John Lee Hooker & Ry Cooder. Click the image for their music.
John Lee Hooker was born in Mississippi, the son of a sharecropper, and rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie style. Some of his best known songs include “Boogie Chillen’” (1948), “Crawling King Snake” (1949), “Dimples” (1956), “Boom Boom” (1962), and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” (1966) – the first being the most popular race record of 1949.
Ry Cooder is a multi-instrumentalist from Santa Monica, California but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries. Cooder’s solo work has been eclectic, encompassing many genres such as folk, blues, Tex-Mex, soul, gospel, and rock. He has collaborated with many musicians, notably including Captain Beefheart, Ali Farka Touré, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Randy Newman, David Lindley, The Chieftains, and The Doobie Brothers, Carla Olson & the Textones (both on record and in film). He briefly formed a band named Little Village. He produced the Buena Vista Social Club album (1997), which became a worldwide hit. Wim Wenders directed the documentary film of the same name (1999), which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2000.
Cooder was ranked eighth on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2003 list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” (David Fricke’s Picks). A 2010 ranking by Gibson placed him at number 32.
John Lee Hooker appears at the All Our Colors Benefit Concert along side his good friend and slide guitarist Ry Cooder at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California on October 10, 1992.. Singing his commiserating Serves Me Right To Suffer, Hooker demands the audience applaud following Ry’s solo.