Earl's Boogie - Earl Hooker

Earl Hooker (January 15, 1929 – April 21, 1970) was an American Chicago blues guitarist, perhaps best known for his slide guitar playing. Considered a "musician's musician", Hooker performed with blues artists such as Sonny Boy Williamson II, Junior Wells, and John Lee Hooker (a cousin) as well as fronting his own bands. An early player of the electric guitar, Hooker was influenced by the modern urban styles of T-Bone Walker and Robert Nighthawk. As a band leader, he recorded several singles and albums, in addition to recording with well-known artists. His "Blue Guitar", a popular Chicago area slide-guitar instrumental single, was later overdubbed with vocals by Muddy Waters and became the popular "You Shook Me".

In the late 1960s, Hooker began performing on the college and concert circuit and had several recording contracts. Just as his career was on an upswing, Earl Hooker died in 1970 at age 41 after a life-long struggle with tuberculosis. His guitar playing has been acknowledged by many of his peers, including B.B. King, who commented: "to me he is the best of modern guitarists. Period. With the slide he was the best. It was nobody else like him, he was just one of a kind"
Earl Zebedee Hooker was born in 1929 in rural Quitman County, Mississippi, outside of Clarksdale. In 1930, when he was one-year old, his parents moved to Chicago. His family was musically inclined (John Lee Hooker was a cousin) and Earl was exposed to music at home at a very early age. About age ten, he started playing guitar. Hooker was self-taught and picked up what he could from those around him. Although Hooker was gaining proficiency on guitar, he did not show an interest in singing. This has been explained by a speech impediment, i.e., pronounced stuttering, which afflicted him all his life. Hooker also contracted tuberculosis when he was young. Although his condition did not become critical until the mid-1950s, it required periodic hospital visits beginning at an early age.
After his California sojourn, Hooker returned to Chicago and performed regularly around the city, including the first Chicago Blues Festival on August 30, 1969, which attracted about 10,000 people. In October 1969, Hooker toured Europe as part of the American Folk Blues Festival, where he played twenty concerts in twenty-three days in nine countries. There his sets were well received and garnered favorable reviews. "The journey overseas was a sort of apotheosis for Hooker, who regarded it, along with his recording trips to California, as the climax of his career." The tour exhausted him and "his friends noticed a severe deterioration of his health upon his return." Hooker played a few dates around Chicago (including some with Junior Wells) from November to early December 1969, whereafter he was hospitalized. On April 21, 1970 at age 41, he died from complications due to tuberculosis.
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