One of 11 children, Hooker grew up in a sharecropping family on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta. By the time he turned 14 he was playing guitar in Memphis, Tenn. From there he moved to Cincinnati and sang with gospel quartets before moving to Detroit in 1943. There he resumed his career as a blues musician. Intensely prolific, he recorded more than 100 albums, many of them under pseudonyms like Birmingham Sam and His Magic Guitar and the Boogie Man. But whatever the name, the sound was pure Hooker. He could captivate you with a one-chord song, and his unadorned yet subtly rhythmic music was the perfect match for his austere, often heartbreaking lyrics. “No matter what anybody says, it all comes down to the same thing,” he said once. “A man and woman, a broken heart and a broken home.” But when he picked up a guitar and opened his mouth, nobody ever made feeling bad sound so good.
