Connect the dots: The Lovin' Spoonful to John Lee Hooker
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I absolutely LOVE it when I find a connection / inspiration to music I've known forever to an earlier artist and/or song that I never knew about. Case in point:
John Sebastian leads off this great Lovin' Spoonful track with a spoken intro that I've known for 40 years. A few weeks ago a CD that came with the Brit music mag UNCUT was loaded into the iPod changer. "John Lee Hooker" I thought.."THIS one won't be sticking around". Boogie Chillin (It's in Comments). Well, I was wrong about that. I liked it, but even more amazing, at 2:15 in JLH does a little spoken interlude that is obviously the inspiration for Sebastian to paraphrase in the Spoonful song.
I really should not have been surprised, given Sebastian's Bleeker Street background and interest in Folk and Blues. The Lovin' Spoonful have never advanced to the position in the rock pantheon that I feel they deserve. Some consider them a singles band, as they had multiple hit singles. But they put out three absolutely great albums, their first three. As is frequently the case for great groups, the members of the band (Sebastian and Zal Yanovsky, lead guitarist and one of three vocalists) created something magical that they could never duplicate afterwards when they were apart. Oh, the Spoonful put out another album without Yanovsky but it was pretty poor. Yanovsky put out one solo LP that I finally obtained a couple of years ago - weird and slapdash. And Sebastian went on to a checkered solo career and now seems to have some kind of serious throat damage, as his warm voice has been reduced to a croak. Zal died a couple of years after the Spoonful was inducted into the R&R Hall of Fame.
John Lee Hooker is one of the old bluesmen that simply does not appeal to me. I bought one of his CDs, but he is so one-dimensional. One-chord "boogies" simply don't do it for me. "Boogie Chillin" has TWO chords (twice as good!) and a bit of interesting guitar work, so I have to say it's my favorite of any of the JLH material I've heard to date. It's a keeper.
Comments (13)
Here's the John Lee Hooker tune:
first band i ever saw play live was the lovin spoonful!
I'm half with you. I think the Lovin' Spoonful were terrific, and agree with you about those albums ... there's more good stuff than just the hits. But I think John Lee was terrific, too. It's like I said when someone complained to me that the famous solo on "Freebird" was just one note played over and over ... "but it's a great note!"
Mark, I have to believe you haven't heard enough of ole John Lee. One of the last of the great Delta Bluesmen, with direct influence on the Rock scene, John Lee Hooker's guitar rave ups, his voodoo rhythms, his intensity, are distinctly old school African at heart, a pulsing wild ride through the dark heart of the blues. Far more than simply a one chord boogie guy, John Lee like Bo Diddley was as much concerned with rhythm and hinted at counter rhythms/harmonics, something Sun Ra loved to explore in more wild forms.
I had always considered the Spoonful as rock lite. They have a few absolute stone cold gorgeous songs*, a bunch of damn fine songs, and some absolute wastes of vinyl.
*god help me I love Darling Be Home Soon (hanging my head)
Those first three albums by The Lovin' Spoonful are as good, I think, as the first three by The Byrds, which puts them in the top tier of mid-'60s U.S. groups. That they never were able to follow up that trilogy (due to the personnel changes, and to other extra-musical factors) is a shame, and probably why they aren't usually name-checked alongside other important bands of their era. But they were a ball of fun live, and I was happy to be at the R&R HoF ceremony when they were inducted, even though their performance was, to be charitable, ragged.
Mark, i love this Lovin' Spoonful tune myself. i will be one more stubborn Mogger to insist that you give John Lee Hooker another chance. wait, strike that, don't try to like him at all, and one day he will surprise you. that's how i came to love him anyway. and i love Boogie Chillen! but that's me.
I love posts that link two disparate recordings.
Until a few hundred years ago, people, including cavemen, made do without chord progressions that melodies could bounce off of and keep from being too random and meandering.
Zal Yanovsky was maybe the first rock (or rock 'n' roll) guitarist to record B.B. King style guitar, and an early country-rock guitarist.
I don't know what to tell you about John Lee. One chord, two, none - I'm no music theory professor, but whatever it was he was doing sounds ideal to me. As for The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer In The City" is a perfect pop song (the back of my neck never gets dirty and gritty but that I think of it), and the Spoonful's theme song for Woody Allen's "What's Up Tiger Lily?" is pickin' and grinnin' done right.
(^Cheesecake for ivylander.)
I have blissed-out memories from last seeing that scene forty-odd years ago.
Much appreciated, Buzz. I too remember that movie quite well, though I'd forgotten that there was music attached to that particular scene....
Perhaps the reason the Spoonful didn't get the respect that, say, the Byrds did was that they weren't afraid - or were maybe forced by their record company - to go pop, even though they did it so gloriously. (I for one have always thought that the really superior song in their early catalog was "You Didn't Have To Be So Nice" rather than "Do You Believe in Magic?") That, plus the fact that "Daydream" still makes me -and, presumably, a lot of other people - cringe, possibly from simple overexposure.
"Summer In The City" - best single of 1966. Against formiddable competition.
(Nice cheesecake.)
Yeah, love the Spoonful's soundtrack for "What's Up Tiger Lily".
If you can find some of Hooker's mid-'60s albums, some of the tracks that weren't big hits are worth a listen, such as "San Francisco Blues"...
I thoroughly enjoyed that vid, UC. But I must admit that my favorite version of "Boom Boom" is the cover by The Animals - probably my favorite Animals track ever.
The one JLH CD I own is Endless Boogie, from 1971, Unfortunately, that title proved true too often on the CD.