My Favorite Concerts: John Lee Hooker, 1967

A few weeks into my freshman year at the all-boys Jesuit high school in Detroit, I went to my first school event: a concert in the commons. The performer was none other than John Lee Hooker. I knew nothing about him, other than one of my favorite albums, The Best of the Animals, included a line where Eric Burdon listed “meeting John Lee Hooker” as his most thrilling experience. I later learned he’d written their hits “Boom Boom” and “Dimples.”

The rowdy audience of preppy teenagers quieted down when John Lee Hooker was announced. Hooker, who still lived in Detroit, walked in wearing a black leather coat and a Russian-style black hat, both of which he left on the entire evening. Carrying a red semi-hollowbody guitar, he worked his way to a small stage set up in the middle of a large room with a circular balcony that doubled as a running track. He plugged into a small amp and eased himself into a folding chair illuminated by single spotlight. Tapping time with both feet, he began playing staccato blues riffs with his thumb and forefinger while moaning in a deep, resonant voice. Never having heard anything like this before, I was instantly mesmerized.

Hooker had just released his magnificent Live at Café au Go-Go album, recorded the previous summer with the Muddy Waters band, and at our show he covered most of the songs on the record, sans accompanists. Seldom opening his eyes, he sang his menacing “I’m Bad Like Jesse James” and heart-wrenching “When My First Wife Left Me,” “It Serves Me Right to Suffer,” and “I’ll Never Get Out of These Blues Alive.” He picked up the pace for “Bottle Up and Go” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer,” rocked the house with “Boom Boom,” and closed the show with his almighty “Boogie Chillen” and “Dimples.” Wow!

This night marked the beginning of my love for the blues. I went right out and got Live at Café au Go-Go. In time, I filled orange crate after orange crate with blues LPs. When I became a music journalist in the 1970s, I made it my mission to interview as many blues artists as I could find. Best of all, I was blessed to become friends with John Lee Hooker.

Jim Marshall, who shared my love for the man he always referred to as “Mr. Hooker,” photographed two of my interviews with John Lee Hooker. When I was choosing a cover for my book Rollin’ & Tumblin’: The Postwar Blues Guitarists, he suggested I use a shot he’d taken around the time of that concert in Detroit. I gladly accepted.

RIP, John and Jim.

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Blind Blake: King of Ragtime Blues

During the mid 1920s, strong sales of 78s by Papa Charlie Jackson and Blind Lemon Jefferson led Paramount Records to sign Blind Blake, a swinging, sophisticated guitarist whose warm, relaxed voice was a far cry from harsh country blues. Some of Blake’s 78s cast him as a jivey hipster sitting in with jazzmen, while on others he walked the long, lonely road to the gallows. The man with the “famous piano-sounding guitar” is still regarded as the unrivaled master of ragtime blues fingerpicking.

“Lord have mercy, was he sophisticated!” says Jorma Kaukonen, who helped introduce Blake’s guitar style to rock audiences during the 1970s. “He would have been sophisticated in any era. I really like the completeness of his piano-style playing, his left- and right-hand moves. He could play a complete band arrangement by himself. That appealed to the lone-wolf mentality that I aspired to when I was learning his songs. Later on, it gave me depth for playing double-guitar and piano-guitar stuff with other people. It taught me a lot about putting music together.”

“Blind Blake is a great player, a great musical figure,” echoes Ry Cooder. “In the years where he was on top, he was fabulous. Blind Blake just had a good touch. He played quietly, and he didn’t hit the guitar too hard. He had a nice feeling for syncopation. He’s from down there in the Geechie country, and all those people have a real nice roll to what they do. He was a hell of a good player, and he had a lick that was great. And Blind Blake played all over the place, with all kinds of people, including Johnny Dodds, which is just way too much for me.”

Besides his music and session details, not much is known of Blind Blake. His single surviving photograph shows us a dapper bantamweight in a neatly pressed three-piece suit and bow tie, fingerpicking a small guitar beneath closed eyes and a frozen Buddha grin. (With its deep body and distinctive bridge, the guitar in the photo is likely a Chicago-made Harmony, a good guitar back then.)

