Boogie Man

  ‘Oh, he had a lotta things that wasn’t true,’ says Hooker; clearly Urban Blues was a continuation of Vee Jay by other means in more than simply musical terms. ‘[Smith] had his name on a lot of ’em, “Backbiters And Syndicators” and some more of ’em. Jimmy Bracken had his name on a lot of ’em, and he can’t write nary a tune. Everybody in the [Vee Jay] company put their name on my songs. That was cold.’

  Cold it may have been, but the album itself was hot. Nevertheless, by the next time Hooker stepped into the studio for BluesWay, Smith was nowhere to be seen. Simply The Truth was cut in New York rather than in Chicago, and it reunited Hooker with Bob Thiele, who took personal charge of the session, rounding up a Big Apple session A-team which included legendary drummer Bernard ‘Pretty’ Purdie. Liner-note writer John F. Szwed, a contributing editor to Jazz and Pop magazine who sat in on the sessions, found Purdie’s antics – arraying signs reading DID IT AGAIN! THE LITTLE OLD HIT MAKER ‘PRETTY PURDIE’ and BING BANG BOOM PRETTY PURDIE AT IT AGAIN: THE HIT MAKER around the studio; sending out for a complete chicken dinner which he set up on his tom-toms whilst he played – almost as fascinating as Hooker’s method of outlining the songs to his accompanists, none of whom (with the exception of harpist Hele Rosenthal), he had ever met before the session. All of the players (apart from Purdie and Rosenthal), the others were guitarist Wally Richardson, bassist William Folwell and keyboard guy Ernie Hayes on rolling piano and simmering Hammond organ) came up trumps here, but it was Rosenthal’s salty harp which provided Hooker with this session’s primary instrumental foil.

  The final release version of Simply The Truth demonstrated how far a little care and attention could go when it came to making the difference between a bunch of songs, however cool, and a satisfying album. The eight songs recorded on that particular session were beautifully and sensitively sequenced by Thiele, resulting in inspired juxtapositions of both topic and mood. Hooker’s devastating ‘I Don’t Want To Go To Vietnam’, a pointed ‘answer’ to the patriotic shibboleths of Junior Wells’ then-current ‘Vietcong Blues’, is immediately followed by a paean of praise for ‘Mini Skirts’ and their wearers, particularly those of the ‘big-legged’ persuasion. The joyful boogie vibes of ‘I Wanna Bugaloo’ and ‘(Twist Ain’t Nothin’ But) The Old Time Shimmy’ alternate with the exquisitely eerie moods of desolation evoked by ‘Tantalizin’ With The Blues’ and a Hookerization of Mercy Dee Walton’s classic ‘One Room Country Shack’. And there’s no nonsense about composer credits going astray here: the sleeve uncompromisingly states ‘All tracks written by John Lee Hooker’.

  And the road was good to John Lee Hooker at this time, not just the studio. The era of monster open-air festivals was in full effect by now: only a few months before Simply The Truth was recorded, in May of 1968, Hooker had played the Miami Pop Festival – promoter Michael Lang’s dress-rehearsal for Woodstock – alongside Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry and the Mothers of Invention. And in October of that year he’d rejoined the American Folk Blues Festival package for another swing through Europe, in the company of – amongst others – T-Bone Walker, Eddie Taylor and ‘Big’ Walter Horton, though for some reason no album was released even though the now-traditional Cologne recording session did indeed take place as usual. He was making good money, bringing it home and stashing it away; but as it turned out, that wasn’t going to be enough to keep his world intact. The Motor City was still burnin’ . . . all the way down.

  Women’ll make you drink; women’ll make you do all kind of things! They’re the reason a lot of guys get out and work. They work for women, give them their money; and the women mess over them and don’t treat them right and start them to drinking. That’s the key to this problem: women is the key. So that’s my downfall and just about every blues singer’s downfall. The average blues singer, he just can’t keep a wife. He ain’t got no wife, ’cause he’s on the road all the time and his home gets tore up . . . so anything he sings is about a woman. If it wasn’t for women, there wouldn’t be no blues.

