Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century Review

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Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century Review"Boogie Man" is a fascinating portrait of a fascinating man. John Lee Hooker is arguably the greatest living blues man, a man whose life virtually spanned the entire 20th century, and this is the book he deserves. Based on extensive interviews with Hooker and many of his contemporaries, the reader experiences Hooker's life, his influences, his motivations, and, most important, his music as if one were sitting at his knee listening to him playing his guitar and telling stories. In addition, Charles Shaar Murray does a magnificent job of placing Hooker and his inimitable style within its historical, sociological, cultural, and musical context, including several interesting "sidebars" on the history of the blues, the nature of blues music, and that intangible something that makes Hooker so unique and so influential.
However, the book has one major flaw that will keep many readers, especially those who are not blues aficionados, from completely enjoying it. It is written in the hep-cat, daddy-o style that music critics and biographers seem to be compelled to employ and that readers of music criticism and biography have come to know and hate. Because of this, the author himself is so prominently present on virtually every page of the book. "Boogie Man" ends up being not a biography of John Lee Hooker, but rather a book about Hooker as seen through the eyes of Charles Shaar Murray. Good biographers know how to make themselves disappear from the text, to the benefit of their subjects. Murray is so present here that after a while it proves very annoying. Worst of all, many times he writes in a faux ebonics style that he thinks mimics the way black people speak. It's annoying, embarrassing, and even disturbing.
Murray also shares the bias that many Brits share of being convinced that America is a land seething with racism and racial prejudice, from the day the first Europeans landed here up to the present day. Granted, America is not a land of racial harmony, slavery was legal for he first 250 years of the country's existence, and it wasn't until a mere generation ago that blacks received the same treatment under law as whites. Still, Murray's prejudices against white Americans mars his point of view and clouds his perception of the facts surrounding Hooker and his life.
Further (and, strictly speaking, this isn't really the author's fault), the book is very poorly edited. It was written over a period of many years, and reading the finished product makes it clear that no one went through the book from start to finish to check for consistency and flow. There are several points repeated many times, and even some of Hooker's quotes are repeated verbatim in different places. One small example: Every blues fan knows that there were two blues men named "Sonny Boy Williamson," and perhaps for the sake of non-fans this curiosity needs to be pointed out and the difference between the two explained, but not five or six times.
In the end, despite its flaws, "Boogie Man" is a fascinating, informative, and insightful book, one that fans of John Lee Hooker, or blues in general will want to read -- provided they can overcome the author's style and point of view.Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century Overview

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