In 1927, Blake’s label published The Paramount Book of Blues, a promotional booklet with sheet music and full-page bios of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charlie Jackson, Ma Rainey, and Ida Cox. Their Blind Blake page contained this strangely punctuated write-up:

“We have all heard expressions of people ‘singing in the rain’ or ‘laughing in the face of adversity,’ but we never saw such a good example of it, until we came upon the history of Blind Blake. Born in Jacksonville, in sunny Florida, he seemed to absorb some of the sunny atmosphere – disregarding the fact that nature had cruelly denied him a vision of outer things. He could not see the things that others saw – but he had a better gift. A gift of an inner vision, that allowed him to see things more beautiful. The pictures that he alone could see made him long to express them in some way – so he turned to music. He studied long and earnestly – listening to talented pianists and guitar players, and began to gradually draw out harmonious tunes to fit every mood. Now that he is recording exclusively for Paramount, the public has the benefit of his talent, and agrees, as one body, that he has an unexplainable gift of making one laugh or cry as he feels, and sweet chords and tones that come from his talking guitar express a feeling of his mood.”
Paramount’s ads in the Chicago Defender, a popular African American newspaper, emphasized Blake’s unparalleled guitar playing: “He accompanies himself with that snappy guitar playing, like only Blind Blake can do” read the ad copy for “Bad Feeling Blues.” The company claimed that “Blind Blake and his trusty guitar do themselves proud” on “Rumblin’ & Ramblin’ Boa Constrictor Blues,” while “Wabash Rag” was “aided by his happy guitar.”

Some believe Blind Blake was born Arthur Phelps, but during the record “Papa Charlie and Blind Blake Talk About It,” Papa Charlie Jackson asks him, “What is your right name?” Blake responds, “My name is Arthur Blake.” The name on the copyrights for “C.C. Pill Blues” and “Panther Squall Blues” is Arthur “Blind” Blake, which strengthens the case for Blake being his given name. He had a pronounced Southern accent and reportedly worked in south Georgia, Kentucky, along the East Coast, and in Bristol, Tennessee, before landing in Chicago.

“No matter where Blake was from, he ranks as a musical curiosity,” wrote Steve Calt and Woody Mann in the liners for Yazoo’s Blind Blake collection. “His records betray no basic musical orientation, and it’s anyone’s guess as to whether blues, guitar instrumentals, or even pop ditties were his original specialty. How he actually made his livelihood as a performer is another enigma. While most blind guitarists were soloists who used the helter-skelter phrasing of the street dancer, Blake’s blues phrasing had the strictness of a dance or band musician. It is likely that ensemble playing (perhaps with a jazz band) had a real impact on his music.”

Blind Blake made his first records for Paramount during the summer of 1926, playing solo guitar behind Leola B. Wilson’s lazy vaudeville blues. “Mayo Williams, the Paramount scout, says that Blind Blake was sent up from Jacksonville by a dealer,” reports blues researcher Gayle Dean Wardlow. “That’s how he first got on record, and his records sold very, very well.” Blake showed nerves of steel his first time before the recording horn at Chicago’s Marsh Studios, playing outstanding solos on Wilson’s “Dying Blues” and “Ashley St. Blues.”

A month later Paramount cast him as a solo artist. “Early Morning Blues” was a grim “leaving blues” reminiscent of Lonnie Johnson. The 78’s flip side, the brilliant “West Coast Blues,” was a ragged dance tune injected with spoken asides such as “Whoop that thing” and “I’m gonna satisfy you if I can” [to legally download this and other Blake tracks, visit www.archive.org].

Blake’s releases no doubt astonished and influenced other blues guitarists, such as William Moore, who patterned his Paramount 78 of “Old Country Rock” on “West Coast Blues.” Blind Gary Davis likewise studied Blake’s 78s. “The guitar was being played like a piano in almost all the areas of America except the Delta,” explains Stefan Grossman, “meaning that the left hand was literally doing that boom-chick, boom-chick pattern. Blake was able to use his right-hand thumb to syncopate it more, like a Charleston. He was very, very rhythmic and incredibly fast – I don’t know anyone who can get to that speed. That’s Blake’s real claim to fame, because his chord progressions are nothing fancy. But the thumb work is fantastic, and what he’s doing with his right hand set him apart from everyone. Rev. Gary Davis said Blake had a ‘sportin’ right hand.’ Davis took that and got into even more complicated modes.”