  John Lee Hooker, interviewed in Blues by

  Neff and Connor (Latimer BluesBooks, 1975)

  During his Detroit years, John Lee Hooker was, effectively, an absentee father. A loving, loyal father, by all credible accounts, but an absentee father nonetheless. ‘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.’ Undoubtedly true, as far as it goes, but when most of your business is on the road, it is incredibly hard to be ‘taking care of business’ at home as well.

  One consequence of Hooker’s incessant roadwork was that his sons went virtually unsupervised at times when, at least according to the conventional wisdoms, the presence of a father-figure is at its most vital. Detroit legend depicts John Lee Junior and Robert as a pair of sharp-dressed wild ones, though according to Zakiya Hooker, this is only partially true.

  ‘We always had nice clothes,’ she concurs. ‘We did not really want for a lot. Junior was really the person getting in trouble, as opposed to Robert. Robert was kinda almost nondescript. He was just there. He was the baby at that time. So Robert was just so’ – she makes a disdainful pfft sound. ‘Junior spends a lotta time in [jail]. Drugs seem to be his nemesis. He just can’t seem to get past ’em. That was why he couldn’t do the music. He and Robert both got involved in drugs, and that and music doesn’t mix. They were young, it was an exciting life, they had money, cars, they had anything they felt they wanted. Daddy had made sure of this. I think he can look back now and admit the errors of his ways, but looking back in retrospect doesn’t always help. No it doesn’t. They say hindsight is 20/20 vision. They could’ve had anything. Robert plays excellent keyboard. He was on the albums Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive, Free Beer And Chicken . . . Robert played very, very, very good keyboard.

  ‘That’s another dream I want to follow, learn to play piano . . . I wanted to play keyboards, but when Robert got keyboard lessons, I got a sewing machine [laughs]. I had originally been given the choice, because I was taking sewing in school and I was having such a hard time. I hated the teacher. I hated her; she was just evil, she was the devil. I wouldn’t buy my material, I wouldn’t do anything, I would just do anything to harass her. So after I’d failed the class three times, I said, “Okay, it’s time to get outta here with this woman”, so I passed the class and I says, “Well okay, you know you can sew, get a sewing machine.” So then when Robert got the organ it was just wow, and I wanted to take piano lessons. And they wouldn’t let me take piano lessons! You don’t ask why. As a kid you don’t ask why. Women were expected to do . . . certain things. Sewing’s one of them. My mother taught us to cook, and we’re all very good cooks. Junior didn’t learn to cook until he was grown. Never had to cook. Robert learned to cook because he loved to eat. He used to be very heavy, had to slim down because of his asthma. Junior was just a spoiled brat.’

  Was that because he was the oldest boy?

  ‘Sure was. He was just allowed a lot of leeway. From a child, Junior was getting into trouble, in juvenile hall, at maybe thirteen. Junior was strung out. I didn’t realise he was strung out until I was grown, because I never really saw it. I don’t think [John and Maude] ever found out while he was small, because parents have a tendency to close their eyes to a lot of things, and they probably just attributed it all to him just being a little bad kid.’

  ‘We just got to a point where we got wild, man,’ remembers the Reverend Robert Hooker. ‘Whew . . . from a long time. My other brother, man, he still is wild. I was in school when I got started, man. I was in Foch Junior High, on Fairway St in Detroit, Michigan. It was a pretty school. Back then it was bad, but you look up and it’s 1994 and it’s worse, man.’

  John Lee Hooker says to this day that it is not strange that his two sons went such different ways. Robert Hooker, decades away from his teens, gives fervent thanks for that.

  ‘Well, when you try and be a
good father, man, like any father in his right sense, he want his son, his daughter, he don’t want them to live a low-down life. My brother, he let him down, man. He let him down. He was in a different religion to me, but he was in there three–four years, and my daddy was proud of him, man. He changed his life, he was workin’, got his own business, man, you know? And he just . . . pssheew. He let my daddy down, man. Lost his job, his business went under, went back into that old raggedy life . . . and that’ll hurt a father, man. I’m glad I’m able to stand, and I’m still standin’. He got one son he can really look to and say I’m proud of, and he can continue sayin’ that, because I’m gonna keep on livin’ for Jesus, brother, I’m gonna keep on standin’. Man, my brother, he started messin’ up probably about the age of fourteen years old. Thirteen, fourteen, somethin’ like that. Temptations was there. We just couldn’t handle it.

