Unearthing John Lee Hooker Live at Soledad Prison.

On a summer’s day in 1972, the legendary John Lee Hooker did a feral set of blues songs for a crowd that was very hungry for the bluesman’s dark and primal music. Though Hooker had just released a 1971 crossover album with Canned Heat called Hooker ‘n Heat, he wasn’t playing to a batch of hip fans in a crowded San Francisco nightclub. Hooker and his band were reaching deep into their bag of boogie blues for a decidedly less glamorous audience: a field full of inmates at Correctional Training Facility in Soledad.

The show was recorded and then released the same year as John Lee Hooker Live at Soledad Prison. The album is currently buried deep in Monterey County’s music history below artifacts likeMonterey Pop, a live recording of Miles Davis’ set at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival and Celebration at Big Sur, a movie documenting the Esalen Institute’s 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival. (A few used vinyl copies are available on the Internet, but without a turntable, the easiest way to experience some songs from the show is to pick up the John Lee Hooker Live at the Café Au Go-Go, which includes five tracks from the bluesman’s Soledad show.)

The discovery of this unsung album at Recycled Records in New Monterey made me want to dig into the story behind this unique concert and recording. But I ended up learning about more than just that summer’s day in Soledad back in 1972. I learned how that day ended up being the beginning of a circular journey for the blues legend’s son, John Lee Hooker Jr. Like a record on a turntable, Hooker Jr.’s life circled round and round – loudly – before coming to rest in a quiet place.

From his home in Roseville, Calif., Hooker Jr. tells the Weekly what initially led to him and his father playing Correctional Training Facility, or, as many people simply refer to it, Soledad.

It was Ed Michel of ABC Records who thought it would be a great fit for the blues legend to do a show and a recording at Soledad.

“‘Bang Bang Bang Bang,’” Hooker Jr. says of his father’s reworking of his classic song “Boom Boom,” about shooting someone down. “You know that fit right into the culture of Soledad Prison.”

With sound quality comparable to a good bootleg, the Live at Soledad Prison album begins with Hooker Jr. opening the concert with his more contemporary sounding blues songs “Superlover” and “I’m Your Crosscut Saw.”

“It was intense,” he says. “It was exciting. There I was in the infamous Soledad Prison. I don’t think they do like that no more, where you drive to the stage and ‘One, two, three!’”

Before Hooker Sr. takes over the microphone, a prisoner can be heard uttering: “Shit, I just want to hear about Al Capone.” (That’s likely a reference to Hooker Sr.’s “I’m Mad,” where he sings: “Now I’m mad like Al Capone.”)

On Hooker Sr.’s opening number “What’s the Matter Baby,” the twin guitars of Luther Tucker and Charlie Grimes spin spider webs of solos under his dark, predatory vocals. “I introduced my father, and of course, he tore the place up,” Hooker Jr. says.

The album offers compelling evidence that the blues might be a better genre of music for a group of imprisoned souls than Johnny Cash’s outlaw country songs that he brought to inmates on his 1968 At Folsom Prison and 1969 At San Quentin albums, which helped inspire the Soledad show to take place. Throughout the album, the crowd of about 500 inmates is clearly fired up.

“It was like the Superbowl Blues show,” Hooker Jr. says. “They were so respectful and so hungry for the music. It was great.”

One highlight of the set is “Serve Me Right to Suffer,” which Hooker Sr. announces as a “real, slow-going blues.” In the song, the bluesman sings over and over again how his doctor has written him a prescription for “milk, cream and alcohol” to soothe his nerves. Another clear high point is “Boogie Everywhere I Go,” an eight-and-a-half-minute boogie blues number featuring father and son trading lines in one section.

“He was pitching, and I was catching,” Hooker Jr. says of that performance.

THE BLUES MIGHT BE BETTER FOR IMPRISONED SOULS THAN JOHNNY CASH’S OUTLAW COUNTRY.

