Boogie Man

  ‘I don’t know,’ sighs John Lee when Earl’s name comes up in conversation. ‘He was such a gifted musician, but he just wouldn’t take it in the right direction. He thought things would improve. I would talk to him, but . . .’

  However, one crucial early acquaintance remained elusive. ‘Tony Hollins went to Chicago; that’s where he passed, I guess. He had a barber shop there, but I never did see it. I wanted to go, but I never did get around to it. I never know where he was, but he was there. I know he would’a loved to see me.’

  The move to Chicago might have worked wonders for Hooker’s career and his social life, but as far as any noticeable improvement to his bank balance was concerned, it was just more of the same old same-old. In Chicago Breakdown, Mike Rowe quotes a revealing anecdote gleaned from harpist Billy Boy Arnold, who was signed to Vee Jay as a solo artist while recording for Chess as a member of Bo Diddley’s original group. ‘Billy Boy,’ wrote Rowe, ‘once heard Jimmy Bracken say, with pride, that he wouldn’t pay any artist more than two cents in royalties, but Eddie Taylor did rather better with his $43 for ‘Big Town Playboy’!’39 Hooker may well have expected better treatment from the black-owned Vee Jay than he had received from Besman or the Biharis but, as the saying goes, every brother ain’t a brother. ‘Vee Jay, they took the clothes off your back,’ snorts Hooker. ‘They was terrible. They were just a rip-off. At Vee Jay there was Jimmy Bracken. He was the big boss, and Vivian, his wife. And Al Smith. He was the president of Vee Jay. A big smart crooked man, worked for Jimmy Bracken. The whole shootin’ match was crooked. Al Smith, he was cheatin’ Jimmy Bracken, and Bracken didn’t know it and he was a crook! You go down there to borrow money, you sit there all day just to get . . . they didn’t want to give us advances or nothin’. They did me really in, me and Jimmy Reed. And we made ’em tons of money. Vee Jay had his name on nearly ’bout all of my stuff: Jimmy Bracken and Al Smith. They had they name on my stuff and they ain’t . . . wrote . . . nothin’. ’

  Vee Jay didn’t exactly overwork the studio personnel on Hooker’s behalf, either. In 1956, they’d cut a mere ten sides on Hooker; in 1957 there were only eight titles recorded, spread over two studio days in March and June. After the first of those sessions, weary of the incessant touring necessitated by Hooker’s ever-precarious finances, Tom Whitehead cashed in his chips. ‘Well, he started going on the road and I had a day job. I used to take leaves, but he left town for quite some time. Sidemen, well, having kids and things like that you have a lot of responsibilities, and drummers are ten cents a dozen.’

  And so were chauffeurs. Whitehead’s ‘day job’ was as a driver, and he’d doubled up as Hooker’s chauffeur. When he quit the band, the amiable Eddie Burns took over behind the wheel. ‘With the Vee Jay thing, I still was playing with him here and there, but I didn’t record anything with him for Vee Jay,’ Burns remembers. ‘I was on some of the sessions far as bein’ there ’cause, you see, Johnny’s not a very good driver. He don’t drive very good, and I always was a very good driver. So when he got ready to go [to Chicago] to get money or have a session I used to go with him like that.’

  There had been no other way out for Whitehead: his family responsibilities kept him in Detroit. By the same token, there was no way out for Hooker, either: his responsibilities kept him out on the road. And as time marched on, the contradictions implicit in Hooker’s situation – being able to keep his family fed and warm only by leaving them behind to work away from home – grew ever more intense. And each time he hit that road, whether it took him to Chicago or way down South, the home fires flickered ever more ominously.

  Now Maudie, why did you hurt me?

  Oh Maudie, hey,

  Why did you hurt me?

  You been gone so long,

  I miss you so.

  John Lee Hooker, ‘Maudie’, 1959

  To tear down Hastings Street required a fleet of Detroit city bulldozers, but to subject John Lee and Maude Hooker’s marriage to what eventually proved to be unendurable pressure required little more than the stresses and strains of life at the rough end of R&B. The effect of these occupational hazards on their relationship was the initiation of a slow-motion collapse which took until the end of the 1960s to resolve itself. The genial Paul Mathis had served as a buffer between his sister and his brother-in-law, but in January 1955 he quit Detroit for New Mexico to commence what turned out to be a 22-year hitch in the United States Air Force. However, the danger signs were there early on, even before Paul left town.

