His recording career spanned a full half-century: something he marked by spiking his album "The Best of Friends," which might otherwise have been a routine best-of, with a sizzling remake of his first hit, featuring a phoned-in lead guitar overdub by Eric Clapton that sounded like they were eye-to-eye in the studio. Just as it did when he teamed up with Miles Davis for the soundtrack to Dennis Hopper's "The Hot Spot": Miles overdubbed as well, but it still sounded as if they were in total telepathic contact. On the rideout to that 50th anniversary remake of "Boogie Chillen," John Lee claimed his heritage and stated his identity. "I am," he proudly announced, "the Boogie Man." And he was, like no one before him ever was and no one following in his footsteps ever could be.

I won't trouble you with the blow-by-blow account of his career: that half-century cycle of upturns and downtowns, from Mississippi to Detroit to San Francisco, which started with the million-selling "Boogie Chillen" in 1948 and ended with a wallful of gold and platinum albums and Hooker established as the absolute iconic essence of the African-American art form to which his entire life was dedicated. Without ever making any significant modifications to who he was and what he did, he contrived to be a part of the Electric Downhome Blues movement of the late '40s and early '50s; the rhythm and blues scene of the mid-to-late '50s; the folk-blues revival of the late '50s and early '60s; and a primary inspiration to the white-blues guys of the mid-to-late '60s and beyond.

The central paradox of John Lee Hooker -- apart from the fact that he was a deeply modest man who was well aware that he was a genius -- was that he was simultaneously the grand archetype of the Mississippi bluesman (despite having left Mississippi when he was 14), and utterly unlike any other major Mississippi bluesman of his generation. His songs rarely rhymed, his rhythms were unstructured and freeform, and only a very few of his lyrics looked like anything much if you saw them transcribed on a page.

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He communicated everything through the sound of his voice and his guitar; and he had an unparalleled command of emotional nuance. On that "Hot Spot" soundtrack, he barely sings a lyric at all. There are only fragments: "So sad," or "It ain't right." Everything else is simply Hooker humming or moaning, yet he communicates more than most other singers could do with an entire notebook full of lyrics. The instant you hear him, you know that he understands stuff about your life that you may not even understand yourself.

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