By John Orr

First published in September, 1990

Before there were raised fists at the Olympics, peaceful sit-ins and the phrase 'Keep the faith,' there was John Lee Hooker and the song 'Boogie Chillun.'

This was the America of 1949. The world was still recovering from the global war, in which black American soldiers, as Studs Terkel reported in 'The Good War, " had less freedom of movement on American Army bases than did German war prisoners. Rosa Parks had yet to sit at the front of the bus, Medger Evers was still a child, and the blues was something white people only heard on 'colored' radio stations, in 'dark town' clubs, or filtered through such brilliant composers as Count Basie, Duke Ellington and George Gershwin..

But when 'Boogie Chillun' hit the airwaves, its deceptively simple, deeply poetic lyrics, wound around a one- chord boogie, became an anthem for many American blacks, who never forgot the first time they heard it.

''I was 5 years old, working on the strawberry fields,' New Orleans rhythm and blues singer Irma Thomas said in an interview this summer. 'There I was, in my big old boots, boogeying when I should have been pickin'.'

Albert Collins is one of the greatest electric guitarists the blues has produced, whose licks have been picked up by rock 'n' rollers from Jimmy Page to Eric Clapton,but the first song he learned on guitar was 'Boogie Chillun.'

''Well, my mama didn't 'lowed me,' Hooker sang in that inimitable voice, 'Just to stay out all night long. ''Well, my mama didn't 'lowed me, just to stay out all night long.
''I didn't care what she allowed me, I would boogie anyhow.'

Hooker's music is empowering. It is primal and human and doesn't get involved in the sorts of neuroses that drove Hamlet off the deep end or made the TV show 'thirtysomething' a possibility.

Hooker's music says sex is OK, so 'Let's Make It.' Hooker's music tells Bonnie Raitt, a grown-up millionaire in an age of sexual discrimination lawsuits, to 'Pick it,baby, pick it!' Hooker's music says 'Fellas, you don't ever want to get behind in your rent, if you can he'p it. The landlady threw my clothes out in the street! The dirty old street! I don't like that stuff . . . '

And 'Boogie Chillun' said it was OK to keep on with your life, to take happiness where you could find it, in times when happiness was not evenly distributed. No matter who said it was right or wrong or said you had the 'right' to the pursuit of happiness.

''One night I was layin' down.
''I heard my Mama and Papa talkin'.
''I heard Papa tell Mama,
`'Let that boy boogie-woogie.
`'It's in him, and it's got to come out.'
''And I felt so good,
''Went on boogeyin' anyhow.'

It was a massive hit in the blues field in 1949, and the start of an amazing recording career that has led to more than 100 albums, including 1989's Grammy winner, 'The Healer.'

His music is still the vital, primal force it's always been, and still as sexy as a hot spring night.

Just listen to his duet with Raitt on 'The Healer,' the remake of his old hit, 'I'm in the Mood.' With Hooker's throaty, beautiful lower tones, Raitt's seductive voice and her skin-tingling bottleneck slides, it's steamy enough to open envelopes. 'I get a little bothered up there, singing that song with John,' Raitt has said.

''Well, yes, my mama told me, said, 'Leave that man alone,'
''But my mama didn't tell me what that man was layin' down.
''I'm in the mood, baby . . . I'm in the mood for love.'

He was born in Clarksdale, Miss., the son of a sharecropping preacher, William Hooker, who wouldn't allow his son's guitar in the house.

'He presumed the guitar was the devil,' Hooker remembers. ' 'Cause he was a minister. You know how people are, they think stuff like that is the devil -- the guitar, singing the blues -- but it's not, you know. But that's the way he looked at it. He was the minister, had a big, big church, had members, man, had a big fine church. And he could preach, too. He was a good preacher. But he said, 'You cannot keep this guitar in this house, 'cause it's not in God's will, I being a minister.' '

But when Hooker was 11 or 12 years old, his mother and father divorced, and Hooker went to live with his mother and his stepfather, Will Moore, so he could continue to play guitar. Hooker respected his father's beliefs, he says, but 'I believed in (that) I wanted to be a musician, and I couldn't stay there with him and be that, and so it happens. This is the way it had to be and that's the way God was intended for it to be. My mother got married to a musician, Will Moore, and I lived with him and he taught me, in the style that I'm doing now, that's what he taught me, that's the way he played, direct. I play direct the way he played it.'

Watch him closely. Look at that forefinger and middle finger of his right hand, flying through the air over those strings, and if you're a guitar player, you can't help but be mystified. How do those fingers find the right strings at the right time?

''The Cosmic Flubber-Dubber' is what Hooker's close friend Carlos Santana calls it.
''You've got to know what you're doing,' is what Hooker says about it. 'Can't just anybody do it.'

The second time Hooker left home (the first time, at the age of 12, didn't last long; his daddy dragged him back), he was 17, and started playing at house parties in Memphis with B.B. King and Bobby 'Blue' Bland. In 1943 he was part of the black migration from the South to Detroit, in search of war-driven jobs. It was in Detroit that he first started recording, quickly becoming a star on the blues circuit.

In the late '50s and early '60s, Hooker 'crossed over' to the white audience, thanks to both rock 'n' roll and the folk- music movement. In 1961, Bob Dylan made his New York debut opening for Hooker at Gerde's Folk City. In the early '60s, when Hooker played Europe, his opening act was a British band called the Rolling Stones. Many of his tunes became hits for other artists, such as 'Boom Boom,' recorded by the Animals.

(Other artists are still scoring big with Hooker tunes: George Thorogood had a big hit by combining 'The House Rent Boogie' and 'One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.')

It was that early-'60s 'folk-blues' period that started a conflict Hooker has to this day with some of his fans.

The lead guitarist of Hooker's Coast to Coast Blues Band, Michael Osborn, says, 'Every so often someone will come up to us and say, 'Why don't you guys get off the stage and just let John Lee play?' They want to see John up there with an acoustic guitar, like in the '60s. But that's not what John wants. He wants the band upthere.'

Hooker concurs. 'Sometimes it's a lot of fun,' to do the acoustic-only shows, like the Bread & Roses Show Saturday at the University of California, Berkeley's Greek Theatre, Hooker says, but sometimes it makes him nervous. [In fact, despite the urging of his old friend Joan Baez, Hooker refused to play either acoustic or alone at Bread & Roses that year; he played his electric Gibson 335, with Ry Cooder sitting next to him, playing slide.]

''If it's an older audience, I can feel relaxed; that's what they came for. But if it's a younger audience, I feel like I'm just not reaching them as I can with my band.'

It's not like the old days, Hooker says, when he played the small coffee houses and bars, when he could sit and play close to the people, chatting comfortably.

With the large audiences at the shows he plays now, he says he gets a little nervous when he doesn't have his band around him.

''When you walk out there, and all those people are yellin' and screamin', and it's just you, your chair and your guitar . . .

''When I first get up there, I'm as nervous as a cat, for the first two or three songs. Then I get a little more comfortable.'

Hooker has even been known to bring his band to dates that have been booked for him and his acoustic guitar only, causing his manager and the older, folkie fans a little discomfort. But John Lee's the boss.

And the shows with the band are thrillers, and everybody dances -- it's a law of nature to dance to a John Lee Hooker boogie. You couldn't stop from dancing anymore than you could stop yourself from breathing.

''There's more money in (the acoustic-only gigs), but I ain't in it for the money. I don't want to put the band aside.'

He doesn't care what they allow, he goes on boogeyin' anyhow.