Earl Hooker, Blues Master

Chapter 7 Guitars, Cars, and Women

u X < ÖL huj K|x tyufasii, CAS&, titotC 71/ôtneti As extroverted as he was on the bandstand, Earl Hooker was more of an introvert at home, where he focused his attention almost exclusively on his art. It is no secret that life on the road can be tiresome, but professional entertainers generally find time to rest and enjoy life in their off hours; this wasnot the case with Earl, who spent most of his spare time practicing on his instrument , cutting down sleeping hours to a strict minimumas if he drew his tremendous amount of energy directly from his music rather than from scarce periods of rest. "When we was in Oklahoma, I guess he got some sleep," Billy Boy Arnold reports. "He'd lay down later on or something, but he got up early in the morning and I'd hear him play the guitar. My room wasright next door to his. Early next morning, nine o'clock, eight o'clock, Hooker would be playing that guitar; it wouldwake me up. It wasdamning! He'd be by hisself, playing 'Sassie Mae' by Memphis Slim, and he wasplaying the guitar part that M. T.Murphy did. He had to play. That waseverything to him; he wasafa147 natic. Everythinghe wasdoing wasmusic,you know. Like in the daytime,we'd get up and me and Moose and Smokey—Moose used to follow me around a lot 'cause I had a lot of women who followed me, so Moose liked to be with me, and so we'd go and eat and we'd associate together, but we didn't see Hooker. We'd hear him in the room practicing, and we'd see his car going. Hooker was up at some music store, looking at guitars, finding out the latest gadgets on amps. "He stayed to hisself sorta like, you know. He talked, but not too much. To me he wasn't the guy that took you as a confidential friend. He was always doing something with music, and there was always musicians with him, I don't know whether to sayfriends. He had a lot of associates, everybodyhe knewwas musicians. He was a guy who played so well, he didn't have too much time for guys who couldn't play good. He wasa very different type of guy. He wasunique in his own personality too, he wasn't like anybody else I ever met." Earl's monomania was so pronounced that he could do just about anything as long as it was related to music; even though he did not particularly enjoy puttering about at home, he would perform miracles when his passion was involved . "Hooker wasgood at anythin' a little bit that he wanted to do," singer Andrew Odom stresses. "Like a guy's organ broke down one night when wewas playin' at the 1015 Club, east on 43rd Street in Chicago, and Hooker fixed it on intermission. He may not have had the proper tools or the education, but he would fix it." Unlike most of his traveling companions, Hooker never showed any interest in card games, sports, movies, or television shows. "I'll tell you what," says Big Moose Walker. "If he wasjust layin' up or somethin' like this, he'd watch TV until he'd go to sleep or somethin', and that's it. But so far as wantin' to watch a certain program or somethin', or somebody on TV, no way.He never gambled, never. He did nothing with his money but bought amplifiers, guitars, microphones, tape recorders, radios, cars, and clothes. He couldn't do nothin' but play guitar, wasn't interested in nothin' but womens." Earl's love of musicwasalmost matched by his penchant for women,his professional unreliability finding its pendant on a personal level. Mrs. Hooker's over-possessiveness kept her son from running his own home in Chicago, but Earl always found some compensation for his solitude in the course of his travels . Much asCairo or Chicago in Illinois, Clarksdale and Helena in the Delta, Guitars, Cars, and Women 148 Lawton in Oklahoma, Bradenton and Pahokee in Florida were regular stopovers for Earl, in the course ofhis hectic road trips, variouswomenover the years intermittently played the role of spouse—often combined with that of full-time mother. Sadie in Cairo, Ann (a girlwho worked at a hamburger place on 47th Street) or Dorothy Maholmes (half-sister of saxophone player Bobby Neely) in Chicago, Bertha in Missouri,or Rosemary in Iowa, to cite but a few, provided Hooker with a variety of homes he called his own in scattered locations . This pattern is common among traveling musicians who, adopting the promiscuity which is usually ascribed to sailors in love matters, keep a wife in every port. This is especially true in the mother-dominated family structure of the African American ghetto, in which many male individuals prove incapable of severing the strong ties that link them to their husbandless mothers, consequently refusing to assume in their