BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : AFRICAN AMERICAN EARL HOOKER AN AMERICAN CHICAGO BLUES GUITARIST, THE SLID GUITAR PLAYING : GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK GENIUS "

                            BLACK             SOCIAL          HISTORY                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Earl Hooker  January 15, 1929 – April 21, 1970  was an American Chicago blues guitarist, perhaps best known for his slide guitar playing. Considered a "musician's musician",Hooker performed with blues artists such as Sonny Boy Williamson II, Junior Wells, and John Lee Hooker (a cousin) as well as fronting his own bands. An early player of the electric guitar, Hooker was influenced by the modern urban styles of T-Bone Walker and Robert Nighthawk. As a band leader, he recorded several singles and albums, in addition to recording with well-known artists. His "Blue Guitar", a popular Chicago area slide-guitar instrumental single, was later overdubbed with vocals by Muddy Waters and became the popular "You Shook Me".

In the late 1960s, Hooker began performing on the college and concert circuit and had several recording contracts. Just as his career was on an upswing, Earl Hooker died in 1970 at age 41 after a lifelong struggle with tuberculosis. His guitar playing has been acknowledged by many of his peers, including B.B. King, who commented: "to me he is the best of modern guitarists. Period. With the slide he was the best. It was nobody else like him, he was just one of a kind".

Early life

Earl Zebedee Hooker was born in 1929 in rural Quitman County, Mississippi, outside of Clarksdale. In 1930, when he was one year old, his parents moved to Chicago. His family was musically inclined (John Lee Hooker was a cousin) and Earl was exposed to music at home at a very early age. About age ten, he started playing guitar. Hooker was self-taught and picked up what he could from those around him. Although Hooker was gaining proficiency on guitar, he did not show an interest in singing. This has been explained by a speech impediment, i.e., pronounced stuttering, which afflicted him all his life. Hooker also contracted tuberculosis when he was young. Although his condition did not become critical until the mid-1950s, it required periodic hospital visits beginning at an early age.

By 1942, Hooker was performing on Chicago street corners with childhood friends including Bo Diddley. From the beginning, the blues were Hooker's favorites, but this was when the more country-influenced blues was giving way to swing-influenced and jump-blues styles, which often featured the electric guitar. T-Bone Walker was popular and in 1942 began a three-month club stint at the Rhumboogie Club in Chicago. He had a considerable impact on Hooker, with both his playing and showmanship. Walker's swing-influenced blues guitar, including "the jazzy way he would sometimes run the blues scales" and intricate chord work, appealed to Hooker. Walker's stage dynamics, which included playing the guitar behind his neck and with his teeth, influenced Hooker's own later stage act.

Also around this time, he developed a friendship with Robert Nighthawk, one of the first guitarists in Chicago to switch to electric guitar. Nighthawk taught Hooker slide-guitar techniques, including various tunings and his highly articulated approach; Nighthawk had a lasting influence on Hooker's playing. Junior Wells, another important figure in Hooker's career, entered his life at this time. The two were frequent street performers and sometimes to avoid foul weather (or truancy officers), they played in streetcars, riding one line to another across Chicago.

Early career and recordings

Around 1946, Earl Hooker traveled to Helena, Arkansas where he performed with Robert Nighthawk. While not booked with Nighthawk, Hooker performed with Sonny Boy Williamson II, including on his popular Helena KFFA radio program King Biscuit Time. Hooker then toured the South as a member of Nighthawk's band for the next couple of years. This was his introduction to life as an itinerant blues musician (although he had earlier run away from home and spent time in the Mississippi Delta). In 1949, Hooker tried to establish himself in the Memphis, Tennessee music scene, but was soon back on the road fronting his own band. By the early 1950s he returned to Chicago and performed regularly in the local clubs. This set the pattern that he repeated for most of his life: extensive touring with various musicians interspersed with establishing himself in various cities before returning to the Chicago club scene.

