Inauguration Radio Station: John Lee Hooker, Jr. Says “People Want a Change”

John Lee Hooker, Jr. has a simple plan for celebrating the inauguration.

“I’ll have a box of tissues here—no, a handkerchief—but I’ll be sitting on the couch, man, and relaxing and watching history be made.”

The son of the Boogie Man knows a thing or two about “change we can believe in.” After a precocious childhood on the Detroit blues circuit—and backing up his dad on tour and on wax—the would-be bluesman fell off the wagon, hard, and languished through broken relationships and crippling addiction for what he describes on his Web site as “many, many years.”

In 2004, though, he came back with a vengeance—Blues with a Vengeance, to be precise, the Grammy-nominated debut record that marked his return to the path of righteousness.

Now, with his ‘08 album All Odds Against Me he’s up for another Traditional Blues Grammy, and has crafted a new superhero persona for himself: Bluesman.

“Ever since I was a kid I always wanted to fight for truth and justice—fighting the pimps and rescuing the prostitutes and the damsels in distress,” Hooker Jr. said in a phone interview from his home in California. “Ironically, I got on the wrong side of justice. So I thought how fulfilling it would be for my dream to come true through animation.”*

[Video and more below the jump.]
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