One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer

The version of One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer recorded by John Lee Hooker in 1966 does not sound like a simple repetition of the original song by Amos Milburn from 1953. Hooker gave it his own twist: he shortened the lyrics to the essentials, added dialogues, and set it to a rhythm that oscillates between Chicago boogie and his signature talking blues. The song does not progress in clean measures but moves in an irregular 4/4 time, as if time itself stretched with every drink the narrator orders. The result is a blues that not only talks about drunkenness but conveys it: Hooker’s voice sounds tired, insistent, as if the man had been in the bar for hours without the bartender paying him any mind.

Hooker recorded this version in Chicago during the sessions that would later form part of the album The Real Folk Blues (1966). Producer Ralph Bass and Marshall Chess let the bluesman move freely: he sings and plays guitar, while Eddie "Guitar" Burns accompanies him on strings. The original recording lasts three minutes and one second, but live—as in the take recorded at Cafe Au Go Go on August 30, 1966, with Muddy Waters’ band—the track lengthens, darkens, and gains an intensity the studio could not capture. There, Otis Spann’s piano and the musicians’ interplay gave the story of the drunkard ordering round after round a near-cinematic weight.