John Lee Hooker, born circa 1917 and long associated with the Delta around Vance, Lambert, and Tutwiler, became one of the most famous and successful blues singers in history. He spent many of his early years with his family in the cottonfields around Vance and Lambert, learned guitar in the style of his stepfather Will Moore, and was also influenced by Tony Hollins, who gave him his first guitar. His father, William Hooker, was a preacher and former sharecropper near Vance who disapproved of the blues, and Hooker later gave vague and sometimes contradictory accounts of his own early life, citing August 22, 1917, as his birth date although census records suggest he was several years older. After stays in Memphis and Cincinnati and returns to the Vance-Lambert area, he settled in Detroit, made his first recordings in 1948, and rose to international celebrity with hits including “Boogie Chillen,” “I’m in the Mood,” and “Boom Boom.” His distinctive boogie style, which he said was identical to Will Moore’s, linked the early days of blues with a mix of down-home sounds and urban sensibilities that resonated with many southerners who migrated north seeking work and a better life. Known for improvising new songs in the studio, he recorded prolifically for many labels, often under pseudonyms, later reached rock 'n' roll and folk audiences, and enjoyed a major resurgence beginning in 1989 with The Healer and other collaborations with leading rock artists. He received four GRAMMY Awards, a Rhythm and Blues Foundation Pioneer Award, stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in Clarksdale, and induction into both the Rock and Roll and Blues Halls of Fame. After moving to California in the late 1960s, he owned the Boom Boom Room in San Francisco and died at his home in Los Altos on June 21, 2001. His cousin Earl Hooker, also from the Vance area, was widely regarded by fellow musicians as the best guitarist in the blues; he performed as a teenager on the King Biscuit Time radio show in Helena and later played and recorded with Ike Turner, Junior Wells, and many others, including his own Chicago-based group, the Roadmasters.