[Music]Ba'o Time: John Lee Hooker and the blues

[AnHai Doan <anhai@cs.washington.edu>]

Ta(.ng ca'c blues fans.

MAY 5, 1997 VOL. 149 NO. 18
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THE ARTS/MUSIC

BLUES AND DUES

AT 79, JOHN LEE HOOKER SHOWS HE'S STILL THE BOSS

BY CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY
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John Lee Hooker doesn't just sing the blues, and he doesn't just play the
blues on his guitar. He is the blues. Along with a handful of American
musicians, such as Robert Johnson, B.B. King, Bessie Smith and a few others,
Hooker helped establish in the cultural imagination what being a blues
performer is all about. When Hooker sings, it's with an ocean-deep voice
that grumbles and growls and sometimes soothes; his guitar playing has a
wise, twangy authority.

Hooker is fond of using collaborators to enliven his music--also, no doubt,
to broaden his audience--and on his new album, Don't Look Back, he's chosen
his partners deftly. The band Los Lobos backs Hooker on a virile version of
Hooker's classic song Dimples, and Irish pop star Van Morrison contributes
some cagey vocals on the aching ballad The Healing Game (Morrison also
produced the album).

Don't Look Back is a good album but not a perfect one; a few of the numbers
such as Ain't No Big Thing tend to drag. But there are moments of dark,
understated glory here that make you forgive the occasional missteps. The
title track is the headiest moment; when Hooker sings, "I'm gonna live for
the future/ not the past," using that rumbling, Richter-scale voice to toss
off decades of heartbreak, the listener is touched with a redemptive awe.
Hooker is 79 years old now, and has all but stopped touring. "I'll go out
once in a while," he says. "I've paid my dues." Paid in full. Just one spin
of Don't Look Back should convince anyone of that.

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