Transcript: Bluesman John Lee Hooker

Blues legend John Lee Hooker was interviewed on CNN's news magazine show Newstand on September 5, 2000.

FRAZIER: Well, as the song goes, "they heard the breeze in the trees playing sweet melodies and they called it the birth of the blues." Sounds nice, but music purists say that the blues really evolved in Mississippi, south of Memphis, near Arkansas: the Delta.

As we hear now from our Bruce Burkhardt, no one deserves more credit for birthing the blues than one Delta-born octogenarian who is still wailing.

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JOHN LEE HOOKER, MUSICIAN (singing): When she walk that walk and talk that talk.

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B.B. KING, MUSICIAN: John Lee Hooker, he is one of a kind.

One note of John Lee Hooker and I know that's who it is.

BEN HARPER, MUSICIAN: His voice commands your attention.

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HOOKER (singing): My doctor put me on milk, cream, and alcohol and alcohol.

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ROBERT CRAY, MUSICIAN: It's pretty hypnotic. It's wild. There is nobody like him.

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HOOKER (singing): Baby Lee, please don't do me wrong.

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HARPER: Being in the presence of John Lee Hooker is actually one of the three closest times I've ever felt as if I were levitating.

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HOOKER (singing): I love you gal, always treat me wrong.

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HARPER: It's a soulfulness that can inspire you to be more soulful. He's one of the important voices in blues music and in the history of blues.

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HOOKER (singing): Doing the boogie, doing the shout.

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BURKHARDT (voice-over): John Lee Hooker, who was honored this year with a Grammy for lifetime achievement, is a living legend and, as many of his disciples claim, one of the founding fathers of rock 'n' roll. Tunes like "Come Back Baby" helped point the way.

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HOOKER (singing): Well, my nights are so lonely ever since you've been gone.

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BURKHARDT: Stories of love gone bad sung in that unmistakable voice.

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HOOKER (singing): Well, I wish you were here, baby, by my side.

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BURKHARDT: Pure, raw and muddy, as muddy as the rich Delta silt where the sound took root.

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HOOKER (singing): You know, I'm doomed with the blues. I'll be doomed until the day I die.

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MIKE KAPPAS, JOHN LEE HOOKER'S AGENT: John Lee's is one of the most primal and deep and raw blues there is.

BURKHARDT: His long-time agent and friend, Mike Kappas.

KAPPAS: And the passion of that with no polish and no pretense is, I think, what has really gotten to the hearts of a lot of people.

HOOKER: Miles Davis said the same thing.

BURKHARDT (on camera): Miles Davis?

HOOKER: Yes. If you're in the mud up to your neck, we called it the blues.

BURKHARDT: Mud up to your neck?

HOOKER: The blues.

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HOOKER (singing): I ain't going down on my knees no more, no more.

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BURKHARDT (voice-over): Born in 1917 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, John Lee might seem as old as the blues, but he knows it's a little older.

(on camera): How old is the blues?

HOOKER: It goes right back to Eve and Adam.

BURKHARDT: Eve and Adam?

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HOOKER (singing): Give my soul to me, my soul to me.

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HOOKER: Adam and Eve, they broke the law.

BURKHARDT: You said they broke the law?

HOOKER: Yes, and people have been breaking the law ever since.

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HOOKER (singing): Serves me right to suffer, serves me right to be alone.

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HOOKER: The blues is a thing that consists of a lot of things. When you ain't got no money, that's the blues. When you're going through a lot of changes, that's the blues. It can be a lot of things. The blues is not based upon just womens and mens. It's based upon a lot of things, problems and things like that.

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BURKHARDT (voice-over): Always a bluesman, John Lee added another twist: boogie, a style of playing he learned as a boy from his stepfather. When he left home at 16 to chart his own way, he didn't end up like Muddy Waters and many of the other greats of that era in Chicago; instead, he settled in Detroit, where he could be king -- "King of the Boogie," as he became known.

KAPPAS: John Lee says that Chicago was crowded with all these other big stars and that Detroit was great for him because he had it to himself, in a sense, and he was the big star in Detroit.

BURKHARDT: If historians need a starting point for rock 'n' roll, they could well look to 1948.

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HOOKER (singing): Well, my mama she didn't love me.

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BURKHARDT: That's when John Lee recorded "Boogie Chillen'," a revolutionary sound that caught on immediately and had jukeboxes all over the country lighting up. It also caught on with a young B.B. King.

