Charles Shaar Murray

Charles Shaar Murray became known through British music criticism, and his books combine biography with a long view of blues and rock history. His study Crosstown Traffic, about Jimi Hendrix and postwar music, received the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award. In Boogie Man, Murray turns to John Lee Hooker, drawing on direct access to the singer and guitarist to separate a complicated life from the legends that accumulated around it. Published by St. Martin’s Press as Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century, the book follows Hooker from Mississippi through obscurity, commercial recognition, setbacks, and renewed acclaim. Murray connects those changes to the music itself, treating Hooker’s voice, rhythm, and storytelling as expressions of a wider blues tradition rather than isolated stylistic traits. The authorized biography also gives Hooker room to challenge conflicting stories repeated on record sleeves. Its scale makes one musician’s career a route through twentieth-century American music and the industries that presented it.