Boom Boom is just and awesome song by John Lee Hooker. Wikipedia actually refers to it as a blues standard even though it was written in 1961. Now I though something had to be way older than that to be a standard but hey, there is no denying this is one of the most recognizable tunes out there. Here is a link to an early recording of it so you can see how this song sounded.

John Lee Hooker was famous for his presence as he led his group through free flowing blues where he improvised frequently. Boogie Chillin’ and Crawlin’ King Snake come across like this too but Boom Boom, well, it just nails it. Nothing shows this better than his performance in the Blues Brothers movies. I mean check this out:

This rendition is was out there like Thelonious Monk or Miles Davis but blues not jazz. I think this really shows the progression as John Lee Hooker’s style evolved. Now while John Lee Hooker was taking his sound this way many people were recording John Lee Hooker songs in a more commercially appealing way. The best example of this must be In 1965 the Animal’s recorded an initially more commercially successful version of Boom Boom and with their release the song went commercial and is probably the one we all recognize.

I was thrilled to find this awesome lesson online and learn that Boom Boom is surprisingly easy to play. I think it’s a little fast but then it is the Animals version and apparently John Lee Hooker’s original was 168 beats per minute.

Hope you all got a guitar out and enjoyed that. Thanks to Bruce Lindquist for that fun guitar lesson.

Thanks to John Lee Hooker, The Animals and all of you for checking out this post.