John Lee Hooker was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and songwriter, and considered the father of the style of country blues known as the boogie.
Hooker was born on August 22, 1917, to a sharecropper family in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and moved to Detroit in the early 1940s. By 1948 he had scored his first number-one jukebox hit and million-seller, "Boogie Chillen." Other hits soon followed, with "I'm In the Mood," "Crawling Kingsnake," and "Boom Boom" among the biggest. Hooker's audience increased considerably in 1989 when he released "The Healer," the first in a string of CDs featuring guest artists.
During the 1950s and '60s, Vee Jay Records released a remarkable series of more than 100 of Hooker's songs. In October of 1998 he was honored with a tribute concert by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; in 1999 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation; and in February 2000 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (The Grammys). Hooker died on June 21, 2001.
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