“I suspect Blind Blake was a three-finger picker,” offers Jorma Kaukonen, “and I have a sneaking suspicion he wore picks, because he had such a snappy, percussive sound and he’s not popping the strings the way bare-finger players do. His favorite keys were C, G, and E, although I’m pretty sure he could play in any of them if he wanted to.”

At his next session, October 1926, Blake balanced down-and-out blues songs with the good-time hokum of “Too Tight” and “Come On Boys Let’s Do That Messin’ Around,” which has an early example of a scat solo. He flexed his guitar prowess on his next 78, “Skeedle Loo Doo Blues” and the double-time sections of “Stonewall Street Blues.” Paramount summoned Blake and pianist Jimmy Blythe to Leola Wilson’s November session, which produced a pair of fine 78s. Less than six months after his entry into the record biz, Blake was playing behind the great Ma Rainey on “Morning Hour Blues,” “Little Low Mama Blues,” and “Grievin’ Hearted Blues.”

Early the next year Paramount featured kazoo – possibly played by Blake himself – on “Buck-Town Blues” and brought in a bones percussionist for “Dry Bone Shuffle” and “That’ll Never Happen No More." Blind Blake cut another seven songs during October ’27. The smoothly syncopated “Hey Hey Daddy Blues,” the hip horn imitations of “Sea Board Stomp,” and the tour de force “Southern Rag” suggest that he woodshedded on guitar during his half-year recording hiatus. “I’m goin’ to give you some music they call the Geechie music now,” Blake announced at the beginning of “Southern Rag,” which he laced with images of planting rice, sugar cane, cotton, and peas. Some authors suggest that Blake slips into the Geechie and Gullah accents of Georgia’s South Sea Islands during the track, but Wardlow disagrees: “I don’t think he intentionally goes into the Geechie accent, but he was down from around that part of the country – South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.”

In November '27, Gus Cannon joined in on banjo for the minstrel tune “He’s In the Jailhouse Now.” During the 1950s Sam Charters asked Cannon for his memories of Blake. According to the book Sweet as the Showers of Rain, Cannon responded: “We drank so much whiskey! I’m telling you we drank more whiskey than a shop! And that boy would take me out with him at night and get me so turned around I’d be lost if I left his side. He could see more with his blind eyes than I with my two good ones.” Mayo Williams also reported that Blake would get drunk and fight.

During the spring of 1928 Blind Blake cut his most ambitious records. Jimmy Bertrand manned xylophone for “Doggin’ Me Mama Blues” and warbled slide whistle on “C.C. Pill Blues,” while the great Johnny Dodds soloed on clarinet. “Oh, that record!” enthuses Ry Cooder. “That’s it, see. That’s the whole thing right there. That’s all you need to hear. And then you know: There’s a whole world we’ve all missed and will never know.” (The “C.C.” stood for “compound cathartic.”)

Dodds and Bertrand provided more crazy horn and percussion accompaniment on Blake’s raggy “Hot Potatoes” and the swinging “South Bound Rag.” Bertrand, Dodds, and Blake were also teamed on “Elzadie’s Policy Blues”/”Pay Day Daddy Blues” with Elzadie Robinson, a cabaret singer and former chorus girl from Logansport, Louisiana. Blake was soon back in the studio with blues moaner Bertha Henderson and gospel crooner Daniel Brown. Bertha’s “Let Your Love Come Down” featured Blake playing stride piano with rocking solos. Working solo, Blake simultaneously played guitar and harmonica on “Panther Squall Blues.”

Although Blind Blake may have been earning up to $50 per Paramount side, Little Brother Montgomery claimed that the guitarist’s regular source of income during the late 1920s came from playing South Side Chicago house rent parties. With its piano in the living room, Blake’s apartment at 31st and Cottage Grove became a gathering place where Montgomery, Charlie Spand, Roosevelt Sykes, Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy, and other musicians could drink moonshine and jam blues. But not everyone could keep up. “I met Blind Blake in Chicago,” Ishman Bracey told Gayle Dean Wardlow, “but I couldn’t second him. He was too fast for me. Blind Blake, Tampa Red, Lonnie Johnson, and Scrapper Blackwell – all of them guitar players was buckin’ one another. Blind Blake was too fast.”

