Earl Hooker - Chief/Profile/Age Recordings

Chief/Profile/Age Recordings

Despite a major tuberculosis attack in 1956 that required hospitalization, Earl Hooker returned to performing in Chicago clubs and touring the South. By late 1959, Junior Wells brought Hooker to the Chief/Profile/Age group of labels, where he began one of the most fruitful periods of his recording career. Their first recording together, "Little by Little" (Profile 4011), was a hit the following year when it reached number 23 in the Billboard Hot R&B Sides chart. With this success and his rapport with Chief owner and producer Mel London, Hooker became Chief's house guitarist. From 1959 to 1963, he appeared on about forty Chief recordings, including singles for Wells, Lillian Offitt, Magic Sam, A.C. Reed, Ricky Allen, Reggie "Guitar" Boyd, Johnny "Big Moose" Walker, and Jackie Brenston, as well as Hooker being the featured artist. He appeared on nearly all of Wells' releases, including "Come on in This House", "Messin' with the Kid", and "It Hurts Me Too", which remained in Wells' repertoire throughout his career. Hooker regularly performed with Wells for the rest of 1960 and most of 1961.

For the Chief labels, Hooker released several instrumentals, including the slow blues "Calling All Blues" (1960 Chief 7020) which featured Hooker's slide guitar and "Blues in D Natural" (1960 Chief 7016), where he switched between fretted and slide guitar. However, it was a chance taping before a recording session that captured perhaps Hooker's best known song (although by a different title). During the warm-up that preceded a May 1961 scheduled session, Hooker and his band played an impromptu slow blues which featured Hooker's slide guitar. The song was played once and Hooker was apparently not aware that it was being recorded. Producer Mel London saved the tape and when looking for material to release the following spring, issued it as "Blue Guitar" (Age 29106). "Earl's song sold unusually well for an instrumental blues side" and Chicago-area bluesmen were including it in their sets.

Sensing greater commercial potential for Hooker's "Blue Guitar", Leonard Chess approached Mel London about using it for Muddy Waters' next record. An agreement was reached and in July 1962, Waters overdubbed a vocal (with lyrics by Willie Dixon) on Hooker's single and it was renamed "You Shook Me". The song was successful and Chess hired Hooker to record three more instrumentals for Muddy Waters to overdub. One of the songs, again with Dixon-supplied lyrics, titled "You Need Love", was also a success and "sold better than Muddy's early sixties recordings". Later, rock bands such as Led Zeppelin would achieve greater success with their adaptations of Earl Hooker's and Muddy Waters' "You Shook Me" and "You Need Love".

During his time with Chief, Hooker also recorded singles as a sideman for Bobby Saxton and Betty Everett as well as in his own name for the Bea & Baby, C.J., and Checker record labels. By 1964, the last of the Chief labels went out of business and ended his longest association with a record label; for some, his recordings for Chief/Profile/Age represent Hooker's best work.