John Lee Hooker, Oakland, CA ©1971

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I first met John Lee Hooker in early 1971 during the recording sessions for a double LP called “Lights Out: San Francisco.” The project was conceived and produced by a local late-night FM DJ named Voco whose dream was to compile a selection of new recordings by some of his favorite Bay Area artists, mostly R&B, soul, blues, and jazz, with a little Middle Eastern thrown in.

Among such artists as Tower of Power, Cold Blood, Linda Tillery, and Sylvester, Voco had invited John Lee Hooker to the studio to record the slow, after-hours title tune that Voco himself had written specifically with John Lee in mind.

I’d never seen any really good photos of John Lee, which bothered me since he was so charismatic and yet enigmatic in person. I made a date to meet him to shoot some pictures one afternoon the following week near his apartment on East 13th Street in Oakland, near Lake Merritt.

The day we met, his son Robert (now a bluesman in his own right) joined us, and we decided to take a walk along the lakeshore and just shoot on the fly as scenes suggested themselves. He said he’d like to include his electric guitar in some of the shots, even though he’d be unplugged, so we brought it along. He also took a briarwood pipe, an unexpected accessory that gave him an almost professorial air as he pensively held and smoked it.

We only worked for an hour or so before the sun started going down on that midwinter day, and got a number of memorable shots in both color and black-and-white in that wonderful, late-afternoon light. We walked slowly back to his apartment, talking about the variety of pictures we’d taken as well as his music.

He invited me in for a while before I left. He’d never let go of his guitar the whole time we were out and as we talked, he was still holding it and occasionally strumming it as we sat across from each other in his small living room chatting. A black-and-white TV set was on in the corner, still showing some late-afternoon soap opera at that hour.

One of the actors uttered a dramatic line to his love interest right before a commercial break, and it seemed to resonate with John Lee. He sang it slowly to himself while providing some backing chords on the guitar: “You can’t lose what you’ve never had… no, no, you can’t lose what you ain’t never had…”

His words trailed off and he stared at the screen for a moment as the show went to commercial. The legendary Delta bluesman then turned to me and said with a grin, “You know, I get some real good ideas for tunes from watching the TV…”