turn the responsibility inherent in the status of a head offamily. Sociologist E.Franklin Fraziersawin this a reminiscence of slavery when he wrote: "Only the bond between the mother and her child continually resisted the disruptive effect of economic interests that were often inimical to family life among the slaves. Consequently . . . the Negro mother remained the most dependable and important figure in the family."1 Earl Hooker developed this fickleness, and he enjoyed among his peers the reputation of a lady-killer with a girl in each town, although his power had a tendency to lose its edge with years as his tuberculosis grew more serious. "When Iknew Hooker, he wasn't really that much for hitting on women," Dick Shurman, a friend of Hooker's in the late sixties, says. "But one time when I was with Moose [Walker], somebody made some sort of comment to the effect of how Hooker didn't seem to care much, and Moose said, 'Well, you should have seen Hooker when he was younger and stronger. He could just walk in and walk off with a woman just before you knew it was happenin'.' At one point I guesshe waspretty hot stuff." "Yeah, he was always after some chick," Billy Boy Arnold confirms. "He wasn't the type ofguyin clubs that ran after one but in his spare time, when he wasn't playing music, he was always going over to some chick's house. He had some women around, but you never sawhim openly with them, you know. He sorta liked to be to himself. He was a road man; where he'd go washome. I remember once, Bobby Fields—he was a saxophone player—and see, Bobby 149 Guitars, Cars, and Women Fields was a playboy. He went down to Oklahoma with Hooker once, and he brought a woman back. Bobby wasmarried, but he didn't tell the woman that he had a wife. He brought this woman back to Chicago and had her staying with some people. She wasin love with the guy,and she couldn't resist comin' up here. So Hooker went by this woman's house to try to get the chick behind Bobby's back! See, he was that type of guy, you know, he was a good-time type of guy." In addition to the ephemeral households he started in various places over the years, Hooker kept an eye open for potential conquests. Although his attractiveness generally enabled him to find women who gratified his sexual desires on the road, Hooker also had recourse to professional lovers, according to Son Seals, a guitar player and singer who joined the Hooker band in the early sixties: "Earl had women everywhere he went, man. When we go somewhere and he say,'Well, I'm g-g-goin' to myold lady'shouse,' I just didn't pay it no attention , 'cause hell, he had that everywhere. He wasdoin' somethin'! It seems like they'd have somethin', because I know damn well he didn't know all of those places and shit, man, so these womens would be into some money, which I guess made sense, you know. If you gonna fool around, you know, hell! Fool around good." "I think Hooker had only three things he really loved: that washis guitar, cars, and women," Billy Boy Arnold confirms, before he adds with an arch smile. "I remember in Oklahoma, we were all young guys, and there was a retired soldier and his wife living down at the hotel. And the bottom of the door was about a couple inches off the ground, soHooker waspeepin' under the door at this woman in the hotel, so Moose [Walker] came and got me. I went there and sawHooker down on the ground lookin' under the door. Well, you know, we had a lot of fun." A similar episode is recounted in the posthumous tribute to Hooker published by his friend Dick Shurman shortly after the guitarist's death: "On one occasion, Earl and Moose [Walker] were forced by a man at gunpoint to sample the wares of a lady whose efforts they had been watching through a motel keyhole, a story that has plagued Earl ever since!"2 Earl greatly enjoyed such pastimes in his younger days,but his behavior had more to do with his need to keep his fellow band members laughing than with any lack of sexual balance, as Junior Wells's testimony would tend to show: "Oh, man, he used to do so many crazy things. He had a hole in everybody's Guitars, Cars, and Women 150 door in the hotel. He'd get a drill and put a hole in your door sohe could peep in there at you. And we hooked up Moose John [Walker]'s room one night, took the microphone, put the hole waydown by the bed, down bythe wall,and hid the microphone up there behind the bed and had the amplifier in the other room."3 The decline of Mel London's various recording ventures from 1963 on brought about radical changes in Hooker's career that found a parallel in his personal existence. After so many years on the road, Earl finally