Blake’s 1928 releases “Ramblin’ Mama Blues,” “Back Door Slam Blues,” “Cold Hearted Mama Blues,” and “Low Down Loving Gal” suggest he had bitter feelings toward women. His anger took a scarier turn on “Notoriety Woman Blues,” during which he sang, “To keep her quiet I knocked her teeth out her mouth.” By contrast, Blake’s final recording that year, “Sweet Papa Low Down,” was a bouncy Charleston with piano, cornet, xylophone, and Blake’s happy jiving.

The bluesman journeyed to Richmond, Indiana, in June 1929 for a series of sides with Alex Robinson on piano. “Slippery Rag” rocked the house with driving chords and mind-boggling solos. “Fightin’ the Jug” reinforced his reputation for being a heavy drinker:

“When I die, folks, without a doubt,
When I die, folks, without a doubt,
You won’t have to do nothin’ but pour me out”
Blind Blake was at the height of his powers on August 17, 1929, at what was to be his last great session. During the course of that Saturday, he recorded several of his most enduring songs. While some of these songs were played in the bluesier keys of D and E, Blake relied on his favorite ragtime tuning, C, for “Georgia Bound.” Blake blasted toe-to-toe with Charlie Spand, Detroit’s premier piano boogieman, on “Hastings St. (Hastings St. Boogy),” named after a street in the city’s old black section. I played this track for John Lee Hooker, who’d never heard it before, and he reacted by calling it “the real blues.” John speculated that Blake must have lived in Detroit at some point, since Blake mentions a specific address, 169 Brady, during the song and then says, “Must be somethin’ there very marvelous, mm, mm, mm. I believe it’s somethin’ that’ll make you feel oh boy and how!” “Yeah, Brady was right off of Gratiot,” Hooker said. “Detroit was jumpin’ then, and Hastings Street was the best street in town. Everything you wanted was right there. Everything you didn’t want was right there. It ain’t no more now. It’s a freeway now, called Chrysler Freeway. But that was a good street, a street known all over the world.”

Blake’s next selection, “Diddie Wa Diddie,” is classic ragtime blues, each break a minor masterpiece. Blake masterfully heightened the song’s rhythmic intensity by rushing to the root of a new chord an eighth-note before the next downbeat. With its beautiful lines, harmonic chimes, and bluesy bends, “Police Dog Blues” likewise showcases his consummate guitarmanship. Kaukonen and Cooder have both recorded inspired covers of this song. Blake also recorded “Chump Man Blues” at the session. “Blind Blake was basically a ragtime guitar player,” notes Stefan Grossman, “but then he had things like ‘Chump Man Blues,’ which is a blues in D. It’s not as exciting as his playing in C or G, but it has an almost Bahaman, Joseph Spence sound.”

Blind Blake made a few more sides in Chicago later that summer – a 78 featuring Tiny Parham or Aletha Dickerson on piano, the agile instrumentals “Guitar Chimes” and “Blind Arthur’s Breakdown.” “Papa Charlie and Blind Blake Talk About It,” the first Blake 78 recorded at Paramount’s new studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, joined two musical giants in a stuttering shuck-and-jive routine. With its exaggerated vocals and Jackson’s utilitarian banjo strums overwhelming the arrangement, the song wasn’t far removed from blackface minstrelsy.

Blake was in fabulous form backing Irene Scruggs (billed as Chocolate Brown) during his next Grafton trip. Her “Itching Heel” no doubt struck a resonant chord among many women attached to bluesmen: “He don’t do nothing but play on his old guitar / While I’m busting suds out in the white folks’ yard.” Blake, in turn, responded to her verbal jabs with sped-up guitar parts.

