Here is the NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARY: June 22, 2001

Blues Guitarist John Lee Hooker Dies at 83

By JON PARELES

ohn Lee Hooker, the bluesman whose stark, one-chord boogies were some of the feistiest and most desolate songs of the 20th century, died yesterday in his sleep at his home in Los Altos, Calif., said his agent, Mike Kappus. He was 83.

Mr. Hooker's music stayed close to its Mississippi Delta roots. Usually playing an electric guitar with a menacing hint of distortion, he picked barbed, syncopated guitar riffs that went on to become cornerstones of rock. Electrified for tough urban crowds, they harked back to the rural South and to West Africa. "I don't play a lot of fancy guitar," he once told an interviewer. "The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean, mean licks."

And with his deep, implacable voice, he sang of lust and loneliness, rage and despair in songs so bleak that they sometimes made him cry behind his dark glasses.

"No matter what anybody says, it all comes down to the same thing," he once said. "A man and a woman, a broken heart and a broken home."

Mr. Hooker's songs stoked the blues-rock of the 1960's. They were picked up by English and American rockers, among them the Rolling Stones, Canned Heat, the Animals and, later, Z Z Top and George Thorogood and the Destroyers. Mr. Hooker estimated that he recorded more than 100 albums, and he toured everywhere from juke joints to concert halls.

Mr. Hooker was born Aug. 17, 1917, near Clarksdale, Miss. He was one of 11 children in a sharecropper family on a cotton plantation. His father was a minister, and he learned gospel songs in church. But he learned the blues and the beat he called the "country boogie" from his stepfather, William Moore. The bluesmen Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charley Patton were among the visitors to the Moore household; Mr. Hooker also learned from other Mississippi musicians and from phonograph records. He started playing on strings made from strips of inner tube nailed to a barn, then moved on to the guitar.

As a teenager, he ran away to become a musician. "I was young and had a lot of nerve," he said in an interview with David S. Rotenstein. "I knew I would get nowhere down in Mississippi and I ran away by night. I thought for sure I was gonna make it."

Mr. Hooker made his way to Memphis, where he worked as an usher in the segregated W. C. Handy movie theater on Beale Street. He soaked up more blues playing with musicians like Robert Nighthawk before heading farther north. In Cincinnati at the end of the 1930's, he sang with gospel groups, including the Fairfield Four and the Big Six, and in 1943 he moved to Detroit. There, he worked in steel and automobile factories and played in the blues clubs.

Mr. Hooker made his first recordings in 1948 for Sensation Records, and he almost immediately had rhythm-and-blues hits, beginning with "Boogie Chillun," a guitar-driven tour of the Detroit ghetto. In the song, the narrator reminisces:

"One night I was layin' down/I heard Mama and Papa talkin'/I heard Papa tell Mama,/Let that boy boogie-woogie/It's in him and it got to come out!"

Soon he quit his job to play the blues full time. Evading exclusive recording contracts, Mr. Hooker's label leased his recordings under pseudonyms, including Delta John, John Lee Booker, Birmingham Sam and His Magic Guitar, The Boogie Man and Texas Slim. Although Mr. Hooker played clubs with a band, he often recorded solo, stomping his foot for a beat. He continued to make hits under his name, including "Crawling Kingsnake Blues," "Hobo Blues," "I'm in the Mood" (a million-selling single in 1951), "Dimples" and, in 1962, "Boom Boom." By then, he had moved to Chess Records, then to Vee-Jay Records, a Chicago label, and was recording with full bands.

Mr. Hooker was discovered by collegiate crowds during the blues revival, and switched in the early 1960's to the solo acoustic guitar format that pleased the folkies. But rock musicians soon latched on to his electric boogie, and during the 1970's he recorded with Canned Heat and Van Morrison. He moved to northern California, forming bands with local musicians. He appeared as a street musician in the movie "The Blues Brothers."

Mr. Hooker's career was revitalized in 1989 when he recorded "The Healer" (Chameleon Records) with guest musicians who included Carlos Santana, Los Lobos and Robert Cray. Its new version of "I'm in the Mood," a duet with Bonnie Raitt, received a Grammy Award.

Yesterday, Ms. Raitt said in a statement: "I'm deeply saddened by the loss of my dear friend and one of the last and greatest of the original Delta bluesmen. John Lee's power and influence in the world of Rock, R & B, Jazz and Blues are a legacy that will never die. Getting to know and work with him these last 30 years has truly been one of the great joys of my life. I'm so very grateful to have known him, and know that he went not in pain, truly loved and appreciated the world round."

"When I was a child he was the first circus I wanted to run away with," Mr. Santana, the guitarist, said of Mr. Hooker. "He, Jimmy Reed and Lightnin' Hopkins were the foundation for all of my music."

Mr. Hooker was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, and received a tribute concert at Madison Square Garden with performances by Ms. Raitt, Gregg Allman, Bo Diddley and others. Although he announced he would retire from touring in the mid-1990's, he continued to record until 1997 with many other guest musicians for Pointblank/Virgin Records, and received two more Grammy awards in 1997 for his album "Don't Look Back" (Best Traditional Blues Album) and for a duet with Mr. Morrison (Best Pop Collaboration). A compilation from his 1989-1997 albums, "The Best of Friends," was released by Virgin in 1998.

In 1997, Mr. Hooker bought a San Francisco club to present the blues, calling it John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Room.

Through five decades of recording and countless collaborators, Mr. Hooker maintained the Delta style. "I just got smarter and added things on to mine," he once said, "but I got the same bottom, the same beat that I've always had. I'd never change that, 'cause if I change that, I wouldn't be John Lee Hooker any more."

Mr. Hooker is survived by eight children: Francis McBee Hooker, Diane Hooker-Roan, Zakiya Hooker Bell, John Lee Hooker Jr., Robert Hooker, Shyvonne Hooker, Karen Hooker and Lavetta Williams. He is also survived by a nephew, Archie Hooker; 19 grandchildren; and numerous great-grandchildren.