decided to get married. After a succession of love affairs that seldom lasted long enough for him to acknowledge his children, Hooker finally took the responsibility of a home at the age of thirty-four. The girl of his choice wasBertha Nickerson, his senior by two years. At the time of their initial meeting in 1962, Bertha was a pretty divorcee who lived with her two children, Regina and John Charles, in Catron, a small southern Missouri community. Catron and neighboring towns Lilbourn and New Madrid are located just off of Highway 61, halfway between Cairo and the Missouri -Arkansas state line. As such, they stand at a strategic point on the route that took itinerant bands from the busy St. Louis scene to Memphis and the lower Delta. Earl's frequent incursions into that part of Missouriat the time of his stay in Cairo accounted for his popularity in the area. During the fifties he further developed his network ofprofessional connections on the western bank of the MississippiRiver. His main hangouts in southern Missouri became the country joint operated by Papa Foster and Walter Taylor's,a large clubfound in Lilbourn five miles away from Bertha Nickerson's home. Bertha was familiar with the Hooker band through their regular appearances around Catron, but only after she divorced her first husband in 1959 did she start going around the local clubs on the weekend. In 1962 an evening out provided her with an opportunity to get acquainted with the guitarist, and Earl and Bertha saw each other regularly during the following months. In an attempt at being with her more often, Hooker even started giving thrilling performances in Catron. "When he didn't have a big engagement elsewhere, he would just stay here and play at that place called Bill Rotman's Café," Bertha, who still resides in Catron today, explains. "When he would play here, he'd have a crowd, too. That's when people had jobs. Now they don't harvest crops any more by hand. They do it by machinery which they can take about ten or 151 Guitars, Cars, and Women fifteen people and do the whole thing. People just moved off and it's not too many peoples here any more, maybe two hundred. It was three or four times that many people here. When he would play here, just a big sign said, 'Earl Hooker's band is playing in Catron.' It would be so many cars uptown you couldn't find a parkin' place, believe it or not." From the very beginning, Bertha was impressedby Hooker's musicalability; at the same time, she was an intelligent woman in her mid-thirties with principles and a high sense ofresponsibilitywho wasnot readyto jeopardizethe education of her two children for the sake of a short-lived, sentimental affair, regardless of Earl's talent. "I liked his music," Bertha admits very readily. "He could play anythin' on that guitar. He could even play that guitar with his teeth, I don't know how he did that. And he could play that double-neck guitar . That was a miracle to see him do that! But it wasn't really his music that made me marry him. I guess it wasjust Earl Hooker himself. I just liked him as a person. I've never cared too much for music. I never could understand blues, it never could do too much to me. I guess as a whole, I'm never a blue person." As for Hooker, he possibly admired the heedfulness with which she ruled the existence ofher family. For someone asdependent on his mother as Hooker was, Bertha epitomized a maternal image that made him feel secure. The similarity between Bertha's situation and that of Mrs.Hooker is striking: like Mary Hooker twenty years earlier, Bertha was a dedicated mother with a boy and a girl who had to scuffle to make ends meet. Such elements may not have influenced Hooker's choice consciously, but they probablyplayed a significant role. On Monday,October 7,1963, Earl Zebedee Hooker and Bertha Lee Nickerson were married at the courthouse in New Madrid, Missouri,by Reverend B. B. Gillespie, in front of Doris Hampton and Geo. D. Boone, official recorder of deeds. The marriage was to last for close to seven years, until Hooker's death in 1970. Paradoxically, whereas Earl had children with various concubines over the years, his union with Bertha did not bring any because Bertha decided that she wastoo old to start a new family when shewas already responsible for the education and welfare of two children. Judging by the fact that Hooker didn't raise his own progeny, Bertha's decision apparently didn't strain their relationship, although Earl apparently liked being around children. "He got along real good with the kids," Bertha reports. "They liked him. My son, I imagine he got along with him better than my Guitars, Cars, and