A rare concert by a blues legend
inspired Midnight Son: A Tribute to John Lee Hooker, to be released by the UT
Press on Monday, April 17. UT Press will commemorate the release with a signing
party from 4 p.m.-7 p.m. in the Plant Hall Grand Salon. Light refreshments will
be served.
Photographer Timothy Kennedy captured John Lee Hooker’s summer
solstice concert on June 21, 1975, in Anchorage, AK, a “land of the midnight
sun” that time of year, from an unusual vantage point—onstage with the
performer. Hooker had established a tradition of performing on the summer
solstice every year.
Five years ago, Kennedy, a professor of
communication at UT, rediscovered his negatives of that memorable 1975
performance. He decided that the event deserved to be memorialized in an
exhibition. When Kennedy tried to contact Hooker to tell him of the exhibition,
he learned that the legend had died on June 21, 2001, the summer solstice and
anniversary of the concert.
With Monday’s release of Midnight Son, 16
duotone plates from the exhibition become available to the public in a limited,
signed, cloth-bound edition.
For more information, contact Dr. Richard
Mathews or Sean Donnelly at (813) 253-6266 or
utpress@ut.edu.