Boogie Man. Charles Shaar Murray

Let’s say this: Rev. William Hooker was the father of Johnny the child, but Will Moore was the father of John Lee Hooker the artist, and – because it is impossible to separate the two in any meaningful terms – of John Lee Hooker the man. Hooker remembers Moore as ‘a nice lookin’ man, about my complexion, maybe a little lighter, kinda medium tall. Very pleasant.’ Evidently, Moore took his new-found parental responsibilities very seriously. ‘Will Moore object to me drinkin’, but he did [drink]. Back then, they thought kids that young . . . they never did taught me to drink, my step-dad and mom. He would take a drink, but he wouldn’t drink it round me. Was Will Moore strict? Not on what I wanted to do. He was married to my mother and so he wasn’t . . . he was strict enough for me to know not to get outta line. He would tell me what’s right and what’s wrong, and if he would tell me I wouldn’t do it, because back in them days if you did something wrong that you shouldn’t’a didn’t’a did, you get a good whuppin’. An’ he was allowed to do that because I wasn’t real pampered. My mother would tell him that if I got outta line, whup us. But he never had to do that because I never did get outta line.’

      Where Will Moore, in loco parentis, drew the paternal line was over whether to carry John with him when he went out to play with Patton, Jefferson, Son House, Tommy McClennan and other wandering players of the time. In the Delta, a boy of sixteen was generally considered to be practically a full-grown man, but because John was ‘rather small’ and those Delta dances could get pretty rough, Moore ‘wouldn’t take a chance on taking me to one of those places’. Clearly, John Lee was considered more vulnerable than many another youth his age; more urgently in need of shelter and protection. It’s fascinating to contemplate the spectacle of the adolescent John Lee Hooker sat at the feet of such towering blues patriarchs amidst the smoke, crush and clamour of a Delta house party, but the evidence suggests that he learned all he needed to know at home. If the feats of the student are anything to go by, the teacher did his job well. ‘He wanted me to do what I wanted to do best, long as it was right. He guided me and helped me to do that. He is my roots because he is the man that caused me who I am today. I understudied under him, Will Moore. He made me what I am with his style. He give it to me, like you got a piece of bread and I ain’t got none, and he said, “Here’s a piece of my bread.” He gave me a piece of his music. What I’m doin’ today, that’s him. Identical, the same thing that he taught me by watchin’ him. I wanted to play just like him, and I did, but he was so bluesy. The first thing I learned, the first tune I learned from him, I never forgot. It wasn’t one of his tunes, but he played it all the time. Called “The Peavine Special”, by Charley Patton. “I thought I heard that Peavine when she blows.” I would’na thought that song goes back so far. “I ain’t got no special rider now.” That was the first thing I learned.’

      Not necessarily the first but without doubt the most important of the musical lessons John Lee learned from Will Moore was the boogie. This was Moore’s personal beat, his distinctive rhythmic pattern, his signature, his mark, his call. It is the most profound gift that a master bluesman can give to his apprentice, and just as it had been Will Moore’s trademark around the Clarksdale area, it eventually became John’s, recognised as such all around the world. His first hit, ‘Boogie Chillen’, cut in Detroit at the tail end of 1948, a decade and a half after he finally shook the Delta dust off his feet, was the piece that established him at the forefront of the ‘downhome revival’ which was one of the dominant trends of postwar blues. Its galvanic, hypnotic boogie groove was pure, unreconstructed Will Moore. ‘I got that from my stepdad,’ Hooker acknowledges, not only freely, but with palpable pride. ‘That was his tune, that was his beat. I never thought I would make nothin’ out of it, and he didn’t either. But I come out with it and it just happened.’

      But there was rather more to ‘Boogie Chillen’ than a beat, no matter how funkily irresistible. It also told part of the story of John Lee Hooker’s early life.

       Well, my mama didn’t ’low me

       Not to stay out all night long

       Oh lord . . .

       Well, I didn’t care what mama didn’t ’low

       Went on boogyin’ anyhow . . .

       One night I was layin’ down,

       I heard mama, papa talkin’.

       I heard papa tell mama

       ‘Let that boy boogie-woogie

       Because it’s in him

       And it got to come out’

       And I felt so good

       Went on boogyin’ just the same . . .

       Boogie, chillen!

      So who were the protagonists of the real-life conversation which provided the seed of the song? ‘It could have been between my father and my mother, or my mother and her last husband. The song was mama and papa, but it would relate more to my real father, because mama said, Let that boy boogie-woogie. It could’ve been either one, but I didn’t do it upon that basis, though. It’s so true, when you’re a kid and you wanna get out there and boogie and your parents don’t want you to do it, and one of them will give in and say, “Let him go ’head. It’s in him, and it got to come out.” You can relate to that, because what’s in you has got to come out, and it was in me from the day I was born. It was a great talent I had, and so I come from . . . not a very poor family, wasn’t rich, but wealthy in food. I was brought up – not all the way up – religious, and to this day some of that is in me. Lovin’ people, helpin’ people. I was taught that by my parents, to do that, and I come up some rough roads since.’

      One of the great tragedies of Hooker’s life, and one of his few genuinely profound regrets, is that Will Moore never lived to hear what John Lee achieved with his legacy. ‘Oohh, he woulda bin so proud. It would have made him feel like a big champ, knowin’ that he was responsible for this. It’s too bad that that’s the way it was. I think about that a lotta times, wishin’ that he could’ve been around just a little while to know that I was doin’ this.’

      Will Moore forever redefined John Lee’s relationship with the music for which he was prepared to sacrifice anything, and anybody, with whom he was born and raised. He also redefined John’s relationship with his blood father’s primal resource: the church. For the Reverend Hooker’s bleak fundamentalist world of fiery retribution and divine punishment, John Lee substituted Moore’s vision of a non-denominational, non-judgmental world of compassion and trust. ‘He [Will Moore] was a religious man, but he didn’t believe in running to church and so forth. He was like me. I’m a religious person, but I don’t believe in going to church. The way I look at it, your heaven is here, and your hell is here. [Right now] I feel like I’m in my heaven. A lotta people love me, I got a few dollars, a place to live . . . that’s my heaven. And lovin’ people, that’s heaven to me. But people that’s sufferin’, hungry, sleepin’ in the streets, don’t know where they next meal is comin’ from, out in the cold . . . they livin’ in hell. For a long time, my parents had me believin’ that there was a burnin’ hell and there was a heaven, but it has come to me in myself, as I grew older and knowledge grew in me, that if there was a God, then he was an unjust God for burnin’ you for ever an’ ever, stickin’ fire to you. If the God was a heavenly father, a good God, then he wouldn’t torture you and burn you. He wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t see you burn. But he tortures you, in a way, if you got nothin’ to eat and hungry, don’t know where you gonna get your next meal, don’t know where you gonna sleep at, half sick, can’t work, driftin’ from door to door . . . that’s your hell. But you’re not bein’ tortured with fire, where you get down in this hole being tortured with flames, with fire for ever. No. So you not gonna fly outta there with wings in the sky like an angel, milk and honey, as I was taught, if you go to heaven. You not gonna do that. There’s nothin’ up there but sky. The only heaven is up there in the big jets and airplanes, with the beautiful