Буги-чиллин: История первой электрической блюзовой песни Джона Ли Хукера

Single by John Lee Hooker

"Boogie Chillen'" or "Boogie Chillun" is a blues song first recorded by John Lee Hooker in 1948. It is a solo performance featuring Hooker's vocal, electric guitar, and rhythmic foot stomps. The lyrics are partly autobiographical and alternate between spoken and sung verses. The song was his debut record release and in 1949, it became the first "down home" electric blues song to reach number one in the R&B records chart. Hooker's song was part of a trend in the late 1940s to a new style of urban electric blues based on earlier Delta blues idioms. Although it is called a boogie, it resembles early North Mississippi Hill country blues rather than the boogie woogie piano derived style of the 1930s and 1940s. Hooker gave credit to his stepfather, Will Moore, who taught him the rhythm of "Boogie Chillen'" ("chillen'" is a phonetic approximation of Hooker's pronunciation of "children") when he was a teenager. Some of the song's lyrics are derived from earlier blues songs. Hooker's guitar work on the song inspired several well known guitarists to take up the instrument. With its driving style and focus on rhythm, it is also considered a forerunner of rock and roll. Music critic Cub Koda calls the guitar figure from "Boogie Chillen'" "the riff that launched a million songs". Several rock musicians have patterned successful songs either directly or indirectly on Hooker's many versions of "Boogie Chillen'". These include songs by boogie rock band Canned Heat, who also recorded a well received version with Hooker. One of ZZ Top's best known hits, "La Grange", allegedly uses elements of the song, which led to legal action by the song's publisher and resulted in changes to American copyright law.

"Boogie Chillen'" is described by music critic Bill Dahl as "blues as primitive as anything then on the market; Hooker's dark, ruminative vocals were backed only by his own ringing, heavily amplified guitar and insistently pounding foot". In an interview, Hooker shared how he came up with "Boogie Chillen'":

He performed the song in clubs before recording it and called it "Boogie Woogie" before settling on "Boogie Chillen'". According to musicologist Robert Palmer, "The closest thing to it on records is 'Cottonfield Blues', recorded by Garfield Akers and Joe Callicott, two guitarists from the hill country of northern Mississippi, in 1929. Essentially, it was a backcountry, pre blues sort of music—a droning, open ended stomp without a fixed verse form that lent itself to building up to a cumulative, trancelike effect". Hooker's vocal alternates between sung and spoken sections. Commenting on Hooker's vocal sections, music historian Ted Gioia notes, "The song has almost no melody. Even less harmony. In fact, it is hard to call it a song. It's more like a bit of jive stream of consciousness in 4/4 time." Some of the lyrics are borrowed from earlier songs that date back to the beginning of the blues. The opening line "My mama she didn't allow me to stay out all night long" has origins in "Mama Don't Allow", an old dance song. Several songs were recorded in the 1920s with similar titles. "Boogie No. 3" by boogie woogie pianist Cow Cow Davenport has sung and spoken sections and includes the lines, "I don't care what Grandma don't allow, play my music anyhow, Grandma's don't 'llow no music playin' in here". Hooker's first and second takes of the song include similar verses and the narrative about Henry's Swing Club, but do not include the crucial mid song hook "Boogie, chillen'!" before the guitar break, which gives the song its lyrical identity. A key feature of the song is the driving guitar rhythmic figure centered on one chord, with "accents that fell fractionally ahead of the beat". Music journalist Charles Shaar Murray describes it as a "rocking dance piece  its structure is utterly free form, its basic beat is the jumping, polyrhythmic groove which he [Hooker] learned in the Delta". In an interview with B. B. King, Hooker confirmed that he used an open G guitar tuning technique for his guitar, although he usually used a capo, raising the pitch to B (1948), A (1959), or A (1970). He also employed hammer on and pull off techniques, which are described as "a slurred ascending bass line played on the fifth string [tonic]" by music writer Lenny Carlson. Although it is titled a "boogie", it does not resemble the earlier boogie woogie style. Boogie woogie is based on a left hand piano ostinato or walking bass line and, as performed on guitar, forms the popular 1940s instrumental "Guitar Boogie". Rather than being derivative, Hooker's boogie becomes "as overwhelmingly personal a piece as anything ever done in the blues".

