JAM, INC. ANNOUNCES WORLDWIDE DEAL TO MANAGE ESTATE OF JOHN LEE HOOKER

04 Feb JAM, INC. ANNOUNCES WORLDWIDE DEAL TO MANAGE ESTATE OF JOHN LEE HOOKER

Array of Projects Planned to Advance the Music and Life Story of a Blues Innovator

Jampol Artist Management, Inc. (JAM, Inc.), is announcing worldwide management of the estate of blues great and five-time Grammy® winner John Lee Hooker.

JAM, Inc. will work with the estate to oversee projects advancing, promoting and protecting Hooker’s legacy—potentially including, but not limited to, new retail and digital packages of his indelible recordings; remixes and cover versions of his songs by contemporary artists; film, TV and commercial syncs; a feature film biopic and a documentary feature; stage productions; books; a touring live experience, and special releases tailored to streaming and other digital platforms.

Hooker’s driving, slinky, loose reworking of traditional blues forms earned him the sobriquet “King of the Boogie.” His best-known work, including “Boom Boom,” “Boogie Chillen’,” “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” “I’m in the Mood” and “Dimples,” informed the basic lexicon of rock ‘n’ roll—and was integral in shaping the sonic and stylistic vocabulary of such acolytes as Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, ZZ Top and Van Morrison, as well as modern blues ambassadors Jack White and Gary Clark, Jr.

“I am proud to announce that the John Lee Hooker Estate has chosen to partner with JAM Inc. to move my father’s legacy to another level, and into the future.” Says Zakiya Hooker, daughter of John Lee Hooker. “I am glad to be working with a company in which I feel secure, and who will expertly introduce my dad’s music to a new and vibrant audience.  Thank you, JAM team!”

“We’re so proud to represent a legend like John Lee Hooker, the King of the Boogie, and his stunning legacy coupled with his iconic songs.”  Said Jeff Jampol, founder and President of JAM, Inc. “Without artists like John Lee Hooker, there are no Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Who or many of the other all-time greats of rock and roll. Without John Lee Hooker, the American Blues playbook is incomplete. The fact that my company and I were chosen to represent this legacy? What a priceless honor!”

Fittingly for a legend whose music conjures such mystery, Hooker’s exact date of birth is a subject to debate—with various sources suggesting he began life in 1912, 1917 or 1920—as is the town he was born in. In any case, it’s known that he arrived in the Mississippi Delta home, thought to be near Clarksdale, of William Hooker (a preacher and sharecropper) and Minnie Ramsey.  John learned music in church but it wasn’t until his parents split up and Minnie married a blues musician named William Moore that the lad came in contact with the form that would become his life’s work. “I was born with the blues,” he’d later proclaim.

After plying his trade on Beale Street in Memphis and bouncing around Cincinnati and other destinations, he landed in Detroit in the’40s, scraping by as an auto-plant janitor during the Motor City’s wartime boom and playing house parties and nightspots like the Apex Bar and Henry’s Swing Club at night. His distinctive sound caught the attention of record-store owner Elmer Barber, whose shop on East Lafayette housed a downstairs space for recording. “He discovered me,” Hooker said of Barber in a 1993 interview. “He said, ‘Oh kid, you got a voice.’ And he would take me [downstairs] and record me… [we’d] eat and drink wine till about two or three o’clock in the morning.” 

Barber brought his young charge into the orbit of local record distributor Bernard Besman.  Besman employed an array of crude but effective studio tactics to deepen the mystery and drive of Hooker’s recorded sound, legendarily putting a wooden pallet beneath his feet to capture his signature stomping grooves, double-tracking his vocal and guitar, and miking a speaker in a toilet bowl for echo.

On “Boogie Chillen’,” recorded solo during their first sessions and released on the Modern Records label in 1948, Hooker delivers a talking-blues sermon that encompasses Detroit nightlife over the tune’s relentless guitar figure. It was, as critic Cub Koda would later write, the riff that “launched a million songs.” The side was a #1 Rhythm & Blues smash, choogling out of jukeboxes and radios worldwide—including the U.K., where a young generation of musicians was starting to fall in love with the blues.  During the ’50s, he recorded for Chess Records, as well as different imprints, under pseudonyms, to make up for the negligible royalties he was paid during this era.  In the ‘60s, Hooker made a string of seminal records with Chicago’s Vee-Jay label, and his work—alternately boisterous and intimate—straddled the burgeoning worlds of blues and folk.

In 1970 Hooker relocated to San Francisco, where he was embraced by countless young rock artists, many of whom recorded his songs and leapt at the chance to work with him. Canned Heat collaborated with him for 1970’s Hooker ‘n’ Heat; Van Morrison, Steve Miller, Elvin Bishop and other stars joined him for the 1972 set Never Get Out of These Blues Alive. His reputation in the mainstream ballooned in the ensuing years, especially following a cameo in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, wherein he’s seen busking in the street with a rendition of “Boom Boom.” That same year he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. A 1989 collaboration with Carlos Santana, Raitt and others, The Healer, accelerated Hooker’s canonization; the Raitt duet on “I’m in the Mood” took the Grammy® for Traditional Blues Recording. Two years later he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and during the ’90s he released a series of high-profile albums, featuring such guests as Eric Clapton, Morrison, Santana, Los Lobos, Robert Cray and Jimmie Vaughan. 1995’s Chill Out took the Traditional Blues Album Grammy®, while 1997’s Don’t Look Back with Morrison scored two trophies, one for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals. “I’ve never done anything different, just sung the blues,” Hooker noted in 1996. “But now they tell me I’m a genius.”

Hooker earned a Grammy® Lifetime Achievement Award and a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame® in 2000. The next year—with his legacy written in the sky and etched in the pavement—he died peacefully in his California home, survived by eight children, 19 grandchildren and a multitude of great-grandkids.

“I know when I’m gone, I’ll never be gone,” he mused in a 1995 CNN interview. “My music is always gonna be here. Forever.”