As a youngster, Hooker initially turned his attention to religious music. I did that for five or six years, playing and singing spirituals, but I switched from spirituals to blues. They use the same patterns. I really don't know why I switched. Gosh, I just had a lot of soul for the blues, could express myself better and tell my story and hard times of different peoples and myself and the things that you come through - trials and tribulations.
Blues can express it better.
He had begun playing guitar shortly before taking up spiritual singing, inspired by the playing of his stepfather. The style I'm playing now, that's what he was playing. When he was quite young, Hooker's parents had separated, and some time later, his mother married Will Moore, who worked his own farm and frequently performed blues in the countryside around Clarksdale. He occasionally performed with Charley Patton when the celebrated Delta bluesman periodically left his home base at Dockery's Plantation to play in the Clarksdale area. Robert Pete Williams and other Louisiana country bluesmen have recorded in a somewhat comparable style, but Hooker's guitar playing really doesn't sound like anyone else's.