Boogie Man

  Eventually released a month or two in advance of The Healer, The Iron Man served notice that, no matter how familiar the world might feel it was with John Lee Hooker, the old master was still capable of coming up with a surprise or two. The songs, and the title, soon attached themselves to Hooker, so it was just as well that he liked the songs – ‘[“Over The Top”] is such a pretty song, and that “I Eat Heavy Metal” sounds good’ – even though recording them was extraordinarily difficult for him. ‘This was a very rough day in the studio,’ remembers Mike Kappus. ‘The words and phrases were completely out of John Lee’s vocabulary and even with on-the-spot coaching, Pete ended up just having John speak most of the words, later using a synclavier to make them sound sung.’

  Needless to say, The Healer received major good press. Two exceptions stand out, for vastly different reasons. The first has all the tragi-slapstick appeal of full-tilt farce: a review of the album by Bay Area rare record dealer Frank Scott, in his Downhome Music Catalogue, fumed,

  What a bunch of self-indulgent crap by producer Roy Rogers . . . this record says nothing about John Lee Hooker’s music but a whole lot about the producer’s fantasies. Coupled with a cover that looks like something from a Nightmare On Elm Street, we have a record that is an insult to a great artist.

  Anything which elicits that kind of chickenbrained response from a blues purist just has to be wonderful (he shouldn’t have joined if he can’t take a joke). The second was rather less easily dismissed. Robert Christgau, the ‘Dean of American Rock Critics’, unchallenged master of the single-para album review and possessor of a wit sufficiently arid to turn the Atlantic Ocean into the Gobi Desert, drastically misread the situation as he drily opined in his syndicated column,

  Pushing one hundred thirty now, Hook will still walk anybody into the studio for cash up front. Though the pickings have been getting leaner, here anybody includes Carlos Santana, George Thorogood, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, Canned Heat and Los Lobos, most of whom commit crimes against his ageless essence which tone up the proceedings considerably. And for the purist market, the product concludes with four solo stomps. B+

  There were inevitable downsides to The Healer’s success, and to Hooker’s newly elevated status. One was a flooding of the album market by cheapjack reissues and compilation albums issued by record companies who weren’t overly conscientious about royalty payments. The other is a feeling amongst some of the old Planet Blues posse that John Lee Hooker had somehow passed beyond their reach and left them down in the bottom.

  In the back room of his club in Austin, Texas, one night in 1992, Cliff Antone is thumping a table and working himself up into a rage. ‘Nowadays [Hooker’s] management has come between people like me and him, and that is something I hate very much. His management is under the philosophy that they need to make him the most money possible, and they have no regard for friendships like mine and his. It’s not John Lee; it’s his management and booking agent that are just so hard core that they’re only concerned with how much money they can make. Now maybe that’s the way to be, but if that was the case then I wouldn’t be here, and he wouldn’t be there either. You’re takin’ him away from the club atmosphere. This is family. They’re going to book him here this month at a rock club, a reggae club, a punk club because we can’t pay $10,000 for one night.’

  Yeah, but Cliff, if John’s regular price is $15,000, then you’re getting a third off . . .

  ‘That’s only because no-one else would pay that much down here. He knows it’s wrong. There’s no way around it. This is serious bullshit, man. I stood by him when no-one wanted him. So if those people that can draw don’t play at the club any more, then it makes it that much harder to keep the club going. They have to give back . . . there’s no other clubs like this, maybe one or two out in the country, but not many. He’s got to help me keep this going. It’s not like I’m making a big piece of money doing this. We’re strugglin’ to keep the doors open. We’re doin’ a benefit just to pay our taxes. It’s a serious problem. It always happens, too. They did this with Robert Cray. The people that made him, as soon as he was big, they took him away, you see? They don’t give nothin’ back. Their only concern is money. Well, is that what it’s all about? How much money can he have? How much money can he use? Is that all there is to life? Should I turn this into a college disco and make ten times more money? I worked with him for seventeen years and now, because of the Rosebud Agency and their philosophy, it’s either pay $10,000 or you can’t have him. That’s what success has done, and it needs to be noted – in my opinion. It shouldn’t be overlooked if the truth is to be known about this. Success isn’t all it’s made out to be, if you turn your back on the people that helped you. Didn’t he call me? Didn’t I stand by him all these years?’

