[Dixielandjazz] John Lee Hooker

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

In the course of mails on a now closed topic I think I was mistaken for making an adverse observation concerning John Lee Hooker.
All I said was he couldn't play guitar, as contrasted with play blues on guitar.
It's true, though. When the owner of a state of the art tape recorder recorded him some sixty years ago he also had Hooker do some spirituals. 
All Hooker could do on guitar with them was time some blues licks as a fragmentary accompaniment.
Thus revealing real musical ability. No mistakes, no wrong notes or dead passagework. 
It was Lightnin' Hopkins who said Hooker didn't know any chords. 
Probably near enough true. All Hooker did was put his fingers in the right places to stunning effect.
Nothing merely correct and nothing banal,
There's no evidence of his being able to play routine guitar at an amateur level.
Which makes him an interesting phenomenon in considering the wide varieties of musical ability 
which wouldn't be worth mentioning if I wasn't pleased to hang on to all the Hooker recordings I've acquired over the years.
It's a case of his integrity like that of some schooled musicians who demand a certain overall command of an instrument. 
Musicians should be judged on what they do. 
Critics should be careful to avoid presuming that will be something else, and hot hearing what it is. 

A young jazzman once got furious because I said his latest CD wasn't jazz,
He insisted that nobody ever claimed it was, least of all him. 
Since most potential buyers seeing his name might wrongly have assumed it was jazz, I just thought it was something they ought to be told. 
It can sometimes be difficult to express uncontentious facts without some opinion being projected on to them.