With audiences from Little Rock, Arkansas, to Paris, France, calling out for more, John Lee Hooker Jr. is doing more than simply capitalizing on a name. Even though his childhood was spent watching and learning as his famous father put blues on the world map, Hooker Jr.'s sound contains no shortage of his own invention. Using an approach he describes as "two parts R&B, one part jazz and down-home blues," Hooker Jr. masters the progressive elements of late-'60s R&B enhanced with cool touches of early-'60s jazz and immersed in the soul potential of country blues.

In a telephone interview with The Prague Post, Hooker Jr. talked about some early musical impressions garnered while growing up in Detroit during the '60s, a time when he saw local acts like Stevie Wonder and the Temptations graduate from local stages to the global airwaves. It left an impression.

"When I was a kid in training, I was easily influenced because everyone needs an anchor, a form, not to step into, but to look at the mold and see how they are shaped," he says. "So yeah, I was influenced by the legends and the greats. But now I can walk on my own."

Walking may be an understatement to describe Hooker Jr.'s recent success. In 2004, his Blues with a Vengeance CD was awarded a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album. While the award was well-deserved, the term "traditional" seems less than apt in describing Hooker Jr.'s music, which he describes as "loaded with buckshot pellets aimed every genre, every age, creed, color and sexuality ... trying to hit them all."

Of all the buttons pushed on Hooker Jr.'s 2006 CD Cold as Ice (on the Telarc label), the most important is fast-forward. Both musically and lyrically, he comfortably slides into the home plate that blues has been straining to reach for the past 20 years. Part of his inventiveness is an inherited knack for what he calls "current-event blues." Asked about his use of topical content, Hooker Jr. says, "My father sang 'Motor City Burning,' Marvin Gaye sang about the war, and I'm singing about the war. It just keeps going — but this is 21st-century blues now."

All this is balanced by moments of tongue-in-cheek humor bound to put a smile on any listener's face. On his current tour, Hooker Jr.'s modern blues voice is supported by Gig Anderson's sizzling keyboards, Jeffrey James' flying guitar responses, Keenan Shaw on bass and Michael Rogers, whom Hooker Jr. calls "the funkiest drummer in the world."