MUSIC IS A GIFT FROM GOD
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My Story
ZAKIYA HOOKER - Daughter of the Blues
Born Into The Blues
Zakiya Hooker was born in the Motor City - Detroit, Michigan - but she was also born into the blues. You could even say she had a front-row seat to the best the genre had to offer, right in her own living room - her dad was the renowned blues giant, John Lee Hooker. The blues has literally been with her from birth.
But rather than relying on her father, Zakiya has pursued life, and music, on her own terms, overcoming personal tragedy and skepticism along the way. But you know what they say: “The fruit never falls too far from the tree.”
Her music paints a broad swath in the styles it covers. A strong and versatile vocalist, the jazzy, blues sound on her debut European release, Another Generation Of The Blues, and her second international release, Flavors of the Blues, takes you in and out of songs like “Hey Lady,” “Baby You Busted,” “Receipt To Sing The Blues” and “Protect Me From The Blues.” In 1998, Zakiya was included in the Every Woman’s Blues compilation, and in 2002 she was invited to perform with Johnnie Johnson on “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” on the Clarksdale To Heaven tribute CD. In 2003, Zakiya released a live recording in Buenos Aires, Colors Of The Blues. In 2004 she performed “Mean Mean World” and “Rock These Blues Away” on her father’s Face To Face album. Her CDs "Keeping It Real" (2009), In The Mood (2015), "Legacy" (2020) and "Bluesman's Journey" (2023) were released on their family label, Boogie With The Hook Records.
Press photos
Press Reviews
ZAKIYA HOOKER
“In the Mood”
Pursuing a career as a blues singer and having a father like the iconic John Lee Hooker must be intimidating, but for Zakiya Hooker working in the shadow of her father’s legacy may not be as daunting because her approach and style is so distinct from the acoustic Delta and postwar electric, urban blues he personified. “In The Mood”, Zakiya Hooker’s fourth CD as a leader, shows that she has positioned herself as a versatile singer who excels in the soul blues style, who can also handle funk, jazz and country blues.
Produced by Ollan Christopher (Chris James), “In the Mood” was largely recorded in Argentina with local musicians whose grooves and solos provide an authentic and soulful framework for Hooker’s sultry voice that evokes a range of emotions from down home grit to tender poignancy. “Another Kind of Blues” is a soul blues that recalls the Malaco classics of Z.Z. Hill and Denise LaSalle. Other tunes in this vein include the rousing, horn-driven title track and the swaggering bravado of “Receipt to Sing the Blues”. The bouncy soul of “Look Me Up”, with its strummed acoustic guitar and subdued chorus of background singers, brings the Staples Singers’ work on Stax Records to mind. Hooker lays down some hardcore funk with a nasty girl attitude on “Let’s Do Something”. In direct contrast, the ballad “Drowning in Your Love” recalls Nancy Wilson’s elegant torch song stylings. A couple of tracks, the funky “Art of Divorce” and the mellow “Protect Me From the Blues”, find Hooker exploring the blues/jazz fusion territory that B.B. King pioneered with the Crusaders.
Hooker invokes her father’s legacy on two tracks: “One Step Two” with its pulsing, slow grinding groove and wailing harmonica and especially on “Hang On for a While”, a foot-stomping, acoustic guitar / harmonica country blues showcase. She closes the set accompanied by acoustic guitar and strings on the tender, lullaby-like “Sweet Baby J (John’s Song)”, a tribute to her late son. Zakiya Hooker is a late bloomer; she did not launch her blues career until her mid-thirties when she joined her father on stage in 1991. With “In the Mood” she makes it clear that she has come into her own on the contemporary blues scene.
Robert H. Cataliotti – Living Blues