Beginning with his May 1930 solo sides, the sheen was mostly gone from Blind Blake’s playing and singing. “When he started to drink too much – you can hear it towards the end – it just doesn’t work anymore,” observes Cooder. “He’s physically past it, because you’ve got to be sharp to sound that good.” He rekindled the old fire in “Righteous Blues” that December, and made his final appearance as a sideman in May ’31 behind Laura Rucker. Blake cut three 78s under his own name that year, but no copies of “Dissatisfied Blues”/”Miss Emma Liza (Sweetness)” are known to have survived. “Night and Day Blues”/”Sun to Sun” are among his most lackluster performances, while the more intriguing two-part “Rope Stretchin’ Blues” tells the woeful tale of a man who catches a stranger in his house, busts his head with a club, and winds up hanging for it.

The final Blind Blake release, the old Victorian music hall standard “Champagne Charlie Is My Name” backed by “Depression’s Gone From Me Blues,” which recycles the “Sitting On Top of the World” melody, was recorded in Grafton during June 1932. But is it Blake? “Even though it says Blind Blake on the label on both sides,” says Gayle Dean Wardlow, “it seems like that last record’s a split side – one side is him, and one side is not him. ‘Depression’s Gone From Me Blues’ – that’s Blake. I think ‘Champagne Charlie’ is by someone else – it doesn’t sound like Blake to me.” Grossman concurs: “That 78 doesn’t have his taste, his feel. Who knows? It might have been somebody else, even a different Blind Blake.”

The bluesman’s final fate is uncertain. “Blind Blake – now, that’s another one that’s a mystery,” reported Georgia Tom Dorsey during the 1960s. “How he got out of the show [business], I don’t know. But he was a good worker and a nice fellow to get along with, as far as I’m concerned.” After Paramount folded in 1932, Blake never recorded again. “I figure he went back to Jacksonville when his recording contract was over,” says Wardlow. “No one’s ever found out what happened to him. Gary Davis said that Blake was hit by a streetcar, and that’s the only rumor of his death that I know of. Maybe he got robbed and killed, because he was blind.”

For a while, though, Blind Blake’s records sold almost as well as Blind Lemon Jefferson’s, and he had a tremendous impact, especially in the Southeast. Personally, I’d like to believe Blind Blake lived the lines he sang in “Poker Woman Blues”:

“Sometime I’m rich, sometime I ain’t got a cent,
Sometime I’m rich, sometime I ain’t got a cent,
But I’ve had a good time everywhere I went”

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Thanks to Jorma Kaukonen, Ry Cooder, Stefan Grossman, Gayle Dean Wardlow, and the late John Lee Hooker for agreeing to be interviewed for this article.

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John Lee Hooker’s Spiritual Side: a Q/A

Asked to name my favorite among all the musicians I’ve interviewed, the first person who comes to mind is John Lee Hooker. John could not read or write, and could barely scrawl his own name, but he was highly intelligent, profoundly insightful, and musically true to himself.

I first saw John Lee Hooker in 1966, playing a solo set at the Detroit-based Jesuit high school I’d just begun attending. That night he did most of the set from a fabulous album he’d just made with Muddy Waters’ band, Live at Café Au-Go-Go, playing an electric guitar and keeping time with his feet. What a way to inaugurate my lifelong love for the blues!

Moving from Detroit to California in 1978, I was blessed to interview John several times during the next two decades. We did two solo cover stories for Guitar Player magazine, as well as joint GP covers featuring John in conversation with B.B. King and Buddy Guy. We listened to old blues records together for a Blues Revue cover story, and did our most in-depth interviews for his 1997 Living Blues cover story. But perhaps my most memorable interview with John was our final one together, in October 1998, for Mojo magazine. It took place in John’s home in Redwood City, California. That day, John pulled out stories that even his longtime manager and friend, Mike Kappus, hadn’t heard before. I'd like to share them as my first blog. (Out of respect for John, I am keeping his language exactly as spoken.)


* * * *


You’ve advised many musicians – especially guitarists – to slow down and play half as many notes. But what’s the best playing advice someone's given to you?