  ‘He had a terrible time with her. All through the years, him and Maude had difficulties.’ From way back in the early ’50s, according to Eddie Kirkland, ‘they was scufflin”. She would show up on jobs and make a scene. One time we did a job in Toledo. I booked it. She found somebody to bring her from Detroit to this club. She walks in, we was up there playin’, tooks his git-tar and busts it over his head. Yeah! That happened several times. He gave me one of the guitars, was busted in the back where she had took it and hit him ’side the head with it. That was the kind of things was goin’ on.’ Hooker remembers the incident clearly, as well he might. ‘Oh, she was terrible,’ he groans. ‘She hit me with the guitar and broke it.’ His main emotion is sheer relief that he happened, on that particular night, to be playing an acoustic guitar with a pickup attached, rather than his solid-body Gibson Les Paul. If he’d taken a blow from the notoriously dense and heavy Gibson model, Hooker notes ruefully, ‘I’d’a been crippled the rest of my life.’

  ‘My mom wasn’t too thrilled about him being a musician,’ says his daughter Zakiya (or ‘Vera’, as she was still known at that time). ‘She would have preferred him to go out and get a nine-to-five job, but this was not what he wanted to do, so he wasn’t gonna go for that. And there was a lot of pressure there, you know, and there was the pressure of raising the kids. Now that I’m a parent I understand what he was going through, and what it was like having to make sure that we had enough to eat, making sure that we were taken care of even when he wasn’t there. Before he had his first big record, he worked at CopCo Steel . . . I don’t remember that, but he worked manual labour. I would never ask anybody to go back to that.’

  ‘I would go by his house with Maudie his wife, and all the children,’ says Famous Coachman. ‘A lot of times his wife would get mad ’cause of me and him stayin’ out at night together. He goin’, “Co-co-co-coachman kep’ me out with him all night. I were ready to go but he weren’t ready to leave.” They didn’t have it that easy when they was raisin’ those children. They had a small amount of money and a small amount of everything in the house. We all was makin’ it makeshift. He weren’t makin’ a lot of money, but John would keep him a good car.’

  ‘One thing that John did do,’ Kirkland affirms, ‘he loved’ed his family. He scuffled for his family, and he was concerned about his kids. He was so good to his children: the same now. That was Godlike to see for a man.’

  ‘John was really a family man,’ says Paul Mathis. ‘The only time he was away from home was when he was takin’ care of business, when he was touring. Other’n that, you find him at home.’ And every time Hooker left Detroit, he felt that he was missing out on another of those precious moments of watching his young family growing up. ‘They were there, they was at home,’ he muses. ‘I just know I had a family and that’s about it. Come home to ’em, stay awhile and get right back out. Wasn’t because I wanted to, but because I had to do that. I was young, I could handle it then, you know. I wanted to be home with them; I wished I could’ve, but I couldn’t. Hey, I got to put food on this table, I got to go. So they grew up knowin’ when I come through, knowin’ that I did the right thing. I’m glad they know that, knowin’ that I did that for them, for the kids. They didn’t ask to come here. I got ’em here’ – he chuckles – ‘so I got to take care of ’em. So that’s what I did.’

  And just as he valued each moment with his children, they valued each moment with him. One thing Hooker need never fear is that his children might h
ave failed to appreciate him, and what he went through for them. Zakiya realized quite early on that her father was a musician. ‘I was fairly young. I just considered it to be his job. I didn’t look at it as different to other peoples’ jobs, it was just what he did. I thought it was great. He was home with us more than the ones who worked nine to five. I remember he was always a great baseball fan, so we were forced to watch baseball. I hated baseball. I mean, to this day I hate baseball. We’d sit there and watch baseball while he smoked a cigarette and drank his coffee. So I never considered it as being different from any other line of work. I loved Detroit, I really loved it. It was nothing like it is now. It’s very depressed and . . . dirty and dingy and grey, but when we were coming up . . . I guess maybe we saw it with children’s eyes. This was home, and this was where we’d get up and go to the local swimming club or go to parties or visit our friends. This was where our social life was, and it was really, really nice. It wasn’t like these children have to grow up to day. It wasn’t like that. We had a very secure upbringing; my father saw to that. If there was anything that was going on in the undercurrents, we were pretty much shielded from that. We saw some [aspects] of it, but not a whole lot.’