Besides its commercial success, "Boogie Chillen'" had a big impact on blues and R&B musicians. B. B. King, who was a disc jockey at Memphis, Tennessee, radio station WDIA at the time, regularly featured Hooker's song. He recalled:

Murray likens the song to "the R&B equivalent of punk rock" or superficially simple enough not to intimidate beginners. It interested the young Bo Diddley: "I think the first record I paid attention to was John Lee Hooker's 'Boogie Chillen,'  When I found John Lee Hooker on the radio, I said, 'If that guy can play, I know I can.' I mean John Lee's got a hell of a style". In an interview, Buddy Guy described learning to play "Boogie Chillen'" at age thirteen: "that was the first thing I thought I learned how to play that I knew sounded right when someone would listen." Guy later recorded a version with Junior Wells for their 1981 album Alone & Acoustic. Albert Collins also recalled that it was the first song he learned to play. The success of "Boogie Chillen'" brought numerous offers for John Lee Hooker to record for other record companies. Because he received little remuneration from the sales of his record, Hooker readily accepted the opportunities to generate income. This led to his recording using a variety of pseudonyms, including Texas Slim, Little Pork Chops, Delta John, Birmingham Sam, the Boogie Man, Johnny Williams, John Lee Booker, John Lee Cooker, and others for such labels as King, Danceland, Regent, Savoy, Acorn, Prize, Staff, Gotham, Gone, Chess, and Swing Time.

The demand for "Boogie Chillen'" remained high enough for Hooker to re record the song several times. In 1950, he recorded a faster version with different lyrics as "Boogie Chillen' #2" for Bernie Besman's Sensation label (also issued by Regal). Modern Records released an edited version in 1952 titled "New Boogie Chillun". After Hooker began his association with Vee Jay Records, he recorded "Boogie Chillun" in 1959, which closely follows the original single. Because of the similarity, the 1959 version is sometimes misidentified as the 1948 version and vice versa (at 2:36, the Vee Jay version is about a half a minute shorter than the original). The first two takes from the September 1948 Detroit recording session began appearing on various compilation albums in the 1970s, sometimes with the titles "John Lee's Original Boogie" and "Henry's Swing Club". Meanwhile, Modern and its associated labels including Kent and Crown reissued the song several times. From the 1960s onwards, Hooker recorded several studio and live renditions of "Boogie Chillen'", with guest musicians such as Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones. In 1970, he recorded an updated version of the song, titled "Boogie Chillen' No. 2", with the blues rock group Canned Heat for their joint album, Hooker 'n Heat. Blues historian Gerard Herzhaft describes the performance as a "memorable one". It combines Hooker's vocal and Canned Heat's signature boogie rock backing, as heard in the group's jam song "Fried Hockey Boogie" (itself an adaptation of "Boogie Chillen'"). In 1999, it received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award and is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame list of the "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll". "Boogie Chillen'" was added to the U. S. National Recording Registry in 2008, which noted that "the driving rhythm and confessional lyrics have guaranteed its place as an influential and enduring blues classic". Authors Jim Dawson and Steve Propes included it in their 1992 book What Was the First Rock 'n' Roll Record?, identifying it among the precursors of rock and roll. "Boogie Chillen'" has inspired several songs, beginning in 1953, when Junior Parker recorded his interpretation titled "Feelin' Good". It became Parker's first hit for Sun Records and was subsequently recorded by James Cotton in 1967 and by Magic Sam as "I Feel So Good (I Wanna Boogie)" for his influential 1967 album West Side Soul. Other songs that borrow from "Boogie Chillen'" or "Boogie Chillen' No. 2", either directly or indirectly, include the radio hits "On the Road Again" by Canned Heat in 1968, "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum in 1970, and "La Grange" by ZZ Top in 1973, "Shake your Hips" by The Rolling Stones in 1972.

In 1991, Bernie Besman, as the song's publisher, La Cienega Music, brought legal action against ZZ Top for copyright infringement for their song "La Grange". Writer Timothy English notes that of the various Hooker recordings of "Boogie Chillen'", the one released in 1971 with Canned Heat "has the most elements in common with 'La Grange', including the guitar pattern and the 'howl, howl, howl' vocal line". The case wound its way through the American legal system (including an appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court). When the ruling did not favor the publisher, the U. S. Congress was persuaded to amend the Copyright Act in 1998 to protect many songs recorded before 1978 from entering the public domain. ZZ Top settled out of court in 1997, but Hooker again gained no financial reward from his song—Besman had obtained Hooker's rights to the song years earlier. However, Gioia noted, "Nonetheless, his [John Lee Hooker's 1948] spontaneous performance in a recording studio had led to a substantial change in U. S. intellectual property law".