  This argument cuts way little ice with Mike Kappus. Still behind his desk at Rosebud long after his employees have gone home for the evening, Kappus sighs deeply. ‘Oh. That’s a unique case. There’s a circuit of bars [that JLH used to play] but everybody else understands and appreciates the fact that John has had success and they know perfectly well . . . actually, most clubs don’t call for John any more, because they understand that he’s not going to be playing clubs, but those that do will say, “I gotta ask, I’m sure I can’t afford it, but how much is John Lee getting these days?” We tell ’em, and they say, “It’s a shame, we’d love to have him back, but I understand that it can’t work.” The fact is that maybe it’s harder for people that deal strictly with blues to understand something like that, because they’re not used to quick changes in an artist’s popularity in the blues world, and the same goes for the jazz world. Generally, there’s a gradual change over a long period of time.

  ‘We actually did run through this with a major blues festival, too, where they were contacting us and not making a very quick decision about whether they wanted to spend the money for John Lee, but they started contacting us as The Healer was at maybe 100,000 sales, and John Lee’s price was above what it had been prior, but the next time they called it was at 200,000 sales, so in the time between the two calls it had already sold more than any other blues artist in America had sold in any given year for the last ten years, so obviously there’s going to be a slight price increase. By the time they finally decided they definitely wanted to move, every time they would call back, they left such a large space in their pondering whether or not to pay the new high price for John Lee Hooker, it did go up. The price doesn’t stay the same when, since the last conversation, you’ve sold more records than you have in the preceding ten years. The price does tend to change, and that caught at least this one place by surprise. Most people understood this. They look at the charts; they turn on VH-1 and they saw John Lee on there all the time; they saw John Lee on an awful lot of magazines . . . they realized that this wasn’t just an interesting coincidence, and now for [the extra] $5000 he’ll draw so many more people.

  ‘Well, there’s business people around who know that if you draw a lot more people, you’re worth a little bit more money. We’re primarily reacting to price, and the highest prices that we get for John generally are those that are offered to us by people trying to convince us to take a date, or percentages that are earned by the actual sales on the door: we’ve actually made a guarantee of a lower amount. Frequently, the new ground is set by the commercial performance, or by somebody trying to convince us to take a date. In the blues world or the jazz world, career movements upward are generally much more gradual, and those that aren’t thinking in terms of what happens in the world of rock, in that kind of realm that John is in – his pop sales, he’s in the pop charts and everything – those people understand that if you sell ten times as many records as you’ve ever sold before – John’s probably sold ten times as many records on The Healer as he’d sold in the preceding ten years all combined – that’s certainly going to have an effect.’

  Furthermore, Kappus points out, Hooker has played the tiny Sweetwater Club in Mill Valley (capac
ity 125, jam-packed) more times than any other venue during their entire association: it’s simply that he likes the vibe there and gets on well with the owner. ‘This is only one clear example among many,’ Kappus asserts, ‘which would counter Antone’s claims, including an endless list of benefits and other events in which John Lee gives back to friends and the less fortunate at little or no compensation to himself . . . or his representatives.’

  Meanwhile, as The Healer went through the roof – or what passes for the roof on Planet Blues – Hooker was continuing his version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Never Ending Tour’: the Never Ending Recording Session. Hooker is never per se working on an album: by the same token, he is never not working on an album. Sessions went down whenever they needed to go down: some towards Hooker’s own albums, and some towards the outside projects for which Hooker was increasingly in demand. One such was Roy Rogers’s lovely take on Robert Johnson’s ‘Terraplane Blues’ – a Rogers/Hooker duet with the former playing exquisite Johnson-style guitar and the latter supplying equally immaculate Hooker-style vocals – which appeared on Slidewinder, Rogers’ second solo album. Another was a rather more ambitious project: Hooker’s first full-scale movie soundtrack. No Blues Brothers or Color Purple-style cameo appearances, but the full-on real deal.

