Eddie Kirkland died in Florida after a
Greyhound bus smashed into his Ford Taurus. True to form, the Road Warrior
was driving himself to a gig. He was 87 years old.
That was one tough generation.
‘I’ll be here forever, but my body won’t.’ About that, at least, John Lee was
entirely right. His art was indeed immortal, and he is still here: or, to be precise,
his voice and his songs are still very much with us, as is his brooding image on
film. What isn’t here anymore is his sheer physical presence: hugely impressive
but never imposing; towering but never overbearing. I’m thinking both of his
physical presence in a room during our many hours of conversation (both on-and
off-tape) and socialising, and the presence he could bring to a stage, be it in
blazing afternoon sunshine at open-air festivals or under the late-night mood
lighting of intimate clubs and theatres.
As I’ve said, here and elsewhere, John Lee Hooker was deeply mysterious.
Not the ersatz trick-lighting-smoke-and-mirrors mysteriousness of a stage
magician, but the genuine broad-daylight mysteriousness of a real magician. He
could, and did, explain exactly what he was doing and how he was doing it . . .
and not one iota of the mystery would be dispelled.
Now, because my agent tells me that folks love lists, allow me to leave you
with my own entirely personal and infinitely subjective mini-list of my half-
dozen favourite covers and reinterpretations of John Lee Hooker’s songs.
Covering his compositions is a tricky business, to be sure. Muddy Waters,
Howlin’ Wolf, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, let alone the
simultaneously sainted and damned Robert Johnson, were also hugely distinctive
performers as well as gifted and eloquent songwriters – hell, while we’re at it we
could also toss in Bob Dylan, Lennon & McCartney and a regiment more – but
hundreds, if not thousands, of performers have managed to sing their songs
without having to travel deep into their musical landscapes and specifically
engage with the spirit of the originals.
Hooker is different. With the exception of a few bar-band staples which can
be rocked-up a treat by any halfway-competent group (‘Boom Boom’ and
‘Dimples’ come immediately to mind), composition and performance are
virtually indivisible. The only real options open to most performers would be
either to mimic Hooker (which sounds ridiculous) or to obliterate him (which
reduces the songs to generic boogies with cute lyrics). The only way it can work
is for the performer to delve deep within him- (or her-)self to find an aspect of
that self which can connect with some aspect of Hooker. The easiest to reach is
his dark, ominous, brooding side, with its undercurrents of lust and anger. The
hardest, and most elusive, is his warmth, compassion and humour.
Six, therefore, of the very, very best.
JUNIOR PARKER & THE BLUE FLAMES:
‘Feelin’ Good’ (1953)
Not so much a ‘cover’ as an audacious ‘Parkerising’ of Hooker’s ‘Boogie
Chillen’, this primo example of pre-Elvis Sun Records Memphis R&B speeds
the sensuous, hip-twitching lope of Hooker’s original groove up to a faster-
rocking itchy-foot kind of boogie messaround which still preserves the ethos of
the original.
THE ANIMALS: ‘I’m Mad Again’ (1964)
For a chubby kid from Newcastle to attempt not only to sing John Lee Hooker
songs but also to redeliver one of his most idiosyncratic dramatic monologues
would’ve been a spectacular act of hubris if Eric Burdon hadn’t pulled off this
variation on the ‘Bad Like Jesse James’ theme so impressively. This bravura
