Contributing to this atmosphere of boogie fever was the 1968 Canned Heat album, Boogie with Canned Heat, featuring “On the Road Again.” No, not the Willie Nelson song, but rather, the hit single and mystical boogie number; well, not really mystical, but strangely strange, thanks to the vocal by Bob Hite and harmonica by Alan Wilson. “On the Road Again” was copped from the semi-obscure Chicago bluesman Floyd Jones (who took his cues from “Big Road Blues” by Tommy Johnson, and suddenly we’re back in the Delta again). As great as that single was and is (as was their other hit, “Goin’ Up the Country”), Canned Heat eventually moved into dreaded boogie territory like long solo-ing and over-jamming, which made way for a legion of blues-based rock bands with an emphasis on boogie. 

Just imagine the ’70s rock fan who yelled “Boogie!” during the slow numbers and you get an immediate picture of the non-discriminating fan of the boogie- rock band. It is only a short leap from there to the Budweiser blues of the Blueshammer variety that nearly bludgeoned the blues itself to death in the ’80s and ’90s. I’m talking once semi-reasonable English bands, like Slade and Status Quo, that degenerated into bottom feeders of the boogie barrel; I’m talking Southern rock bands, like Molly Hatchet and the Outlaws; need I say more? I’m talking the prime offender, Foghat. Acts like Pat Travers and George Thorogood, though seemingly different on the outside, both chugged from the same boogie-filled trough. Forgive me for mentioning “Doctor Doctor” by UFO, but it brings back a chill. If they were as popular at your high school as they were at mine, these bands were likely committi
ng heinous crimes of the listening, as well as the boogie kind.

Perhaps not wishing to miss out on any of the precious boogie action, the disco inferno concurrently raging during boogie-rock’s reign experienced its own boogie meltdown. You can’t really blame it on “Jungle Boogie” by Kool and the Gang, a pre-disco precursor, nor on Stevie Wonder’s “Boogie On Reggae Woman”, but “Boogie Fever”, “Boogie Nights”, “Boogie Wonderland”, and “Boogie Shoes”, all hits of the disco era, were fairly weak defenders of “boogie.” Between all this boogieing and the likes of Foghat, the people began to cry uncle. Is it any wonder this is right around the same time punk rock came along?

There would be nary a word from the house of boogie for the next decade, nearly two. The word ‘boogie’ had become to tastemakers what styrofoam is to green people. KRS-One came first to reclaim the b-word in the ’80s with Boogie Down Productions, though it was left to garage bands of  Detroit to bring back the real live boogie sound.

So sometime before the Great Detroit Rock Explosion of the 21st Century, garage-punk band the Gories not only shamelessly cut “Boogie Chillen’”, they went for a full-on 12-bar boogie-rock jam on “You Done Got Wrong.” The Gories were a profound influence on the area’s bands to be and it was as if in one small move, all memory of the beer-swilling, confederate flag-waving Charlie Daniels Band could be laid to rest. The next generation of boogie children were born… the Von Bondies, the Detroit Cobras, and the White Stripes, who most recently boogied on “Rag and Bone” (”Black Math” and “Screwdriver” boogie too).

Jon Spencer tried to boogie, and once and awhile he did, especially in his associations with R.L. Burnside whose “Old Black Mattie” boogie was featured in the film Black Snake Moan.

The Black Keys don’t really boogie, though I wish they would. Covering Burnside’s contemporary, Junior Kimbrough, on Chulahoma they came close, as did the title song on their second album, Thickfreakness, which came closer.

Is it really possible that boogie may be making a (slight) return? Perhaps it doesn’t deserve the completely bad rap it ended up with. Maybe it’s not just a word yelled at concerts by fans of Elvin Bishop and Stevie Ray Vaughan like I thought it was. And maybe we needn’t “Blame it on the Boogie”, like Michael Jackson told us we should.

Ok, so the jury’s still out on it, but for now I think I’ll bow my head for a minute and pause to remember John Lee and those who’ve passed down the boogie line. When it feels like the appropriate amount of time has passed, I will lift my head up, take a deep breath and exhale the only thing I can think of that’s appropriate. C’mon, be brave and say it with me now: “Let’s Boogie!”

Watch: John Lee Hooker, the Stones, and Clapton perform “Boogie Chillen” [at youtube.com]

Read past installments of Origin of Song:

When a Good Song Goes Bad

Bo Diddley: The Originator

Well C’mon! I Wanna Be Your Dog