John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1917 – June 21, 2001) was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie.
Some of his best known songs include "Boogie Chillen'" (1948), "Crawling King Snake" (1949), "Dimples" (1956), "Boom Boom" (1962), and "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" (1966). Several of his later albums, including The Healer (1989), Mr. Lucky (1991), Chill Out (1995), and Don't Look Back (1997), were album chart successes in the U.S. and U.K. The Healer (for the song "I'm In The Mood") and Chill Out (for the album) both earned him Grammy wins as well as Don't Look Back, which went on to earn him a double-Grammy win for Best Traditional Blues Recording and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals (with Van Morrison).
John Lee Hooker didn't seem to be one of Peel's favourites during the blues boom of the late 1960s, even if he did collaborate with Canned Heat on one LP and the backing band he used on his UK tours became Peel session artists and Sounds Of The Seventies favourites the Groundhogs. But in later decades, the DJ often featured Hooker's music on his shows, mostly from reissue albums of the singer's early work rather than the best-selling new LPs mentioned above. In 1992, Peel played Hooker’s 1960 single, No Shoes, which he was enjoying as part of a 6-CD Hooker retrospective from Charly R&B called The Vee-Jay Years 1955-1964, which Peel (like many blues critics) regarded as the singer's best period. Before playing No Shoes on his 29 May 1992 show he said:
"You can fill stadiums with all the equipment you can get and all of the dancing folk and backing singers and whatever you like, and you’re still not going to get anything that sounds as good as this."
In 1999, he nominated No Shoes as one of his Peelenium tracks for 1960 on his show.
