Earl Hooker

Earl Hooker - Don’t Have To Worry - 1969 - Bluesway

“It isn't always easy to find unanimity about anything among vintage postwar Chicago blues guitarists, but their awe of their former peer Earl Hooker and their belief that he was the unchallenged best are about as close as they get. And no wonder, given his technical mastery of slide and fretted picking with or without effects, supreme economy of motion, and ability to make the guitar talk in a human voice like no other blues guitarist,” remembers blues authority Dick Shurman. Guitarist Paul Asbell (see CD review in Phonograph Blues), who played with Hooker, adds, “What Earl did great while I was playing with him was play slide, in an amazingly vocal style that resembled no other Chicago player I heard except Robert Nighthawk. He often furthered the vocal effect by combining it with the wah wah pedal. I never heard anything on recordings that really showed how well he could do this, or how great he sometimes sounded. We did a version of James Brown's "I Feel Good" on which his vocal impression was uncanny.” “Hooker was the best,” is the most common response when hip blues folk are queried about Chicago blues guitarists. © Dave Rubin, © 2005 PlayBluesGuitar.com and TrueFire.Com. All Rights Reserved

The late, great slide guitarist Earl Hooker is a hugely respected guitarist amongst countless musicians, and he has influenced many of today's finest blues guitarists. Many of his recordings are generally available, but strangely, it is not easy to find this great album. It would be great to hear more of these great recordings remastered on CD. Some of the tracks have already been issued on other Earl Hooker albums, and other blues compilation albums, especially the Bluesway collection, "Simply The Best ", issued in 1999. The tracks were recorded on 29/5/1969 at Vault Recording Studio, Los Angeles, featuring Johnny "Big Moose" Walker and Little Andrew "Blues Boy" Odom. It was originally released on BlueswayRecords in 1969. Earl Hooker was known to be uncomfortable as a vocalist, and on "Don’t Have To Worry" he mostly plays great guitar, using several different vocalists. His own composition, "Blue Guitar" is now considered aa blues classic, and he covers two Elmore James classics, "The Sky is Crying" and "Look On Yonders Wall." Buy Earl's great "Sweet Black Angel" album.

TRACKS

The Sky Is Crying *
Hookin'
Is You Ever Seen A One-Eyed Woman Cry? []
You Got To Lose #
Blue Guitar

Moanin' And Groanin' *
Universal Rock
Look Over Yonder's Wall ( []
Don't Have To Worry #
Come To Me Right Away, Baby

CREDITS

Earl Hooker, g, # voc; Johnny 'Big Moose' Walker, p, org, [] voc; Little Andrew 'Blues Boy' Odom, * voc; Chester E. 'Gino' Skaggs, b; Jeffrey M. Carp, hca, Paul Asbell, g; Roosevelt Shaw, dr; prod. by Ed Michel



BIO (Wikipedia)

