John Lee Hooker and Canned Heat

I said, "Hey, Mister Bartender"

Three years ago I spent a whole pocket-full of money on vinyl records at Black Swan Records in their then-new home in the Dominion Building at 207 W. Hastings (they may have moved their store completely on-line - read here and here). Included in my purchase was Hooker & Heat, a 1971 Liberty Record release featuring John Lee Hooker and Canned Heat. This is the man who sang One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer (later covered by George Thorogood), Boom Boom, and I'm in the Mood.

For some reason I placed it in my collection and didn't touch it until last night when I arrived home on the verge of a flu. I made myself some tea and flipped through my LPs, found it and put it on the turntable.

According to Johnleehooker.com, Hooker was born in 1917 in the American South, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, the son of a sharecropper (a tenant farmer who uses his crop to pay his land rent). He moved from the Mississippi Delta to Detroit and played houseparties, which I suppose might be similar to the rent parties we're familiar with but I'm not sure. At age 31 Hooker was introduced to record producer Bernard Besman, who recorded his material for Modern Records.

Between 1948 and his death in 2001 Hooker is said to have recorded over 100 LPs. "It don't take me no three days to make a record," he says on Hooker & Heat.

It's what I'm going to listen to when I call in sick today.

xoxo

M