Devil's Jump

Album: The Best Of John Lee Hooker (1949)
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Songfacts®:

  • Lyric-wise there is nothing special about this John Lee Hooker composition, but as Pete Townshend said in the November 2014 BBC documentary Play It Loud: The Story Of The Marshall Amp, Hooker had the idea of putting the microphone inside the guitar, restringing the instrument and singing into it which gave "this incredible distorted noise." Townshend said it blew him away the first time he heard it, adding that "[Rock musicians] can't claim to have invented distortion."
  • "Devil's Jump" was released in 1949, and was also credited to Texas Slim (a Hooker pseudonym). Like other obscure releases such as "Mockin' Bird Hill" (1951) and "Space Guitar" (1954), it shows the debt later generations of musicians owe to their predecessors, or as Sir Isaac Newton put it, standing on the shoulders of giants. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 2

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