In 1952, Earl Hooker began recording for several independent record companies. His early singles were often credited to the vocalist he recorded with, although some instrumentals (and his occasional vocal) were issued in Hooker's name. Songs by Hooker and with blues and R&B artists, including Johnny O'Neal, Little Sam Davis, Boyd Gilmore, Pinetop Perkins, The Dells, Arbee Stidham, Lorenzo Smith, and Harold Tidwell were recorded by such labels as King, Rockin', Sun, Argo, Veejay, States, United, and C.J. (several of these recordings, including all of the Sun material, were unissued at the time). The harmonica player, Little Arthur Duncan, often accompanied Hooker over this period.

Among these early singles was Hooker's first recorded vocal performance on an interpretation of the blues classic "Black Angel Blues". Although his vocals were more than adequate, they lacked the power usually associated with blues singers. Hooker's "Sweet Angel" (1953 Rockin' 513) was based on Robert Nighthawk's 1949 "Black Angel Blues" and showed that "Hooker had by now transcended his teacher". (B.B. King later had a hit in 1956 with his interpretation, "Sweet Little Angel".) One of Hooker's most successful singles during this period was "Frog Hop", recorded in 1956 (Argo 5265). The song, an upbeat instrumental, showed some of his T-Bone Walker swing-blues and chording influences, as well as his own style.

Chief/Profile/Age recordings

Despite a major tuberculosis attack in 1956 that required hospitalization, Earl Hooker returned to performing in Chicago clubs and touring the South. By late 1959, Junior Wells brought Hooker to the Chief/Profile/Age group of labels, where he began one of the most fruitful periods of his recording career. Their first recording together, "Little by Little" (Profile 4011), was a hit the following year when it reached number 23 in the Billboard Hot R&B Sides chart. With this success and his rapport with Chief owner and producer Mel London, Hooker became Chief's house guitarist. From 1959 to 1963, he appeared on about forty Chief recordings, including singles for Wells, Lillian Offitt, Magic Sam, A.C. Reed, Ricky Allen, Reggie "Guitar" Boyd, Johnny "Big Moose" Walker, and Jackie Brenston, as well as Hooker being the featured artist. He appeared on nearly all of Wells' releases, including "Come on in This House", "Messin' with the Kid", and "It Hurts Me Too", which remained in Wells' repertoire throughout his career. Hooker regularly performed with Wells for the rest of 1960 and most of 1961.

For the Chief labels, Hooker released several instrumentals, including the slow blues "Calling All Blues" (1960 Chief 7020) which featured Hooker's slide guitar and "Blues in D Natural" (1960 Chief 7016), where he switched between fretted and slide guitar. However, it was a chance taping before a recording session that captured perhaps Hooker's best known song (although by a different title). During the warm-up that preceded a May 1961 scheduled session, Hooker and his band played an impromptu slow blues which featured Hooker's slide guitar. The song was played once and Hooker was apparently not aware that it was being recorded. Producer Mel London saved the tape and when looking for material to release the following spring, issued it as "Blue Guitar" (Age 29106). "Earl's song sold unusually well for an instrumental blues side" and Chicago-area bluesmen were including it in their sets.

Sensing greater commercial potential for Hooker's "Blue Guitar", Leonard Chess approached Mel London about using it for Muddy Waters' next record. An agreement was reached and in July 1962, Waters overdubbed a vocal (with lyrics by Willie Dixon) on Hooker's single and it was renamed "You Shook Me". The song was successful and Chess hired Hooker to record three more instrumentals for Muddy Waters to overdub. One of the songs, again with Dixon-supplied lyrics, titled "You Need Love", was also a success and "sold better than Muddy's early sixties recordings". Later, rock bands such as Led Zeppelin would achieve greater success with their adaptations of Earl Hooker's and Muddy Waters' "You Shook Me" and "You Need Love".

During his time with Chief, Hooker also recorded singles as a sideman for Bobby Saxton and Betty Everett as well as in his own name for the Bea & Baby, C.J., and Checker

 record labels. By 1964, the last of the Chief labels went out of business and ended his longest association with a record label; for some, his recordings for Chief/Profile/Age represent Hooker's best work.