Well, the best advice given to me was from my stepfather, Will Moore, and T-Bone Walker. Both of 'em told me, "Once you start, don't stop. If you really want to do it, don't let people dis-encourage you. Don't let people tell you that you ain't gonna make it. If you're determined to do it, just keep on pluckin'." I found that really paid off for me. Sometimes things don't go like you want to, and you get kind of disgusted and say, "Oh, I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna hang it up." But don't do it. Keep on pluckin'. If you really want it, you'll have it. I found that was the best advice. A lot of time when you're tryin' to start off, people dis-encourage you. "Oh, you ain't gonna do it. Waste of time." That's what happened to me – people tell me I wasn't going to make it. But I'd look at 'em and laugh, because I know what my stepfather and T-Bone told me: Keep on pluckin', you know. And that's what I did.


You've raised several children. What's the most important thing for a father to teach his kids?

That's a good question! Teach your children to be obedient, to love and be with other people. And keep your mind occupied on something that's not trouble. Keep busy and do the right thing. Learn how to get along with people. That's what I teach 'em, and so far it paid off. I tell them not to get out in the street and get with the gang and run around. There are plenty of good places they can go. They can study their music or stay in school or go out with people that are quality and want to live a good life. Stay home. That's what I tell them. And stay away from drugs! Drugs are runnin' this world now. They run kids and grown-ups too. I teach them to keep their minds occupied on the good things in life. My mind is occupied on music and women, my mind is.


For many years now, you've been renowned for being a ladies man. What's your secret?

I'm nice to 'em. Respect them. And good women, they respects that – they watch that, they notice that. I'm not the kind that runs around with anything with a skirt on. Yes, I am kind of a ladies' man, and there's really nothing wrong with it. I don't think so. I would be a one-woman man if I had one that was really true, but right now I'm not a married man. When I was a married man, I was a one-woman man.


You always keep a guitar here at home. What do you play when you're all alone by yourself?

Just messin' around with the blues, just whatever come to me. Try to find different ideas and stuff like that. Nothin' special. Sometimes at home I sit down and play my old songs – the old ones are really the best songs.


Do you believe in God?

Yeah! See, God's looking down watching you. You can't see God Jehovah, but he sees you. He knows every move you make and what you do – I believe that! He the one that created you, created woman. I believe that, and can't nobody tell me different. I'm not an angel, but I live a good life. But I'm not perfect – there's only one man perfect, and that's God. He's perfect.


What's the difference between singing the blues and saying your prayers?

Well, not much. When you sing the blues, you're sincere from your heart. It's a gift that the higher power gave you. The higher power is God, if you believe in God. Some folks don't believe in the higher power of God, but I do. I think it is a gift from God Jehovah that enables you to do that. He created you and gave you the talent. Everybody can't sing – they can sing, but they don't have my talent.

That's a good, good question you asked. When you're sayin' your prayers, you're praying to God to forgive you and to help other people. You pray for other people, to be obedient, to be loyal to people and forgive them. There's bad people, and you pray that they will be a better person. You pray that yourself will be a better person. And when you sing, you hope people catch on to your singin' and it will soothe their mind if they got a worried mind or something is really botherin' them. The singin' will pick them up. There's a song called "The Healer." That was meant to heal people's soul and mind. You don't find many people like John Lee Hooker – I don't think you do – and I sing for the people, to bless the people, to heal their mind. There are people I wouldn't associate with, but I don't hate 'em. I really don't. I pray for them to get over that thing.


You've loved and lost a lot of people in your life – your mother and father, fellow musicians, friends. Who do you miss the most?

I lost a lot of people – I lost my whole family. That's a hard question. I'd have to say my mother and father. I knowed them well, and I knew they wasn't gonna live forever. I know they long gone by now, but I still think about 'em. I don't worry about it now that people have come and gone. I miss 'em, but life must go on and life must end. I don't let it get me down. I don't let it stop my life, because life must go on. No matter how much I love you, you are not going to live always.


What do you think happens when your time is up? Does your spirit go somewhere?

Yeah. Where, I don't know. But that's what the Bible says. I study the Bible. We have Bible study all the time. We go to church, Jehovah Witnesses. We have Bible study in our home, to pray and bless people and ourselves and talk to God Jehovah. We have the Bible. I'm not good on readin', but people read the Bible to me and it soaks in. I'm not braggin' on myself, but I know I'm a good person – a very good person. I care for people. Sometime people get greedy over money and different things, but I don't.


