“Boom Boom” by John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker wrote "Boom Boom" and first recorded it in 1961, and on Vee-Jay it crossed over in 1962, making its mark on the American R&B and pop charts alike. The critic Charles Shaar Murray went so far as to rate it the finest pop song Hooker ever wrote, and it's easy to hear why: it's the blues cut down to a hook you can't shake.

It went on to become a blues standard and one of Hooker's most recognizable, durable numbers; no self-respecting British R&B band of the early 1960s could leave it out of its set, and it has been recorded over and over since. Three decades after its first run, it came back as a UK top-twenty hit in 1992.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.