snowce:

John Lee Hooker - One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer

If you put this on repeat, you get totally shitfaced.

(via redjeep)

“One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” by George Thorogood

(Words/Music: John Lee Hooker, Album: George Thorogood and the Destroyers, Rounder Records 1977)

One of the main elements of blues songs is that they very often tell stories. Robert Johnson went down to the Crossroads, and every blues singer after him was headed to or away from some place and extolling his or her tales of loves lost and/or abandoned. So when George Thorogood showed up on the scene in 1977 with “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” it was completely natural for fans of classic rock and blues rock to accept his storytelling style and believe his tale of the failure to find a job and new place to live, the separation from his woman, and his decision to drown his sorrows in alcohol. What most people didn’t know was that it was originally done by blues legend John Lee Hooker. And to be more precise, the song is actually TWO songs formerly performed by Mr. Hooker: the beginning is based on his song “House Rent Blues” and the second half of the song is “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” originally written by Rudy Toombs. 

The songs themselves are legendary enough, but the real genius is in Thorogood’s merging of them. I wonder at what point he decided to take a song about finding a place to live and segue into the song about drinking. To his credit, it seems perfectly natural and actually adds a bit more depth  to his problems and legitimacy to drinking away his troubles: not only doesn’t have anywhere to live, he also doesn’t have a woman anymore (oh, and no job either). I can imagine, given the improvisationary style of the blues, that before one show George told the Derstroyers “Hey, let’s jam on ‘House Rent Blues’ for awhile so we’ll eventually end up in ‘One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer’.” I’ve seen enough blues and jazz artists and jam bands to know that this amount of communication wasn’t even necessary (especially with really good musicians who have played together extensively) and it could have been one of those spur-of-the-moment epiphanies inspired by great music and a few drinks. Whatever the reason or origins of the song, listeners have been reveling in its storytelling for over thirty years now without even realizing what a piece of post-modern narrative brilliance it actually is. 

More George Thorogood: AmazonMP3 - last.fm - AllMusic - eMusic

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