Women 152 daughter. She was headstrong. All she believed in was those books. Then, you know, once you bring kids things every time you go out of town and come back, they just love you to death. I remember one time he bought my son a motorcycle. We was comin' home from Indianapolis, Indiana, and he saw this motorcycle. I don't know just how much money it wasback then, but he bought that motorcycle. And my son is named John Charles, but we called him Bubble. He was about eleven or twelve then, he wasstill small. And he said, Tm buyin' that motorcycle for Bubble.' And he put that motorcycle in the back of one of those old long limousine cars, and we brought that motor' cycle home. They rode it 'til they tore it up." Hooker's position was more comfortable than his wife's. For the children, Earl represented the appealing figure of the missingfather who came home on special occasions and surprisedthem with gifts. Bertha, on the other hand, was the head of the family who provided for her children's daily needs; as such, she embodied reliability and security but also strictness and discipline in the eyes of Regina and Bubble.As a result, Earltried to be attentive to his wife when he was at home, although he invariablyended up devoting more of his sparetime to his trade than to his family. "He'd alwaysbring me presents. He could buy my clothes better than I could. Clothes, coats, bags, things like that. He wasa nice person. He wasquiet, pretty wellclose to himself, and he concentrated on that box more than anythin' else. So ifhe wasn't plunkin' on that box, he was asleep. Once you stay up all night, I guess if there were times you can get a chance to sleep in the daytime,you would.He really wasn't a talker. He might get in a conversation and talk, you know, and then the next thing, he's disappeared . He had to play somewhere. Instead of gossipin', he wasalways concentratin ' on usin' the telephone to seewhere he wasgonna play." Although he constantly kept up a joking front with most of his associates, Hooker was a serious-minded and laconic man at home. The only person he ever really communicated with was his mother, with whom he kept in close touch even after he got married. "Earl Hooker was a mama's boy," Bertha says. "I think that she wasreally closer to him than she were her daughter. She was crazy about Zebedee. And then maybe Earl Hooker was just one of those persons who could really talk to his mother. I think he would talk to his mother. I don't know of no great conversations they had, but I know he wascrazy about his mother. 'Cause when he'd get home, the next call he wouldmakewouldbe 153 Guitars, Cars, and Women dial Mum,youknow. I had no grudgeagainst that, I don't think a child can call their mothers too much." Bertha was introduced quite early to her mother-in-law. No serious problem ever arose between the two women, but a concealed tenseness generally plagued Bertha's visits to Chicago. The fact that her son spent most of his days off in southern Missourifrom 1963 was not to the liking of Mrs. Hooker, who considered Bertha more a rival than a daughter-in-law. Like other girlfriends of Earl's earlier on, Bertha soon decided to limit dealings with Mary Hooker to a strict minimum, especially since Earl refused to tackle the problem . "I told him one time I didn't think his mother liked me very well, and he said, 'Oh, forget it,' that's about all I got out of him," Bertha recounts. "Then, well, I didn't think too much about it because whether she liked me or not, I knew I wasn't gonna be there but a day or two. And if things got too uncomfortable, I wouldn't have to be there at all, so it didn't bother me one way or the other. "He brought his mother down here to visit us after we had married. And when we would be in Chicago, I'd stay there sometime a week at a time. She did housework, and she wasalways veryneat about herself. Dressed nice, clean. I think that was one thing that she really liked about me. She liked to dress, and I liked to dress. And she was nice to me, but you can always tell when somethin' was there, you know. We wasn't enemies, but we wasn't just that mother-in-law and daughter-in-law stuff. She always treated me nice, it seemed like she made me welcome, but it was just somethin' there. Jealousy, I'd say. And I don't think it would have been just me, it probably woulda been any woman that Earl Hooker married." Soon after she was married, Bertha realized that much more than his mother, the guitar was fully responsible for estranging her husband from her. Until his death, Earl never stopped traveling for his wife's sake, and Bertha kept track of her husband's itinerary