John Lee Hooker made a guitar sound like it was walking down a dark road. One chord. That's all he needed. He didn't follow the twelve-bar form because he followed his own pulse -- and his pulse was a boogie that never stopped. Boogie Chillen' hit #1 on the r&b charts in 1949 and proved the blues didn't need chord changes to hypnotize a room.

He recorded under a dozen different names for a dozen different labels because he kept signing contracts without reading them -- a habit that cost him money but never cost him the music. When the British blues boom happened, Hooker just shrugged and kept doing what he'd always done: one chord, one groove, one foot stomping on a board.

The Healer in 1989 brought him full circle -- Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, and Robert Cray all came to play on his record. He was in his seventies and suddenly bigger than ever. Boom Boom. Dimples. Hobo Blues. He died at 88, the oldest living link to the Delta, and the boogie never stopped.

The Hook outlasted every trend, every label, every contract he signed without reading. By the end, he was the last of the Delta originals, and the whole world had finally caught up to what he'd been doing for sixty years. One chord. One groove. Boogie Chillen' is still Saturday night refusing to turn into Sunday morning.