On This Day (1949): John Lee Hooker “Boogie Chillen” charted

Boogie Chillen John Lee Hooker

Writer(s): John Lee Hooker (see lyrics here) Recorded: November 3, 1948 First Charted: January 8, 1949 Peak: 11 RB, 4 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 36.9 video, 20.57 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: John Lee Hooker “was born in 1917 at ground zero of the blues, Clarksdale, Mississippi.” TC Will Moore, his stepfather, occasionally played with Charley Patton SS and was considered “one of the pioneering blues players in the Delta at that time.” TC Hooker said, “What I’m playing now, that’s what he taught me to play, his style.” TC Hooker left the Delta and headed for Detroit in 1943. He started as a janitor and played music on the side. It took five years, but he eventually met a local record distributor named Bernie Besman who decided to record him. He employed some unusual techniques such as putting a speaker in a toilet bowl to get an echo effect and putting a microphone by a plank board where Hooker’s foot tapped in time. SS “Boogie Chillen” was recorded at the end of that demo session. Hooker explained the inspiration for the song, saying he’d been walking down Hastings Street in Deroit and dropped into Henry’s Swing Club. He liked what he heard and shouted, “Boogie, chillen!” SS He said the resulting song was was a guitar boogie like what his father played down south. BH It was the first “down-home electric blues record” to top the R&B charts, which inspired record companies to find more of “the new electric generation of country bluesmen.” BH The music was characterized by “heavily syncopated guitar that just sits in a groove while John Lee growls over the top.” TC It “was closer to rock & roll than blues; it had the pronounced beat of the hormonally pumped white music.” TC Hooker became a favorite of British bands like the Animals in the 1960s. In America, bands like “Canned Heat and ZZ Top made careers out of essentially recycling Hooker’s boogie.” TC Resources: BH Blues Hall of Fame by Jim O’Neal TC Toby Creswell (2005). 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. Thunder’s Mouth Press: New York, NY. Pages 366-7. SS Steve Sullivan (2013). Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings (Volumes I & II). Scarecrow Press: Lanham, Maryland. Pages 609-10. Related Links: First posted 9/10/2023.