From Booklist
John Lee Hooker became an overnight sensation in the '80s after more than 40 years at his craft. The springboard for his "discovery" was the Grammy-winning album The Healer, which featured Bonnie Raitt and Carlos Santana among other younger musicians. This gambit, too, was not new, for Hooker had recorded Hooker 'n' Heat with Canned Heat in the late '60s--a truly seminal album. Hooker is one of the last surviving bluesmen with a direct lineage from the Delta blues tradition and for years was king of Detroit's blues scene. Murray's extensive bio goes all the way back to the beginning in a sprawling literary effort worthy of Hooker's lengthy career. Like many American blues artists, Hooker was revered by the early '60s English rockers, yet unlike Muddy Waters, widespread pop music interest in Hooker was slow to build. Nevertheless, Hooker's music is a national treasure; anybody who has ever boogied to George Thorogood's recording of Hooker's "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" or rocked out to ZZ Top's early recordings has heard the man's influence. Now they can read his life story in depth and celebrate Hooker and his music in a way that many of his contemporaries never lived to enjoy. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
Pressestimmen
"(A) meticulously researched portrait...Hooker comes to life as a petulant, triumphant figure: complex and sometimes just unknowable, but as a genius for whom blues is as vital as a heartbeat."—Rolling Stone
"Surely the most exhaustive biography of any bluesman."—Chicago Tribune
"Surely the most exhaustive biography of any bluesman."—Chicago Tribune
Kurzbeschreibung
With John Lee Hooker’s death in June 2001 the world lost one of the last great Mississippi Delta bluesmen. Acclaimed writer Charles Schaar Murray’s Boogie Man is the authorized and authoritative biography of this musician whose extraordinary career spanned over fifty years and included over one-hundred albums and five Grammy Awards. Murray was given unparalleled access to Hooker, and lets him tell his own story in his own words, from life in the Deep South to San Francisco, from the 1948 blues anthem “Boogie Chillen” to the Grammy-winning album The Healer nearly a half-century later. Boogie Man is far more than merely a brilliant biography of one man; it also gives the story of the music that inspired him. “When I die,” Hooker said, they’ll bury the blues with me. But the blues will never die.” Here is the book that does him and his music full justice.
Über den Autor
Charles Shaar Murray’s previous book, Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and the Postwar Rock ’n’ Roll Revolution, was called by Entertainment Weekly “the best book on Hendrix,” and rode their A-list for over two months before winning the prestigious Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award. He lives in England.