  ‘You ever heard that thing where you be around a person so much their spirit come off on you? You ever heard that? Never heard that, huh? I’m gonna show you an example. Let’s say you don’t drink no wine. You not no wino. But all the time you hangin’ around a wino. You know what’s gonna happen? You gonna turn out to be a wino, you keep on bein’ around that person. You take a little bit, then boom! These demons is real. Dope demons, wine demons, liquor demons . . . you keep on bein’ around a person doin’ these things, these demons gonna jump off onto you. That demon gonna get into you, man. They real. You know when I see it? My brother came to the house in Detroit, Michigan, before I ever started shootin’ any heroin. That boy went in the bathroom, man, he shot some dope. I said I will never shoot no dope. But see, that was just talk. No Holy Ghost power, just talk. Next I wind up shootin’ dope. Turned out to be a dope fiend . I wasn’t no bad boy, man. I was a good boy. Just didn’t have no power. Temptation around.’

  It wasn’t so much that Junior personally turned Robert onto heroin, but it was his example which stuck. It was a while before John Lee himself learned of his younger son’s chemical dalliances, but Junior was considerably more blatant. ‘Man, Junior . . . whoo, boy. Junior might have kept it from him a little while, but if I’m not mistaken he didn’t keep it from my daddy too long before he knew he was doin’. But me, man. . . ooh, man, my daddy probably didn’t know I was into it until I was about twenty, twenty-one. Gettin’ ready to get into church. You know, he probably thought all I was doin’ was just smokin’ marijuana and drinkin’ liquor.’

  And if that wasn’t enough of a load for any hard-working man to carry, his marriage was finally beginning to come apart at the seams. And everybody has a different account of what pulled it apart.

  ‘To be honest with you,’ says Maude Hooker, over twenty years later, ‘I don’t know. He was out of town and I was home with the kids. So one morning, myself, Zakiya and Robert, we was sittin’ there in the living room watchin’ TV, and the District Attorney walked in, asked for me and gave me the papers. I said, “What is this?” He said, “Divorce papers.” I said, “Di-vorce papers?” He actually got the divorce from me. He told me why, what he wanted to do, but I won’t say, because it’s so silly.’

  She stops talking for a moment, clears her throat. ‘Well anyway, that’s what happened. He said he wanted to get married to someone else, period. Bottom line. He figured that I would not go through with it, but I mean if he ask, he gon’ get it. That’s the way I see it. It took about a year. I would never have got one myself. It weren’t even on my mind. Whatever we was goin’ through, we just go through it and try to patch it up, but . . . when he really left, we was happy. I didn’t have no idea that that was what was comin’ back, when he came back home that was what he was gonna do. He was on the road, and we was livin’ in Detroit on a street called Jameson. They [the kids] didn’t like it. They was wondering why, but I couldn’t explain it. How can you explain a divorce? They was very young at the time, mm-hm. This was ’69, yeah. It had been twenty-three years.’

  ‘Frankly speakin’,’ says Eddie Burns, ‘I don’t know too much about that divorce. I don’t know who did what. I know what he said when he left, but I do not know what went down behind the closed doors.’

  Others are more forthcoming. According to Eddie Kirkland, ‘[Maude] should’ve been a person to help him fight, because she got more education than him. She could’a been helpful to him by takin’ care’a his business, gettin’ lawyers and things to help him get his due. That’s the same thing what I teach the wife I got now, go back to school, take a course in business administration, help me get what I’m supposed to get. That’s what a wife for. ’Stead’a sittin’ around the house bitchin’ about the money’s not comin’ in, you get out help get that money in. The money’s already made, get out there and help bring it in. The Lord’s very good to John. Things workin’ out for him now he’s an old man. He ain’t got to worry ’bout nothin’. He got just about everything he needs. He got homes, a new car an’ shit, money in the bank . . . so after all things still workin’ out for him. But it could’a been better back then, for her benefit too, if she would’a helped him. You can’t just sit down on your butt and look for somethin’ to come in if you ain’t gonna do nothin’ for it. That’s wrong. At that time, Hooker didn’t know what to tell his wife to do, whether she’d’a been interested or not. He didn’t know no nothin’ either.

