Though he may be a diminutive man, John Lee Hooker casts an enormous shadow over the face of American popular music. Consider: over the course of three albums, The Best of Friends, Mr. Lucky, and The Healer, the cast of musical luminaries who lined up to play with and pay tribute to the Hook included Keith Richards, Robert Cray, Van Morrison, Carlos Santana, Johnnie Johnson, John Hammond, and Ry Cooder, and that's just a partial list. And when it comes to artists who have been influenced by Hooker, this website just isn't big enough to list them all. Though the Hook was born in the Mississippi Delta, and his music is fired by the primal, gutbucket style associated with that region, his recording career didn't begin in earnest until he moved to Detroit in the 1940's. The single "Boogie Chillun," first released on the motor city's Modern label, is one of the great touchstones in the history of the music -- one of the first blues sides to combine the feel of rural and "city" blues into graceful package. Once he got going, Hooker proved to be endlessly prolific, recording for a wide variety of labels under a number of names, including Texas Slim, Delta John, and the Booker Man. By the 1971, the rock world finally caught up with him, and Hooker cut a record with Canned Heat, Hooker 'n Heat, a classic blues/rock synthesis - he hasn't slowed down since. His canon of classics -- "Dimples," "I'm In the Mood," "Tupelo," "Boom Boom," and "Crawlin' King Snake," to name but a few -- is just about endless, and his staying power is legendary. Make no mistake -- as he enters his eighth decade on the planet, John Lee Hooker has no need for Viagra. Mr. Hooker, let me say right off the bat that it's a great honor to be able to speak with you. It's not every day that I get to talk to a living legend. Yeah. Most of 'em gone. But you're still making records, still spending plenty of time on the road, and a whole new generation of kids are responding to your work… The new boogie chillen is boogiein' all together. All down the line. It's all good. Boogie with the Hook. Cause he rocks. I heard that you had a fire recently. My big house that I built down in Los Altos, it burned, and they're still workin' on it now, tryin' to get it back. There was an accident. One of the people that live there, their room caught on fire. So they're getting it back together. It'll be better than it was before. But just the idea of it happening, you know… There seems to be a lot of ugliness going on in the world right now. A season of tragedy. Everywhere you look, there's tragedy, tragedy. Could be Armageddon. You know what Armageddon is? That means the world comes to an end. (Laughs.) Oh lord. The mojo's happenin'. Every time you turn on the TV, it's there. Now, I could be wrong, I could be right, but the Bible speaks about a lot of that. I'm not a big believer in the world coming to an end, but some of that stuff; the Bible speaks about it. Just look through and you'll find a lot about all these great happenings and destruction and disasters. But I'm not sure it's true. I always thought that the best parts of the Bible are in everyone, that you don't need to read it to know them. Right. It's all inside you. Your book is inside of you. Your book is right in there. The Hook is the book! 1 | 2 | 3