  In movie-crit terms, The Hot Spot was a chunk of botched Texas noir, in which some promising ingredients – Dennis Hopper as director, legendary pulpmeister Charles Williams’ novel Hell Hath No Fury as source material – were counterweighted by a poor script and a charisma-bypassed leading-man performance by Miami Vice alumnus Don Johnson. The score, on the other hand, was an absolute gem, which is cast-iron guaranteed to outlast the film. The man in charge was Jack Nitzsche162 (co-composer of ‘Needles And Pins’, former cohort of Phil Spector, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and collaborator with Ry Cooder on the stunnning blues-noir scores for Performance and Blue Collar) who opted for a semi-improvised blues soundtrack, and assembled a dream-team to perform it. On drums was legendary studio musician Earl Palmer, who’d played Little Richard’s New Orleans sessions in the ’50s and been on Phil Spector’s Wrecking Crew team in the ’60s. (More controversially, Palmer had – by his own account, anyway – worked key Motown sessions in the ’60s, with himself and Carole Kaye, on drums and bass, creating and performing parts generally ascribed to the famed Detroit rhythm section of Benny Benjamin and James Jamerson. However, that particular can of worms is best not opened here.)

  On bass was Tim Drummond, another known associate of Neil Young and a hardened studio veteran; but the most startling item on his CV was a tour of duty with James Brown, which included playing to black GIs in Vietnam: about as funky a credit as any groove-crazed white boy could desire. On acoustic guitar and vocals was Taj Mahal. John Lee Hooker and Roy Rogers appeared as themselves. But Nitzsche’s masterstroke was drafting Miles Davis as featured soloist, taking what would essentially have been, in any conventional blues ensemble, the harmonica player’s role. And, no matter who the harp player might have been – Charlie Musselwhite, Junior Wells, the resurrected ghosts of Little Walter or Sonny Boy Williamson, anybody – it would still have been a deluxe, allstar version of the standard blues jam. With Miles on board instead, it became something else entirely: a haunting collection of ominous moans, bump-’n’-grind boogies and slow shuffles which enabled Hooker to prove that he didn’t need words – apart from disconnected phrases like ‘so sad’ and ‘it ain’t right’ – to sing the deepest and most emotionally complex blues; Miles to demonstrate that he was as much at home in Hooker’s menacing dreamscape as in any of the myriad territories he explored during his long and extraordinary career; and Taj to recycle his beloved ‘Wild Ox Moan’. Plus the rocking ‘Bank Robbery’ was utterly unique in the annals of contemporary music. After all, where the hell else can you hear Miles Davis do the boogie?

  Amazingly enough, this startlingly sensuous and intimate music wasn’t quite as live as it sounds. During the three-day session, Hooker, Rogers, Taj and the rhythm section cut for two days, and on the third day Miles came in and overdubbed his stuff.

  ‘For all the raw and rudimentary type of sound that he has, John is a consummate professional,’ says Taj Mahal. The pleasure with which he recalls the Hot Spot date is utterly self-evident. ‘He is himself and he plays it the way he plays it. The guys that played on The Hot Spot . . . all of us love John Lee. The day that Miles came in to play – Miles, who never deals with anybody on any other level than, “I’m Miles, I’m here, and this is how it goes” – to watch Miles really completely give the generational credit, not in any words that he said, but his personal admiration for John Lee Hooker was . . . it wasn’t about the notes. It wasn’t about, “How much jazz do you play?” He knew who John Lee Hooker was, and what it was all about. The reason that Miles was as hip as he was, is that he was always paying attention to what was goin’ on . . . always playin’ attention.’ As far as Miles overdubbing on the third day rather than performing live with the rest of the band goes, Taj is equally emphatic. ‘Miles wanted to be there. If it was a session he didn’t like, he would’ve sounded like he didn’t want to be there. Plus he’s dealt with all the technology that was around, and he knew how to handle it. I love all that stuff that happened there. And Tim Drummond! And Roy Rogers! And Earl Palmer! We had Earl Palmer playing with us! All of us loved Earl. It was like a bunch of musicians that Jack Nitzsche got together. All these guys wanted to play together and had respect for each other . . . so it was not a problem.’