thanks to the laconic postcards she received on the mail: "He'd alwaysreport to let me know where he wasand how he was doin'. He used to write me some letters, or send me a card, you know, from different places. It wasn't very much on 'em, 'Hello! We're goin' to such a place tomorrow, you know. See you soon.' He would alwayswrite 'em," Bertha adds, showing her appreciation of the efforts he made for her, despite the limited education he had received. "But somebody else would address the enveGuitars , Cars, and Women 154 lope, 'cause youknow two different handwrites. He could writepretty good, but I don't know just how good he could read, 'cause he's been interested in that guitar even in school." Because he showed no sign of slowinghis frantic pace, the only possibleway for Bertha to spend more time with Earl wasto travel with him. She did so on various occasions, but the presence at home of her two children, as well as the fact that she had a full-time job in Catron, generally prevented her from following her husband when he took to the road: "If I had some time off that I could go with him and I could get back to my job, I did. He used to play over in Cairo a lot, and I used to go over there quite a bit with him because I could drive to Cairo and come back home the same night to go to work the next mornin'. Then I would go different places. Memphis and Mississippi.And we would always go to Chicago three or four times a year. Chicago, Indianapolis, you know, Waterloo, Iowa. He used to play over there a lot. And another little town in Illinois he used to play all the time, Rockford! I went there several times. We went to Indianapolis one time and he played with MuddyWaters. And he played with Brook Benton down in Memphis. Other than that, I didn't go. You know, stayin' here one night, and losin' half of your clothes, it just wasn't my thing." Although her marriagewasnot an unhappy one as a whole, Bertha felt disappointed in the long run, and his refusal to settle down antagonized her. By the late sixties, and more especially during the one-year period preceding his death, Hooker did not see much of his wife at all. As his career took a turn for the better, essential engagements on the West Coast and in Europe prevented him from visiting Bertha and the children. Furthermore, the presence in Waterloo , Iowa, of another woman named Rosemary that he had been seeing for years put a strain on Hooker's and Bertha's relationship. As much as love and affection, Bertha needed someone she could rely on. Knowing Hooker's uncommunicative nature, she accepted putting up with a situation that didn't suit her. "I thought that he wasgonna get a regular place to play around here close, you know, where we could do the drives, and that he wasgonna settle down," Bertha regrets. "He realizedhe wassick, but he didn't do that. He wastryin' to make a bigdollar. He probablycould have playedhere and made about asmuch money maybe as he would have spendin' it travelin' on the road. It takes a lot of money to travel on the road. But that washis job, that's what he wasdoin' 155 Guitars, Cars, and Women when I found him, so I didn't interferewith him. But I still think he loved that guitar best." Other than his consuming passion for guitars and women, Hooker developed early a marked fondness for cars, which went back to his teenage days on Chicago's South Side when a white benefactor, owner of a hotel on Michigan Avenue, had presented him with a secondhand bus. Ever since, Earl had consistently been divided between his desire to parade about in a brand-new Cadillac and his unconditional love of vintage models. Depending on his financial situation, he usually kept a large set of vehicles, which he sold, traded, or tore up with astounding ease. Cars represented more than a mere status symbolfor Earl Hooker. Although his first fewyearson the road had been spent with others, transportation problems arose after Earl started leading his own ensemble; leaving Chicago for southern Illinois or the Delta could be done by bus or train, but a private vehicle was called for when nightclub engagements took Hooker and band away from their home-base. Earl soon realized that it was better to depend on his own car, especially when disagreements set in among band members.From the early fifties onwards, he never took to the road without his own car, bringing sidemen, stage clothes, and instruments along. "He's crazy about cars," Big Moose Walker shakes his head. "He'd buy 'em and run 'em and junk 'em. Tear 'em up and get another one. Sometime in the fifties, we drove a hundred-dollar Buick all over Florida, New Mexico, Texas, California, 'til it