  So when did her younger brother Robert learn of their father’s unusual lifestyle? ‘Oh man, at a very very young age. He used to go on the road, man, when I was young, and I used to cry. I used to listen to his records, man, and it just did somethin’ to me, you know? He’s very down-to-earth with you. Some people might get famous and get the big head, look over you and stuff, but he’s a down-to-earth person, and he believe in helpin’ people. He was a beautiful dad, a compassionate dad. Mama might pow! pow!’ – he mimes a brace of powerful slaps and laughs heartily – ‘he might get you, but it wasn’t like mama. He was more compassionate. That’s how it was. A beautiful man.’ Nevertheless, coping with John Lee’s occasionally lengthy absences wasn’t easy for the little boy. ‘I just had to endure it, had to live with it. He was doin’ his thing. That was his way of supportin’ his family. It wasn’t no job like he was going to Ford or Chrysler or somewhere like that, you know: he was playin’ the blues. He was a singer. Sometimes he had to go out of town and play. Well, we just had to live with it.’

  Nevertheless, when Hooker was there for his kids, he was there. ‘He was fun,’ laughs Zakiya. ‘I mean he was fun! I can remember him telling us stories, old Southern stories from the Old South. One story stands out to this day . . . about this man – called John – who wanted to go to heaven but he didn’t want to die, and when he got there, he wanted his whole body intact. So he was out under a tree, and he was praying one day; he would go out there every day, and he would pray. So this particular day there was a man up in the tree asleep, and he heard John down there praying, and he decided to play a joke on John. He says’ – Zakiya deepens her voice into a low, portentous tone – ‘“Johnnnn?” John says, “Is that you, God? Is that you?” “Yes, John, this is me.” John says, “I wanna go to heaven whole, soul and body. I been good, I tried to be good, whatever.” And so the man tells him, “Well, John, you come back here tomorrow and you’ll go to heaven whole, soul and body.” John jumped up and he ran home and he told his wife, and he packed up his clothes, and he was ready to go.

  ‘The next day he went down to the tree, and the man was there and he had a noose, and he hung it out the tree, and he told John, “Well, John, if you want to go to heaven whole, soul and body, put this noose around your neck, and I’ll pull you up.” John says, “Lord, a noose? That’s gon’ hurt.” The man says, “John, don’t you have faith?” John says, “Well, yeah, but that’s a noose and it’s gon’ hurt.” “John, you got to have faith or you can’t go.” John said, “All right”, and he put the noose around his neck, so the man started pullin’ the noose and it started to choke John. So John said, “Waittaminnit, waittaminnit Lord, you said it wouldn’t hurt!” “John, it’ll only hurt for a little while!” “Lord, I don’t think I wanna do this!” “John, you can’t change your mind . . .” and he began to pull on the rope. Now John managed to get the rope off his neck, and he grabbed his suitcase and ran back to the house. He knocked on the door, and his wife let him in, and he said, “If you see the Lord, tell him I’m not here!” So John ran and hid, and so the man came to the door and knocked on the door, and the lady said “Who is it?” He said, “Is John there?” By then, John had heard the man comin’ and he had ran out the back door. All he had on was his clothes, no shoes, no nothin’. He had took off runnin’ and so the wife said, “Well, Lord, John has gone and I don’t think you gon’ catch him, because he’s runnin’ without any shoes on, and I know you’re not gonna catch him.”’

  Zakiya sits back in her chair and laughs uproariously. ‘How’s that? At that time it was a funny old story. I remember that. I remember a lot of the other guys would come over, like Eddie Kirkland. He would always tell stories. I can’t remember his, but he would always tell ghost stories. It would always be dark, and everybody be scared to death. They was all bein’ really nice people. Dad was always just a really fun person. He is to this day.’

  ‘Fun’ is also what Maude Hooker chooses to remember from those years. ‘It was really nice,’ she says, glowing nostalgically. ‘We had a lot of fun. We enjoyed each other, raising the kids, and they raising us, yeah. We used to go out and make snow men, you know, put his little hat on and his little eyes, and the kids just love it, throwin’ snowballs at each other. Mm-hm. Yeah! You know what we used to do? Before we’d go in the house, we’d get on the porch and shake it all off of us. Oh, it was so beautiful.’

