John Lee Hooker was the most original of the electric blues giants. Many artists were inspired by his haunting musical minimalism, contemporaries such as Slim Harpo to imitators like The Rolling Stones. Hooker connected plaintive yet powerful vocals with passionate and percussive guitar playing. Few can match the inexplicable erotic charge that forms the core of his best performances. The patented
… "boogie" rhythm, which almost every bluesrockband and hard rock of the seventies based its numbers is more or less invented by Hooker. With more than 100 albums on numerous labels Hooker was one of the most recorded bluesmen after the war, his work mostly in Detroit and Chicago. He continued working well into his eighties. Hooker opened his own blues club in San Francisco in 2000 and was awarded a Grammy for Lifetime Achievement. He died the following year, at the age of 83.more