caught on fire, and it ran out of transmission fluid; we stopped and we put some water in the transmission! Then went on to LosAngeles." In a similarway, Hooker's trip to Florida with drummerKansasCity Red in late 1953 had started inauspiciously when the band's car broke down in some remote part of Tennessee. By the time Hooker took Billy BoyArnold's band to Oklahoma in 1956, his situation had improved: he traveled in a superb 1949 Roadmaster Buick. "It was maroon with a black top, a very sharp car," says Arnold. "Very beautiful car, in excellent condition; he bought it down South somewhere." The Roadmaster wasHooker's own favorite and remained sofor a long time, to the point that he even used its name to identify his group. Earl was by no means an exception in his milieu; many of his peers shared his love of automobiles, but few of them proved as inveterate as he was in this particular field. An exception washis friend Arbee Stidham, who often bought Guitars, Cars, and Women 156 the same car asEarPs, or vice versa. "Weboth started with a Chrysler," Stidham reports. "Then I went from a Chrysler to a Roadmaster Buick. I went down and bought a Buick, and it wasa color, I never sawthat color again until recently. I bought one and Hooker bought one, just alike. He loved the BuickRoadmaster . After he got that Roadmaster, I don't think he ever changed, 'cause I left that for a Cadillac, but he never did. We'd get cars the same color, but you could bet, his would be a Roadmaster and mine would be a Cadillac." Earl's extended road trips eventually used up the resourcesofhis Buicks,and when time came for him to find a replacement for the Roadmaster model, the many musicians and the bulk of equipment he carried with him urged him to look for a larger vehicle. When most bandleaders in the business commonly drove vans and station wagons,Earl bought one of the eight-door monsters ordinarily used as airport limousines. His mile-long Chevrolet and Chrysler limousines largelycontributed to the spreading ofhis reputation, especially in the small country towns where he took his show. Hooker wasnot the only one in the business to use such an awkward automobile; Elvis Presley for one impressed his California fans during the summerof 1956 when he hit Hollywood in one of these, and this illustrious example wasfollowed by Junior Parker and Bo Diddley. "In his lifetime, [Earl]had two of those old long limousine things," says Bertha Nickerson. "He had another car, but most of the time, he took the van 'cause it was cheaper, I mean the coach, or whatever you wanna call it, limousine. He bought one. One got bad and he bought another one. 'Cause they would seat the whole band and still have room in the back, you know. That waythey just take one car." For added comfort, Earl installed a carry-all on top of the limousine, and he had his name painted in huge letters on the side. Even when he didn't have the time to post placards to advertise his show, he still drew crowds by driving his conspicuous car around. By the sixties, his limousine had become so famous that it became part of his routine alongside other featured attractions, as Dick Shurman recalls. "In fact, on one of his posters he had a picture of his limousine on it along with the people in the band. He had on his poster like 'Carey Bell—The Wizard of the Chromatic,' Tittle B. B.—The East St. Louis Blues Singer,' 'A Limousine,' and there wasa picture of his car on it." Hooker remained faithful to his limousines for close to fifteen years,ordering them from a specialized dealer in Arkansas, according to Big Moose 157 Guitars, Cars, and Women Walker: "That old long car, they put two cars and stuff together and make those cars, and these guys make these in Hot Springs, you know. See, they take the cars and they cut them half in two and they stick the transmission and stuff like that, and they put two more doors between that so that makes four doors on each side." His ceaseless road trips made an incredibly enduring driver out of Hooker, and his energy seemed inexhaustible when he had to cover long distances. But if his associates all concur in saying that Earl was a good driver who rarely entrusted with anyone the responsibility of his road ship, traveling with Hooker was seldom uneventful. When asked about his friend's caution on the road, Big Moose Walker provided a typical answer: "You's kiddin'?! He drove asfast as he could! Yeah, but he was a good driver. Earl did a lot of drivin' too, you know. He could drive, like leave [Chicago] and goto Lawton, Oklahoma, and thengo to St. Louisor Cairo, Illinois. You gonna sleep and wakeup, you'd be a mile and a half, or