Tuesday, August 22, 2006

 

Hook

thermography
I remember taking a literature class in high school and learning that great poetry didn't have to rhyme. I was 14 and I knew everything back then, so I thought that was complete bullshit. Even if it wasn't bullshit in the stodgy world of poetry, it was certainly bullshit in the world of the music I listened to. A song has to rhyme. How can it not? How can it not and still be any sort of good?

Every time I see you, baby
Walkin' down the street
I gets a thrill, darlin'
From my head down to my toes.....


Today would have been John Lee Hookers 89th birthday. August 22nd, besides being MonyP's birthday (who is considerably younger...) is one of my personal holidays. We all celebrate different things in our lives, I've celebrated the birth of John Lee Hooker for a number of years now. I have to go out and buy some scotch to celebrate it properly, as I already have the bourbon and the beer.

Hook will always be the "King of Boogie." His music was as raw as could be, made by a simple man with a soul that just oozed the blues. When I first started listening to Hook in the late 1980's, I was completely blown away. How was Hook not the single most famous human being on the planet? No mere mortal could be cooler!

That was my first reaction, it was from somewhere deep inside me and didn't require my brain at all. It was after my brain kicked in that I realized that he tends not to rhyme in his lyrics, he plays with odd rhythms in a very sparse style. His voice, while soulful, is really anything but pleasant. The more I actually thought about Hook's music, the more I realized that, for me anyway, it had nothing to do with thinking. It was all about the soul. If you don't like John Lee Hooker's music, there's absolutely no way that I can explain to you why you should like it. His music doesn't work that way, what is special about his music comes from someplace that defies explanation.

Listen to John Lee Hooker's "I'm in the Mood" from the 1989 album The Healer. Of the many amazing things about this track featuring Bonnie Raitt, one that always struck me as amazing was that it was done in one take. Bonnie was in and out of the studio in about half an hour. And while I've never been too big on remakes, Bonnie and Hook's duet is something special. Ther original is absolutely fantastic, throwing a woman's voice into sex-laced story about forbidden love gives it an amazing energy.

Every time I see you, baby
Walkin' down the street
I gets a thrill, darlin'
From my head down to my toes.....


I listened to that lyric for years before one day it struck me that it didn't rhyme. Not only does it not rhyme, but there's a rhyme there, an obvious rhyme that bad songwriters like me would have jumped all over. Hook went out of his way to avoid a rhyme. I've often wondered why. Was it defying convention, thumbing his nose at musical expectations, or was it his own little joke. On a live recording of the song, I heard him sing the line with a little bit of a laugh in his voice. Who knows? And, as with everything about Hook's music, it's best not to think about it too much. His music has nothing to do with thinking.

BOJ

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