Earl Hooker (January 15, 1929 – April 21, 1970) was an American blues guitarist. Hooker was a Chicago slide guitarist in the same league as Elmore James, Hound Dog Taylor, and his mentor, Robert Nighthawk. Some Chicago blues guitarists even consider Hooker to have been the greatest slide guitarist ever. Born Earl Zebedee Hooker in Clarksdale, Mississippi, from a musically inclined family (he was a cousin of John Lee Hooker), he taught himself to play the guitar around the age of 10, and shortly thereafter his family migrated to Chicago, where he began attending the Lyon & Healy Music School in 1941.[2] From the knowledge he gained there Hooker eventually became proficient on the drums and piano, as well as banjo and mandolin. Whilst a teenager, Hooker performed on Chicago street corners, occasionally with Bo Diddley. He also developed a friendship with Robert Nighthawk, which led to Hooker's interest in the slide guitar and some performances with Nighthawk's group outside of Chicago. In 1949, Hooker moved to Memphis Tennessee, joined Ike Turner's band, and toured the Southern United States. Being in Memphis led to some performances with Sonny Boy Williamson on his KFFA radio program, King Biscuit Time, and to Hooker's first recording dates. By the mid 1950s Hooker was back in Chicago and fronting his own band. He became a steady figure on the Chicago blues scene, and regularly traveled to cities such as Gary and Indianapolis, Indiana, playing blues clubs. Hooker made his first recordings, in 1952 and 1953 for small record labels, Rockin', King, and Sun. He performed on the 1965 European tour with Joe Hinton, (which included an appearance on the UK pop music television program Ready Steady Go!) and a return trip overseas with the American Folk Blues Festival package in 1969. Hooker spent most of the 1960s playing in Chicago clubs with his band, often with Junior Wells. Hooker played slide guitar on the 1962 Muddy Waters recording "You Shook Me". In 1969 he recorded an album, Hooker 'n Steve, with organist and pianist Steve Miller (not to be confused with the guitarist and bandleader Steve Miller) for Arhoolie Records. Hooker also helped popularize the double-neck guitar. The 1970 album Sweet Black Angel, with co-producer Ike Turner, contained songs "I Feel Good", "Drivin' Wheel", "Country and Western", "Boogie", Don't Blot! "Shuffle", "Catfish Blues", "Crosscut Saw", "Sweet Home Chicago", "Mood", and "Funky Blues". Hooker died at the age of 41 in Chicago, Illinois, after a lifelong struggle against tuberculosis, which is alluded to in the title of a 1972 compilation album of his work, There's a Fungus Among Us and on his song, "Two Bugs and a Roach." He is interred in the Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois. His story was told in a 2001 book by author Sebastian Danchin titled Earl Hooker, Blues Master. Although Hooker did not receive the public recognition to the same extent as some of his contemporaries, Jimi Hendrix proclaimed Hooker as the "master of the wah-wah"; and his talent was respected by B. B. King, Ike Turner, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy and Magic Sam.



BIO [ Unsung Heroes of The Blues. Earl Hooker: The Best Yet? © Dave Rubin]