  For Hooker, sharing a project with Miles Davis was both a professional honour and a personal pleasure: a professional honour because . . . hell, because Miles was Miles, just as Hooker was John Lee Hooker; and a personal pleasure because the session provided the opportunity for a reunion. ‘When I was living in Detroit in the ’50s, he used to come in the bar, slip in the bar where I were. I been knowin’ Miles a long time. He was wild. He was a very young man then. Miles was a very good person; he just had his way of livin’. He didn’t do nobody no harm, he just didn’t like to have a lot of people hangin’ round him all the time. A man just like to keep to himself. Wasn’t nothin’ wrong, just Miles bein’ Miles. He wasn’t a mean man, he just didn’t like bein’ around a lot of people.’

  Ever the diplomat, Hooker didn’t mention just why Miles had chosen to come hang out in Detroit for the six months which spanned autumn ’53 and early 1954. Never the diplomat, Miles did.163

  As soon as I kicked my habit I went to Detroit. I didn’t trust myself being in New York where everything was available. I figured that even if I did backslide a little, then the heroin that I would get in Detroit wasn’t going to be as pure as what I would get in New York. I figured that this could help me and I needed all the help I could get.

  The day he recorded his contribution to The Hot Spot’s soundtrack, Miles paid Hooker one of the most treasured compliments of his entire career. ‘That is a very big thing coming from a person like Miles Davis, because he is one of the greatest men that ever lived in jazz. The guy liked me a lot; and when he got through playing, he looked at me, he give me a big hug, and he say, “You the funkiest man alive.”

  ‘I said, “What you say?” He say, “You the funkiest man alive. You in that mud right up to your neck.” That mean the deep, deep blues, you know, and I think that was a great compliment coming from him, from a jazz man especially: I mean, jazz and blues, they practically the same thing. It’s great to hear it coming from a great jazz man, talking about a great blues man.’

  In his liner note to the soundtrack CD, Dennis Hopper paid handsome and eloquent respects to both of these venerable titans whilst pumping up each of their respective personal myths:

  Miles Davis . . . who I have known since I was seventeen . . . punched out the heroin dealer and said he would kill me if I ever did it again. I’ve wanted him to score every movie I’ve ever made and we finally got it together, man. John Lee Hooker . . . proves you can make a steady diet of fried chicken well into yo
ur seventies and still try to get all of those pretty young things into a hot tub.

  And the sessions just kept on coming. The Salkind movie production dynasty who made the Superman and Three Musketeers movies had discovered the merits of shooting two movies back-to-back on the same sets and with the same cast, and Blue Rose had cottoned on to the same trick. What was to become 1991’s Mr Lucky formally kicked off on 9 April 1990, with – miracolo! – Van Morrison finally showing up to cut a simmering ‘I Cover The Waterfront’ for Mr Lucky and a stirring medley of ‘Serve Me Right To Suffer’ and ‘Backbiters And Syndicators’ which stayed on Mike Kappus’s shelf until 1995’s Chill Out. (Booker T. Jones, the Stax mainstay whose Booker T & the MGs hit ‘Green Onions’ had served as the basis for Hooker’s own Vee Jay-era ‘Onions’, overdubbed his Hammond organ parts in Hollywood the following February.)

  The Texan titan Albert Collins, the Master of the Telecaster, for whose astonishing guitar sound the word ‘searing’ was specifically invented, was the next to weigh in. For the first time, Hooker and Rogers brought in members of the Coast To Coast Blues Band for an album session, and so Ken Baker (sax), Deacon Jones (organ), Jim Guyett (bass) and Bowen Brown (drums) did the honours for Lucky’s ‘Backbiters And Syndicators’ with Mike Osborn and Rich Kirch plugging in their guitars to join in on ‘Boogie At Russian Hill’, a storming jam on Hooker’s patented set-closer which Kappus and Rogers sat on until they assembled Boom Boom in 1992. When BBC2 staged their Hooker tribute concert a year or two later, Collins paid fulsome tribute to Hooker. ‘He been my idol all these years,’ he told the show’s producer, Mark Cooper, ‘and I’m so glad that he still here to carry me along with him. He extraordinary because he got young kids playin’ with him, and he playin’ the same thing he did forty years ago. That’s my man. I love him. He’s a beautiful man.’164