  Some of the ‘fun’ was a little less innocuous. ‘I knew the whole family, used to go over his house quite a bit,’ says Tom Whitehead. ‘We would hang out, doin’ various things . . . well, I don’t like to talk too personal like that, you know. He never had any trouble much outta me. I’d get into it with him sometime, but . . . we used to booze, you know, but I don’t approve of it no more. When you get older you have to stop.’

  ‘Back in those days,’ remembers Eddie Burns, ‘he drinked. And we all used to drink together, and stuff like that, and he was real lively like that. He liked a lot of fun, so you know we used to go to wild parties, and stuff like that.’

  ‘I used to love to drink,’ the now-abstemious Hooker admits cheerfully. ‘I had this pint of liquor in my car on the way to work one night; I would never go out without a bottle of liquor in my car. Some Courvoisier. I was going to work one night and I was drinkin’. I was high as a Georgia pine. And I got out the car, and I was throwin’ up with my finger down my throat, you know how you do it? ’Cause everyone know that the police is round that area. They called me Little John Lee. Little John Lee the Iron Man. They drove by, they said, “Mr Hooker, you sick?” I said, “Yeah, sick to my stummick.” “Well, can I take you to the doctor, to the hospital? You gonna be all right?” I said, “I’m gonna be all right, I just eat something didn’t agreed with my stomach.” But I was throwin’ liquor up. He says, “You wanna go to the hospital, John Lee, I’ll take you.” So I see the doctor at emergence,’ I say, “Oh, I’m fine.” I was drunk and he didn’t know that. I was throwin’ liquor up, and he’s sayin’, “Now you be careful, you hear?” I say, “Oh yes, officer, I’m gonna be all right . . .” And I went legal out of sight. Soon as he left, I got in the car. Went on to work.’

  And then there were the notorious ‘house parties’. ‘You know, these big cities, they got these big bullpens, they call ’em. Not where they keep the heavy crime people, but people they pick up for house parties and drinkin’ and stuff like that. Breakin’ the law, after-hours places, doin’ what they shouldn’t be doin’. They busted this place . . . I was walkin’ the floor, playin’ my guitar. They come up’ – Hooker raps his knuckles on the coffee table in his lounge three times: bap bap bap – ‘“Mr Hooker? Let me talk to you.” They had the outside staked out, with policemen at the back door and front door. I said, “Whoah man, stop. You see me playin’ this guitar and st
op and talk to you?” And there was women goin” – he slips into a coquettish falsetto – ‘“Heeeyyyy John! John Lee! John Lee! Play it, baby!”’ – bap bap bap – ‘“Mr Hooker, you got to let me talk to you.” “Hey man, I told you, go ’head and leave me alone. I ain’t got time to talk to you!” It was the po-lice, and I didn’t know it. Plain-clothes. He said, “I’m the po-lice. Put that guitar down.” Everybody say, “Hoooooaaaaaaald on!” Some people started tryin’ to get out the back door, and they round ’em up; catch ’em comin’ out the back door, run straight into they arms. I put my guitar down, scout round the back door, run right into one of them law. Like that. They go on back in, and they calls a Black Maria. You know that thing they took you down in? Police van. They had about three vanloads with guys, and a vanload of women. Carries us on in – “here you are, man” – throws us in the bullpen, and I had my guitar and amplifier with me. I couldn’t leave ’em there, so the police said, “Bring ’em wit’cha.” He locked us up, my guitar and amplifer with me, somebody was sittin’ on the floor, they had they dice in they pocket, shootin’ dice in the bullpen, goin’ on . . . and I’m sittin’ there with my guitar, playin’ away.

  ‘The next mornin’, we get out. That was Sunday night, and by the time we get out, it’s time for people to go to work. If they take ’em in on a Saturday night, they let ’em out on Sunday evenin’. Take ’em in on Friday night, they keep ’em in Friday night, Saturday night, let ’em out Sunday. Dependin’ on when they catch you. They had jobs, they know to turn ’em loose. And they do the same thing next weekend: they catch you, they bust you again, put you back in the bullpen. I was in there playin’. . . they knew who I was in Detroit.’