“It isn't always easy to find unanimity about anything among vintage postwar Chicago blues guitarists, but their awe of their former peer Earl Hooker and their belief that he was the unchallenged best are about as close as they get. And no wonder, given his technical mastery of slide and fretted picking with or without effects, supreme economy of motion, and ability to make the guitar talk in a human voice like no other blues guitarist,” remembers blues authority Dick Shurman. Guitarist Paul Asbell (see CD review in Phonograph Blues), who played with Hooker, adds, “What Earl did great while I was playing with him was play slide, in an amazingly vocal style that resembled no other Chicago player I heard except Robert Nighthawk. He often furthered the vocal effect by combining it with the wah wah pedal. I never heard anything on recordings that really showed how well he could do this, or how great he sometimes sounded. We did a version of James Brown's "I Feel Good" on which his vocal impression was uncanny.” “Hooker was the best,” is the most common response when hip blues folk are queried about Chicago blues guitarists. Though similar to “hot stove league” baseball arguments about Babe Ruth vs Ty Cobb, or heaven forefend, Barry Bonds, it is a telling answer. Not Otis Rush or Magic Sam or Buddy Guy, but Earl Hooker. In fact, Buddy will be the first to point to the magnificent virtuoso. Along with his mentor, the legendary and elusive Robert Lee “Nighthawk” McCollum McCoy, Hooker was the unchallenged Jedi master of standard-tuned slide. With a few deft slices of his “guitar saber” he could cleanly cut to the heart of any song as famously demonstrated on Muddy Waters’ “You Shook Me” (1962). Attesting to the almost supernatural control he exerted over his gear, his last recordings show him bending the problematic wah wah pedal to his will. If only he could have sung with the singular eloquence, inventiveness and expressiveness of his fancy fretboard frolics – and had lived longer – he may have been regarded more universally as the undisputed six-string champ. Earl Zebedee Hooker (born January 2, 1929 in Vance, Mississippi, died April 21, 1970 in Chicago, Illinois) was begat by musical parents and was a cousin to John Lee Hooker. He taught himself to play guitar around the age of 10 and shortly thereafter his family migrated to Chicago where he began attending the Lyon & Healy Music School in 1941. A self-described “bad boy” who consorted with gangs and had “sticky fingers,” Hooker ran away from home back to Mississippi when he was 13, only to return again to Chi-Town. He played street gigs with Bo Diddley and then quite fortuitously made the acquaintance of Robert Nighthawk. He hung out at the slide master’s music store, scoring tips in the fine art of bottlenecking “catch as catch can” around 1945 and later played with the Nighthawk band circa 1947 on radio station KFFA in Helena, Arkansas. Lessons with jazz guitarist Leo Blevins only heightened his interest in music beyond the blues and no doubt encouraged him to develop his remarkable technique. In 1949 Hooker went to play with Ike Turner’s band in Memphis, where he also appeared with Sonny Boy Williamson II on the King Biscuit Time show on KFFA across the Mississippi. His first instrumental sides, “Shake “Em On Up,” ”Race Track,” “Happy Blues” “and “Blue Guitar Blues” were cut in Florida for King Records in 1952. A year later he waxed a vocal version of Nighthawk’s “Sweet Black Angel” that clearly showed the older bluesman’s influence. The limitations of Hooker’s singing voice were immediately apparent and, with a few exceptions, he concentrated on instrumentals for the remainder of his career. The same year, however, he sang well in Memphis on “I’m Going Down the Line,” along with playing like a demon on the instrumentals “Guitar Rag” and “Earl’s Boogie Woogie” with backing by a band that featured Pine Top Perkins on piano. One wonders what may have happened if he had more confidence in his vocal abilities and had given them the chance to improve alongside his guitar work. Hooker returned to Chicago as his home base in the mid-1950s while barnstorming the country with his own band and recording intermittently for a number of independent labels. In 1956 he played gigs with Otis Rush as the future Chicago star was just turning heads in the gin mills on the South Side. Hooker’s reputation as a guitar wizard, particularly on slide where he went unchallenged for supremacy, grew wherever he touched down, including once at a C&W gig in Iowa (Check out “Galloping Horses A Lazy Mule” from 1960 for his hot “pickin’ ‘n’ grinnin’”). In Chicago his dazzling, vocal-inflected lines helped to engineer the emphasis away from harmonica to guitar and it has been reported that his fellow string-benders would often split the scene in resignation when he would arrive to jam. In 1959 he “hooked up” with producer/record label owner Mel London and for the next four years contributed his estimable talents as a leader and a sideman with artists such as Junior Wells (“Calling All Blues” and the fret-melting “Universal Rock,” 1960), A.C. Reed and Lillian Offitt. Though the exuberance and un-harnessed energy of his earliest work had become somewhat tempered, numbers such as “Blues in D Natural” (1960, featuring a motif that would influence Rush’s version of “I Wonder Why” in 1971), “Blue Guitar” (1961) and “Tanya” (1962), on Chess/Checker, are rightly considered major blues guitar classics. From the early 1960s on recurring bouts with tuberculosis would hamper his rambling, though he managed to do hospital benefits. Recordings for the Cuca label in Sauk City, Wisconsin that sometimes included Freddy Roulette on steel guitar, kept him going as did a trip to England in 1965 where he appeared on Ready Steady Go with the Beatles. In the late 1960s he experienced a minor resurgence that brought him much-deserved attention beyond his traditional blues audience. Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records sought him out in 1968 on Buddy Guy’s advice, recording the still vital slide samurai that year and the next. Sessions for Bluesway, Blues on Blues and Blue Thumb followed before he succumbed to the TB (the “bug” in his composition “Two Bugs and a Roach” from 1968) in 1970 that had relentlessly dogged him to the end. © Dave Rubin, © 2005 PlayBluesGuitar.com and TrueFire.Com. All Rights Reserved