Blues Hypnosis

Much cooler, cloudy early, then clearer.

On a tip from a friend, I started buying records at the Western Auto store. Now defunct (I think), Western Auto went from being an auto parts store to general hardware to home appliances, which eventually included TVs and stereos. So, if you're selling stereos, you're selling records too! I'd never realized this, but once I started walking to work (my dad's department store), I used to hit the local newsstand/book/record store first. The record buyer was the owner's wife, who let her tastes (country, bluegrass) dominate the store's small collection. Rock and soul were added just to make some extra money. So, much of the really good records, I learned from the friend, were actually at the Western Auto store. Plus, they were eager to make special orders -- something the other place (as I recall) refused to do, except for bluegrass records.

So, that's where I got the "rap" of the 60s. I don't mean the late James Brown's inventive forays into his genre, but the type of music that white teenage boys bought at that time to secretly rebel against the authority of their elders. Chess Records (the late 60s/early 70s incarnation) hopped on this trend by packaging "greatest hits" of their biggest acts of yore. They were sometimes known as the "aka" series, after the police abbreviation for aliases -- it stood for "also known as." There was McKinley Morganfield -- aka Muddy Waters and Chester Burnett -- aka Howlin' Wolf among others. But there was one that didn't have an "aka" in the title. It was simply "John Lee Hooker."* 

While most of the other Chicago bluesmen fronted bands, John Lee Hooker played solo. The only accompaniment he had, besides guitar, was a warped board he stomped on. He played electric guitar so loud it just about tore the needle off the track, and he would roar rather than wail the blues. Or sometimes just mutter.

The records were always in double sets, with a fold-out full of commentary and history about the blues artist. The guy who wrote John Lee Hooker's liner notes went to great lengths to explain why he was a solo artist: but it basically was that nobody either wanted to play with him or could. I remember trying to figure out what the liner note writer meant by John Lee's "modal" blues. What it meant in fact was that a bluesman like John Lee was a kind of house entertainer, and he had to keep things interesting. He would play something, then change it, and then play something else, and then change that, and then maybe "rap" some, and then go back to what he was doing before, but different -- or just suddenly stop. On a chord you don't normally expect anyone to stop on. Kind of like me ending a sentence with ... .

Hooker did have some accompaniment on some cuts -- but it sounded like they were playing on tip-toe, waiting for John Lee to just up and change something without any cue or warning whatsoever. John Lee was all about the "folk blues" -- stuff so ragged and raw that most kids wouldn't listen to it. I couldn't get enough of "Boogie Chillun" or "Don't Turn Me From Your Door." One cut, his version of the traditional "Sugar Mama" was reportedly recorded in a bathroom to get an echo effect. With John Lee's guitar turned all the way up, it sounded like he was singing (more like yelling) from the gates of Hell. The effect was hypnotic and chilling (or maybe "chillun'").

The refined "club" blues of today makes its artists more money, I'm sure. But they simply don't compare to the raw power of Delta folk blues with the guitar plugged in. I didn't buy the retrospective album of John Lee's recorded near the end of his life, but I heard a few cuts. Respectful and sincere, but not the intensity of John Lee from that Chess compilation.

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*The John Lee Hooker LP I had was named Mad Mad Blues. It is now apparently available on second-hand vinyl only. Mine had a cover with a photo of the artist performing live, set in the pupil of a big blue eye. There may have been other covers for that LP, as well.


LJ orig: 01/08/07