KING: When I was growing up, there was a fad of music called boogie woogie. Boogie woogie was like eight beats to the bar, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) like that.

BURKHARDT: Songs like "Voodoo Woman" helped push the boogie craze. In the 52 years since that first hit, "Boogie Chillen'," his career has "boogied" at times, "chilled" at others, as the popularity of the blues would variously rise and fall.

But it wasn't until 1989, when John Lee teamed up with Santana for "The Healer" album, that a new generation caught the bug.

KAPPAS: Carlos Santana called me up and said, "If John Lee makes another record, I really want to be part of it." BURKHARDT: Recorded in 1989, "The Healer" won John Lee his first Grammy. It was followed shortly by another for "Chill Out" in 1995; then a double Grammy in 1997 for "Don't Look Back" -- all recorded with his friends. And what friends: Van Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Keith Richards, just to name a few.

KAPPAS: He hasn't changed. He's still as raw and unpolished as ever, but he's also collaborating with some of the top stars of today and not compromising his sound. Both parties enjoy it, and what comes out of it is something that works for everybody I think. He's -- and he's influenced so many of those people.

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HOOKER (singing): Baby Lee, please don't do me wrong.

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BURKHARDT: Among those influenced: Robert Cray.

CRAY: Everybody has to go back to the roots. I mean, you have to go back to the root to feel grounded, and John Lee Hooker is where the ground begins. He mentioned that he wanted to do "Baby Lee," which we recorded, and then we were going to do the video, and it was going to be set at the beach. Well, that's just a perfect place for John to be dressed up in a suit on the beach. We just had a ball. John Lee Hooker is just a great guy to be around. He's like dad, you know. He's like the man.

BURKHARDT: He is the man -- in commercials targeted at a young audience, like Lee jeans and Pepsi...

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HOOKER (singing): Yes, I got no shade...

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: Hey, that's cause you got no Pepsi.

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BURKHARDT: An 83-year-old man who defines cool.

(on camera): Do you think you're cool?

HOOKER: Think I'm cool?

BURKHARDT: Yes.

(LAUGHING)

HOOKER: Is that what you said, do I think I'm cool? I don't know, I know I'm for real.

BURKHARDT: You're for real?

HOOKER: Yes. BURKHARDT (voice-over): Real, and cool: just ask long-time admirer Ben Harper.

HARPER: John Lee Hooker is one of those magic cats who has made history and lived history while he's been alive.

CRAY: It's his guitar playing, it's amazing to me. I'm different. I guess I play guitar out of strength, and where, if you shake hands with John Lee Hooker, it's like you're not shaking hands at all, his hands are so soft.

HARPER: It's pure strength, but there's no bones in his hands.

BURKHARDT: John Lee does have bones, it's just that when it comes to the blues, those bones seem to disappear.

(on camera): Wow. That comes in pretty handy when you're playing.

HOOKER: If I want it to.

BURKHARDT: If you want it to?

(voice-over): And when he "wants to," John Lee turns it on with songs like "I'm Leaving You."

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HOOKER (singing): I pay my fare, that train start rolling.

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BURKHARDT: It is one of the great music mysteries: how this countryside, this relatively small geographic region known as the Delta, produced not only John Lee, but so many other blues greats.

KING: Most of the blues singers that you hear about that have made a name for themselves that was born in Mississippi was born within 100 miles of each other. And I thought it about, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, myself, we all was born within 100 miles of each other. I don't know, maybe it's the water.

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BURKHARDT: If it is in the water, it is the water of kings: B.B. King, the king of blues, and John Lee Hooker, the king of boogie.

Good friends, they share not only a common heritage, but also a fondness for many of the same things.

(on camera): Tell me what three things you love most in life.

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HOOKER: Music, food and women.

KING: I would put it almost a little differently, I think, women, women, women.

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HOOKER (singing): But I know I never, I know I never, come out of these blues alive.

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HOOKER: I love to sit down and do my thing, you know, because I love the blues, I was born with the blues, and I just dig it. Nothing else I want to do, and I wouldn't do anything else in the world but this. I want to thank you.

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FRAZIER: Bruce Burkhardt reporting there.

John Lee Hooker fans will be heading to bookstores next month, with the publication of a biography, it's title is -- what else -- "Boogie Man."