Earl Hooker

While he was most famous for his slide guitar, which used standard tuning instead of the more usual open tuning and a short slide that allowed him to switch between slide and fretted playing, I can't find any videos of him playing slide. He was born in Mississippi in 1930 and died from tuberculosis in 1970, but in his day he was an influential blues player in Chicago and touring the US and Europe. John Lee Hooker was his cousin and he was influenced by Robert Nighthawk (early electric blues guitarist) and T-Bone Walker. Some of you may recognize this tune


Maybe from here

 

More below the fold.
Here he is (probably - the album credits aren't clear) playing with his more famous cousin


Some live footage when he was touring Europe


"Blue Guitar," maybe his most famous slide piece


Later overdubbed with Muddy Waters vocals


"You Got to Lose" - I like this sound


"Hookin'"


Several songs that I first heard done by Stevie Ray Vaughan turn out to be his covers of Hooker. We've heard one; here's another. Again, some experimental sounds in there along with standard blues


It seems that Earl Hooker was always more appreciated by other musicians than he was by the public. That may be because was happy to experiment with new techniques and technology and also cross genres at times. He didn't always play what a blues audience expected to hear. But that's just my own speculation.
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6 comments:

  1. raven1:07 PM

    That was fun. Thanks!

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  2. Grim4:17 PM

    Oh yeah, that's Johnny Lee Hooker he's playing with in "Boom, Boom."

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  3. Tom8:22 PM

    I'm glad you enjoyed it!

    On "Boom, Boom", it's definitely Johnny singing, but for guitars the cover says Earl Hooker or Paul Asbell, so I'm not sure it's Earl on that one. By the time I realized it, though, I'd already put it in the post.

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  4. raven9:04 PM

    BB King remarked in an interview about blues players adopting some of whatever the current musical trend was at the time, to try to stay relevant, AKA get gigs.
    An example might be the wah wah pedal in "Hookin'".
    Muddy Waters made an album called 'Electric Mud", with a salting of mid sixties psychedelic rock sounds.
    Imagine the horror of being a blues player in the disco era.......!

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    Replies
    1. Grim9:19 PM

      I guess they survived it. That version of “Boom, Boom” is sometimes called “Bang Bang Bang Bang,” a later version from the disco era. It’s the one Johnny Lee Hooker performed in 1980’s “The Blues Brothers.”

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  5. Tom10:10 PM

    I think they just wore wide lapels and added glitter. But yes, it must have been horrifying.

    I'll have to check out 'Electric Mud.' That sounds interesting.

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