Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century [Paperback]

Charles Shaar Murray (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 2002

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.

Editorial Reviews

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"(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

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (March 18, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312270062
• ISBN-13: 978-0312270063
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #346,890 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Facinating, But Flawed, January 27, 2001

By 

J. Keenley (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century (Hardcover)

"Boogie Man" is a fascinating portrait of a fascinating man. John Lee Hooker is arguably the greatest living blues man, a man whose life virtually spanned the entire 20th century, and this is the book he deserves. Based on extensive interviews with Hooker and many of his contemporaries, the reader experiences Hooker's life, his influences, his motivations, and, most important, his music as if one were sitting at his knee listening to him playing his guitar and telling stories. In addition, Charles Shaar Murray does a magnificent job of placing Hooker and his inimitable style within its historical, sociological, cultural, and musical context, including several interesting "sidebars" on the history of the blues, the nature of blues music, and that intangible something that makes Hooker so unique and so influential.

However, the book has one major flaw that will keep many readers, especially those who are not blues aficionados, from completely enjoying it. It is written in the hep-cat, daddy-o style that music critics and biographers seem to be compelled to employ and that readers of music criticism and biography have come to know and hate. Because of this, the author himself is so prominently present on virtually every page of the book. "Boogie Man" ends up being not a biography of John Lee Hooker, but rather a book about Hooker as seen through the eyes of Charles Shaar Murray. Good biographers know how to make themselves disappear from the text, to the benefit of their subjects. Murray is so present here that after a while it proves very annoying. Worst of all, many times he writes in a faux ebonics style that he thinks mimics the way black people speak. It's annoying, embarrassing, and even disturbing.

Murray also shares the bias that many Brits share of being convinced that America is a land seething with racism and racial prejudice, from the day the first Europeans landed here up to the present day. Granted, America is not a land of racial harmony, slavery was legal for he first 250 years of the country's existence, and it wasn't until a mere generation ago that blacks received the same treatment under law as whites. Still, Murray's prejudices against white Americans mars his point of view and clouds his perception of the facts surrounding Hooker and his life.

Further (and, strictly speaking, this isn't really the author's fault), the book is very poorly edited. It was written over a period of many years, and reading the finished product makes it clear that no one went through the book from start to finish to check for consistency and flow. There are several points repeated many times, and even some of Hooker's quotes are repeated verbatim in different places. One small example: Every blues fan knows that there were two blues men named "Sonny Boy Williamson," and perhaps for the sake of non-fans this curiosity needs to be pointed out and the difference between the two explained, but not five or six times.

In the end, despite its flaws, "Boogie Man" is a fascinating, informative, and insightful book, one that fans of John Lee Hooker, or blues in general will want to read -- provided they can overcome the author's style and point of view.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars just tell the story, January 11, 2001

By 

Paul Hench - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century (Hardcover)

I thank Mr Murray for writing a well researched biography and letting John Lee Hooker tell his own story. But I would offer him (or any other would-be biographers) the following suggestion: people are not interested in hearing how hip you are, they're interested in John Lee Hooker. Try to make yourself as inconspicuous as possible; don't get in the readers face with frequent references to "your correspondent"; use your own voice without inserting phrases in pseudo-Black English which only sound affected and draw attention to yourself instead of the subject matter (people writing on blues musicians often feel the need to sound hip and street-wise). Just tell the story.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars too much bull about everything but the subject, August 10, 2005

By 

Keith W. Humphrey - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century (Paperback)

I wouldn't recommend this book unless you are looking for a sleeping aid. The few parts that are about John Lee Hooker are good, but there is just too much bull that has little to do with the subject. Too wordy and too hard a read.