The other night, just before Michael Anthony’s trio opened the show for Sammy Hagar and the Wabos at our local casino, they played this tune over the sound system.
Good tune to get people loose, to get people revved up.
So of course that makes it a good tune for Sleepy LaBeef, national treasure, to cover. It’s a familiar John Lee Hooker tune from 1962, and Sleepy recorded it on July 22, 1972, at Singleton Sound Studio in Nashville.
You know it as “Boom Boom,” but Sleepy’s version is called “Boom Boom Boom,” and is credited to B. Pender, Sharon Smith and Tony Lee. But they’re clearly Hooker’s lyrics, so I suspect the new credits and the extra “Boom” are for the more upbeat arrangement.
“Boom Boom Boom,” Sleepy LaBeef, from “A Rockin’ Decade,” 1997.
And a little bonus: Aikin, our man over at the fine Licorice Pizza blog, posted this last month.
“Boom Boom,” AC/DC, from “Shockingly Rare,” a 2006 bootleg. It’s Brian Johnson and Angus Young playing an impromptu bit at a French radio station. A perfect song for Johnson.
AM, Then FM 