Oregon daily emerald., May 10, 1985, THE Friday EDITION, Image 9

THE
ads
Eagle Park Slim, 43, and John Lee Hooker, 68, represent a two
generation blues odyssey that started in the fields of the South,
transplanted to urban areas like St. Louis and Detroit in the 1940s, and
was finally smuggled to the West Coast.
Eagle Park’s trip began in 1942 after his parents stopped cotton
picking in Arkansas to start a tavern in Eagle Park, Illinois, just over the
bridge from St. Louis. Every weekend The Village Tavern was a magnet
for area blues enthusiasts and sometimes the blues legends. People like
Albert King, Little Milton and Sonny Boy Williamson would at one time
The continuing saga of
John Lee Hooker
and
Eagle Park Slim
ii
You ha ve to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues ’ ’
- Ringo Starr. 1971.
DDD
JL jLre you ready? I said are you ready for The Man, ladies and
gentlemen. Are you ready for the Godfather of the Blues? Please welcome
John Lee Hooker!” The portly bar announcer makes way for the gray-suited
black man riding the crest of a good vibe wave caused by the genuine admira
tion and plentiful beer inside Mother’s Mattress Company, a Corvallis club.
Hooker’s welcome is reminiscent of the cheers accompanying the return of a
long gone prize-fighting champion.
Forty miles south and a few hours earlier at Zoo Zoo’s health food
restaurant in Eugene, a 220-pound bluesman with the unlikely sobriquet of
Eagle Park Slim, parks himself and his acoustic in a wooden chair.
Underneath a purple Gay Pride banner, he strums and sings an old traditional
called “Easy Rider,” as his washboard bassist plunks out the beat. The five
customers chomp down their tempeh and omelets fairly oblivious to the
background music. It might as well be Muzak to them.
Story by
Paul Sturtz
Photos by
Hank Trotter
or another make their way to the tavern.
One night in 1958, two years after Slim started learning guitar from
bands stopping through, his idol, Chuck Berry found his way over the
bridge. “He had just recorded a tune called ‘Sweet Little 16,’ one of his
first hits,” Eagle Park remembers. “He came rolling out to my mama’s
place in a big Cadillac. My dad started hollering ‘Chuck Berry’s here,
Chuck Berry’s here!’ And so he came in and played a tune and I got a
chance to jam with him.”
That same year, Slim had his first experience with the big, bad, evil
music business. His first band made a rhythm & blues record entitled,
“Shirley, Can’t You See” and were told by their manager that they would
have to play a number of promotional dates without pay. After they en
thusiastically played the shopp
ing centers and bars, the
manager pocketed the money.
“I was a kid. The man
screwed us around, one of those
type stories,” Slim says.
Now you know how some
people get the blues.
In 1948, 10 years before
Slim had his first whiff of music
business deception, John Lee
Hooker had already tasted star
dom as his eccentric brand of
blues first hit with “Boogie
Chillen,” a record that still
ranks as his favorite.
Unlike B.B. King and Mud
dy Waters, other legendary
bluesmen of the time, who made
the classic sojourn northward to
Chicago, Hooker decided to go
to Detroit and work at the Ford
Factory. “I never did want to go to Chicago. I left home at 14 and 1 wounded
up in Memphis, Cincinnati and then Detroit. I wanted to live in Detroit so I’d
have a big field all by myself.”
My phone interview with the Hook talking from his home in San Carlos,
California began inauspiciously enough. “I was wondering if you had a few
minutes to talk about you and your music,” I began. He shot back, “As long
as it doesn’t take long.”
Informed from a conversation with a Hooker acquaintance. I thought I
would try my pre-planned icebreaker: “I hear you like to talk about baseball,
women and music.” I got a cold response, a pungent “Huh?”
Trying to regroup, I could think of nothing other than to repeat the ques
tion. This time Hooker said with his characteristic growl, "Well I love
baseball and I love women. If you’re a man, you got to like women.”
As for music. Hooker says, “It picks you up. It means everything to me
and that’s my life.”
Having dispensed with the topics at hand, I decided to go see Hooker up
in Corvallis. Despite his age, he is still able to tour four to six months a year
— the Corvallis gig was one stop on a six-city tour up to Vancouver, British
Columbia. He is still able to the some of the energy that inspired white blues
and R&B groups like Canned Heat, ZZ Top, and the Animals (who revamped
his 1962 hit “Boom Boom”) in days gone by.
All Hooker has to do is growl a few choice lines and throw in a few
choice guitar licks on his red guitar, and the effect is completely satisfying.
"Lets’s get down in the mud now,” or “Let’s do the boogie,” were all that
was needed to send the crowd into paroxysms of raucous cheers.
His crack backup band, the Coast-to-Coast Blues Band, provided the up
to-date effects needed to make the boogie sound vital in 1985.
“It’s a complete turnaround. It’s an entirely different world.” Hooker
says. “You have to change with the times. As the times change and the music
change, I try to change with it. I got the same beat but 1 build a young group
around it.”
Though it’s probable that Hooker tours partly for the money, he says he's
set for life. “I live off royalties from other singers doing my songs.” After
Hooker has announced near the end of the show that he’ll give an autograph to
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