How Hooker found his boogie: a rhythmic analysis of a classic groove

Abstract

This article closely analyses the rhythmic components in John Lee Hooker’s boogie. We show how Hooker recasts a signature riff from a ternary to a binary beat subdivision, paving the way for the triple-to-duple shift that characterised mid-century American popular music. Further, we attribute the boogie’s ‘hypnotic’ feel to two psychoacoustic phenomena: stream segregation and temporal order misjudgement. Stream segregation occurs when the musical surface is divided by the listener into two or more auditory entities (streams), usually as a result of timbral and registral contrasts. In Hooker’s case, these contrasts occur between the guitar groove’s downbeats and upbeats, whose extreme proximity also blurs their temporal order. These expressive effects are complemented by global and gradual accelerandos that envelop Hooker’s early performances.