The concert ends abruptly during an electrifyingly roughshod version of “Bang Bang Bang Bang,” which careens forward and threatens to run off the tracks at any time. Four minutes and 17 seconds into the song, the prison guards turned off the band’s electricity.

“It was count time,” Hooker Jr. says, referring to when the prison officials get the prisoners to count off to make sure that no one is missing. “They do not play up in there.”

Hooker Jr. believes there was something about his father that the inmates at Soledad related to at the performance.

“He didn’t sugarcoat anything,” he says. “That’s what they appreciated. They knew it was raw. They knew it was unrehearsed. And that’s when they saw natural talent. My dad didn’t rehearse before we left. We just got up there and did what we did.”

But the inmates at Soledad had no idea that they might have related to Hooker Jr. even more than his legendary father. The son of the blues legend had just been released from a Michigan prison a few months earlier, and he would return to Soledad a few years later – but not on tour.

When Hooker Jr. came back in 1985, it was in a prisoner transportation vehicle. The son of the blues legend says he was addicted to heroin at the time. He was processed in the prison population and then assigned to a work crew.

Hooker Jr.’s new work supervisor immediately realized who he was. “Ernie says, ‘I remember you,’” Hooker Jr. recalls. “You came up here to do a CD. He says, ‘I’m Ernie. I was the guy who stood by the stage to guard you.’”

Since Hooker Jr. was not a violent prisoner and had never attempted an escape, he was treated fairly well at Soledad.

“Ernie took care of me,” he says fondly. “Nobody laughed and said, ‘Ha, ha, ha, you’re back in here.’ Everyone knows the results of drug addiction.”

Hooker Jr. even performed music again for inmates in Soledad as a member of The Soledad Blues Band. This time, it was in a group made up of other prisoners.

“I believe there was two to three yards, and sometimes, we would throw a show in our yard, especially in the summer time when the weather was good,” he says. “We’d go to different yards to perform. It was something to do.”

After two years at Soledad, Hooker Jr. returned to the outside world. But it didn’t last long. In 1991, Hooker Jr. returned to Soledad for another two-year sentence. When he returned, his passion for music was replaced by something else.

“I taught the Bible,” he says. “I preached the gospel, and I was a light in a dark and evil place.”

He says he had been ordained as a preacher by the Progressive Church of God in Christ in Sacramento in 1990 before falling off the wagon again, leading to his second imprisonment at Soledad.

Then Hooker Jr. gives me a well-practiced couple of lines.

“I left the blues for the good news,” he says. “I left fame for the name of Jesus.”

Once he was out of Soledad again, Hooker Jr. says he kept being lured back into the music business by people who urged him to carry on his father’s legacy. He notes that the life of a musician was not a good match for a man easily tempted by drugs.

Though Hooker Jr. was nominated for Grammys in 2005 and 2008, he might have been found more often in a jail cell than on a stage. He notes that he has spent time in 10 prisons including the former Oakalla Prison Farm in British Columbia.

“We did a show in Vancouver,” he says of the reason for being jailed at Oakalla. “I got loaded on drugs and ran into several cars. They let me go, and I failed to show up. They kicked my door in. There were some drugs on the table. To make a long story short, they sentenced me to 90 days.”

Hooker Jr. adds that he has now fully left the red carpet for the pulpit and hasn’t been imprisoned for 20 years.

But he hasn’t left the music business entirely: This October he is planning to release a gospel CD titled Set Free.
These days, Hooker Jr. says he visits San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin and the Rio Consumnes Correctional Center in Elk Grove to tell people his story.

“Now I am an evangelist and go to prisons,” he says. “Anybody who wants can call me to come to their prison or church.”

But what he really wants is a chance to do an encore performance in Soledad Prison, even though he knows it will be differ from what he did in Soledad with his father back in 1972.

“I am now Rev. John Lee Hooker Jr.,” he says. “I am no longer bluesman John Lee Hooker Jr.”