The original boogie man, John Lee Hooker sustained a career of more than 50 years with his incessant one-chord stomp and half-spoken vocal style. But behind the captivating, hypnotic rhythm Hooker found his own deep blues – one with dark tones and mysterious flurries of notes – as he groped to express, often with a wicked irony, his own feelings of pain and desire.

Though Hawkins’ songs didn’t top the charts, they’ve had an enormous influence on music. Every artist who has recorded creepy music in the past 50 years – or used wild and shocking props on stage – can thank Hawkins for doing it first. And his songs have made their way into the pop culture consciousness.

It’s impossible to guess what the blues might’ve sounded like, had there never been a Howlin’ Wolf – that mountain of a man, with a voice like a thunder-crack, a sulphur-throated force of nature whose bone-rattling voice screeching tales of betrayal, loneliness and death at fans whom he stared at bug-eyed and sweaty as he howled.