two miles, or ten miles from where you wasgoin'. I've seen him drive a thousand miles. But when he got sick, oh goodness! He wasterrible! He'd get on the other side lane. Yes!He'd tell us, 'I-H-I ain't gonna need you all here, I'm gonna carry you all with me!' and he'd get on the other side. I'd say,'Goddam !!!' he say,'Th-th-th-there ain't nothin' comin', man,' and zoom! He'd get on the other side. Drivin' along like that, and goin' up the hills, a hundred miles an hour!" Fortunately, Hooker was never involved in any serious accident, but his driving sometimes upset passengers unused to it, as the following story recounted by BillyBoyArnold confirms: "When we weregoing to Oklahoma, we were going somewhere in downstate Illinois, and [drummer] Billy Davenport was a verynervous type of guy. Hooker wasscaring him the wayhe was driving; he threatened to jumpout ofthe car and bla-bla. He wasmad and trying to stop him from driving too fast, and Hooker couldn't understand what was wrong with the guy.Of course Hooker wasdriving at top speed, and I remember this guy was back there moanin', saying his stomach was hurtin', he was goin' on vomiting, you know, because he wasscared to death. So Billy Davenport took over the driving, and Hooker got asleep, and that's really the reason whyhe let him drive. We were almost at St. Louis; it was daybreak, and Hooker got real tired. So Hooker let him drive a few miles. Then Hooker sawhe couldn't drive, and he took the car away from him." Guitars, Cars, and Women 158 In his quest for recognition with the members of his community, Hooker was very meticulous about his appearance, spending large amounts of money for his clothing. Until the last few years of his life, Earl remained a strict dresser. "He and Ihad both those two bad habits, clothes and cars," Arbee Stidham says. "We never dressed alike, but we loved clothes alike, and he'd say, 'Well, I got to go shopping/ and I'd say,'Well, I've been already,I don't have to go there today,' or somethin'. He was a conservative dresser, but he wore a lot of sport clothes. He liked sport coats, he liked different coats and slacks." Hooker's love of garments was inherited from Mary Hooker, herself a sharp dresser, especially when she wasgoing out with her son on a weekend evening. On such occasions, Hooker tried to dazzle people with garish outfits, his fascination for loud colors or unusual combinations urging him to brighten up the strict cut of his suits. Singer Lee Shot Williams makes a detailed description of Hooker's wardrobe: "His suits he wore was two-tone. If he had a brown suit, it would be dark brown on this side up this way,this legwouldbe dark brown, this arm and this chest'd be dark brown, and this other side'd be beige brown like that, that's the kinda suits he wore." If Hooker dressed with care in everyday life—an undeniable asset when trying to impress women—it wason the stage that the care with which he polished his image fully manifested itself. A logical complement to his instrumental brilliance, Earl's flamboyant costumes had much to do with the admiration he aroused in audiences, particularly around the rural areas he visited . "See, at that time, you didn't wear jeans much, jeans were not popular at that time. Youonly worejeans ifyou were goin' to work in the fields,"bluesstar B. B. King explains. "But Earl Hooker would alwayswear a shirt and tie, and if not shirt and tie, a beautiful shirt, nice, youknow, and other clothes to gowith. He looked real Chicago. He was a light-skinned black guy, very fair complected , verythin, kinda long-jawlike; slimfingers,verythin fingers.And he'd always wear a hat, and usuallyvery well dressed, most times. Most of the guys in Chicago alwaysdress, they're verydressy." With time, Hooker's tastes changed. During the second half of the sixties, his wardrobe evolved as he developed a penchant for western attire. In addition to tight-fitting jackets, he would usually wear a large Stetson hat, while leather vests, flashy shirts with frills, and gaudy shoes completed his western look. "The outfit that I remember him best for," friend Dick Shurman reports, 159 Guitars, Cars, and Women "he had a black cowboy hat, and he wore a black suit and a lilac ruffled shirt and lilac shoes, any wild kinda shirts. Now he wasn't a real fancy dresser, but you know he dressed up to a certain extent." Companionship, cars, clothes . . . being choosy about his standing and ap^ pearance wasjust another wayfor Hooker to enhance the attractiveness of his shows. As in other fields, Earl would put this meticulousness at the service of his only true passion: his music. Guitars, Cars, and Women 160 ...