Do you think you'll see your mom again?

That's what I'm hoping. I'm hoping to see her in some beautiful place – and my father. That's a dream and a hope. Nobody never found that out yet, but where you go, I hope that's true. We pray and study the Bible and hope that we come back again as a person. If you pray to God Jehovah, you will relive. This earth is made for paradise. See, God made this planet, and it will never be destroyed. But the filth and the trash and the sin will be destroyed. But not the earth, not the ground, but the bad people and the filth and the evil will be cleaned up. It will become a new world, and new generations will live on with no sadness, no grief. It will be a beautiful place for people.


You're pushing eighty now, and people talk about the "golden years." But are the golden years so golden?

I don't feel any differently. I feel real active. I feel real blessed to be here, to enjoy the younger generation and the older generation, all of it. I'm here for a purpose, I know. For God hasn't taken me away, so I believe that. And I get out here and go about my way. Oh, I have my aches and pains. I know I'm not gonna live forever. I don't think so, being that Armageddon will come. That's the end. You may be here when Armageddon come. You may live through it. Who knows? But that's when the earth be cleaned up, and then only the righteous will survive, through the God Jehovah. They the only ones will survive. If you're a Christian and believe in the God Jehovah, I believe you can live through that. But people against each other and fighting over wealth and doing evil – that's a sin, and I think they'll be destroyed away. That's a sin. I believe in that. But where and when, we don't know. But right now we're living in a world of doubt; it's full of good and it's full of evil. People are evil over money, love, sex, everything.

This is the truth, from my heart: I really don't believe in chasing money. I have enough to survive and live, but I don't go crazy over money. I have just enough to survive like I am now. I'm set. And I don't look to be a double-millionaire or billionaire. I am very generous with money. I'll give you a lot with no regret. I ain't looking for that back, because I give from my heart and soul. I'm not greedy over money. I don't take what don't belong to me. I just live an easy, peaceful life and love people. That's what I want.


You've recently worked on a book about your life. As you were reliving your life, did you think of things you wished you'd done differently?

Yes! But you can't. If I could change things, one thing I would change is for the good. The things I did in my young life – 18, 19, 20 – I wouldn't do. If I could change that, I would. I'm not sayin' I was an angel in my younger days, but I wasn't bad. But I was just wild and would do things that was kind of dangerous then. I wouldn't do that any more. I used to be a wild person – I'd drink and party, whole lot of women. I don't do that anymore. If I had to live it over again, I would reach back and get one lovely woman in my life and stick with her. But back then I didn't do that. I just got a bunch of 'em, screwin' around. I wouldn't do that now. If I had a good wife, a good woman, I'd be like an angel to her – just that one, one woman. I really would, if I could relive that. But I can't find her now.


This is the 50th anniversary of your recording "Boogie Chillen." Did you ever imagine your music would carry you for so long and so far?

I really didn't! I didn't thought I would get this far. I rarely talk about it or brag about it, but I never know I'd be one of the biggest blues singers in the world. The music carried me so far, everything I touch would turn to gold. I never figured that. But back longer than 60 years ago, when I was in Mississippi, I run into this woman at a circus. I was about 10, 12 years old. I'm at this circus, and out of all the young people, the kids, she come straight to me. I never will forget. I was singin' around a little bit then, but there was nothin' to it – just hummin' around in the church and whenever I could. She walk up to me and said, "Young man, one day you will be a great musician – you will be real famous and a very rich man." I looked at her, and I kind of laughed. Then she said, "I read people. I'm a fortune teller." That's what she said. She also said, "You ain't got no money," and I didn't! I didn't have a dime, so I said, "No." Then she said, "You gonna be very famous, young man," and I said, "Yes, sure." Then she walked away, and I never seen her since.

I didn't pay much attention then, but then it dawned on me for years and years and years, and it done happened. I did become famous and a very loving person and very successful with money. This woman looked to me like a living angel – and she could have been an angel, because out of all those people, she came straight to me. I know this woman been long gone, because she was kind of an old lady then. But I still think about it a lot, because it's true what she told me. That's why I believe in certain things – people can read your life's story.

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