  ‘I was John’s closest friend, so he would tell me things that he wouldn’t tell no-one else. It was something done that offended John, don’t get me wrong. Quite natural, a person’s not gonna offend themselves. What I feel about it is this: if she was so much into the Lord, she would say, “Hey, I did somethin’ wrong, I made a mistake.” But you deny your wrongness, you cannot be too close to God, right? Because if you is, you clean your conscience, say, “I did some things wrong and I’m sorry that I did. I was young and I made a mistake.” But the average person’s not gonna do that. But most of that come from other people talking to your wife, putting wrong ideas in your wife’s head. See, when you an entertainer you gotta lotta different things comin’ against you, mostly people’s jealous. If they find out they can talk to your wife, and your wife’ll listen to ’em, that’s all they need. Every time you turn around . . . blah blah blah, the wrong thing to ’em. See, that’s what happened to my wife. John had a lot to be offended about back then, towards his wife. But, as far as I’m concerned, I never got in it. I would always be a friend to her and him both. That’s what a friend’s supposed to be. Last time I saw Maude was years ago.’

  For Zakiya, at least, the divorce came as no surprise. ‘No. I knew that it was coming, because circumstances had just gotten too great for [John] to handle. He just didn’t want to deal any more. That was it. But no, I was not surprised. I think he divorced her . . . no, she divorced him, because – see, I was . . . was I still at home when it happened? I was married in . . . [Zakiya’s son] Glenn was born in ’69, and I was married in ’69, married and out on my own. I lived in Detroit, driving distance, but I can’t remember who divorced who. All I remember were the reasons for the divorce, that’s why in my mind that he divorced her. But she started the divorce. He ended up having to get an attorney and pay for her attorney, the whole ball of wax. He was just tired. He was tired. I love my mom and my dad both, and as an adult looking back, I understand . . . I don’t understand, but I can deal with her: what happened with her. And I sympathise with my dad. I see both sides, and I can understand why he left.’

  And then there’s John Lee Hooker’s own account. ‘When I drove from Detroit out here [to California], I was young then, much younger than I was now. When my old lady was divorcing me, she took the house, one of the cars, and she would’a taken all the money in the bank but I beat her to the punch. My booking agent booked me in Vancouver, and that’s a long way from Detroit. That’s a three-day ride. He told her to tell me that the gig was cancelled, and she didn’t tell me. She taken me to the train station to get me out of town, sit there with me and have a cup of coffee and some breakfast, make sure she see’d me on the train.
I got almost to Vancouver, call my agent to let him know where I were. I say, “I’m almost to Vancouver.” He say, “What?” I say, “I’m almost to Vancouver. You surprised at me?” He say, “Yes, I am. Didn’t Mrs Hooker tell you, your wife, that the gig was cancelled and for you not to go?” I say, “No.” “Did she know when you left?” I say, “Yes, she brought me to the train station, put me on the train.” He say, “Well, Mr Hooker, there’s something wrong. You better check up. I told her to be sure to tell you not to go to Vancouver.” I was wa-a-a-a-yy almost there, and I had to turn around, come back.

  ‘I stayed all night in that town, couple of nights, I think I did. I was so angry and disgusted with her, I just wanted to be away for awhile. I come back in a couple of days and she was shocked. I got me a cab, come to the house, and she wasn’t there. The kids were there. They say, “Daddy, you back already?” “Yeah, your mama didn’t tell me not to go.” “She said you was going to Vancouver to work.” “She told you all that?” Diane and Zakiya, they was kids then. When she came back to the house, it was like she seen a ghost sittin’ there. I said, “I don’t want no trouble.” You know the expression on peoples’ face when they afraid?’ He shifts into soft, placatory tones. ‘“Hi, how are you?” “I’m fine.” I said, “I didn’t play.” She know why, I didn’t have to tell her. She had some lady with her. Both of them had been drinkin’, loaded. I guessed that she wanted to get me out of town so that they really could party, so that really took a lot out of me at the time. Everything run into my mind, wondering why, why did she do it? Why did she send me three thousand miles away knowing there wasn’t no gig, knowing I had to get there? At that time I didn’t have a whole lotta money, but I happened to have money in my pocket, so when I called my agent and he said, “You got money to get back? I can wire you some money to get your ticket.” I had about four, five hundred dollars in my pocket, and I gave him the number where I was at.