Although it is called a boogie, it resembles early North Mississippi Hill country blues rather than the boogie-woogie piano-derived style of the 1930s and 1940s.

Music critic Cub Koda calls the guitar figure from "Boogie Chillen'" "the riff that launched a million songs".

[4] Several rock musicians have patterned successful songs either directly or indirectly on Hooker's many versions of "Boogie Chillen'".

Recent hit singles by Muddy Waters and Lightnin' Hopkins had also used this stripped-down, electrified Delta blues-inspired approach.

[10] "Boogie Chillen'" is described by music critic Bill Dahl as "blues as primitive as anything then on the market; Hooker's dark, ruminative vocals were backed only by his own ringing, heavily amplified guitar and insistently pounding foot".

Essentially, it was a backcountry, pre-blues sort of music—a droning, open-ended stomp without a fixed verse form that lent itself to building up to a cumulative, trancelike effect".

[19] A key feature of the song is the driving guitar rhythmic figure centered on one chord, with "accents that fell fractionally ahead of the beat".

[5] Music journalist Charles Shaar Murray describes it as a "rocking dance piece ... its structure is utterly free-form, its basic beat is the jumping, polyrhythmic groove which he [Hooker] learned in the Delta".

[22] He also employed hammer-on and pull-off techniques, which are described as "a slurred ascending bass line played on the fifth string [tonic]" by music writer Lenny Carlson.

[26] "Boogie Chillen'" entered the Billboard Race Records chart on January 8, 1949, where it remained for eighteen weeks, and reached number one on February 19, 1949.

Hooker's singing is remarkable for vocal coloring and phrasing; his improvised lyrics aren't much—even if he does toss in a couple references to Detroit.

His dynamic rhythms and subtle nuances on the guitar and his startling disregard for familiar scale and harmony patterns show similarity to the work of Robert Johnson, who made many fine records in this vein.

[28]"Boogie Chillen'" became the most popular race record of 1949[29] and reportedly sold "several hundred thousand"[30] to one million[31] copies.

[e] In an experience similar to Muddy Waters' 1950 hit "Rollin' Stone",[33] the song's popularity allowed Hooker to give up his factory job and concentrate on music.

King, who was a disc jockey at Memphis, Tennessee, radio station WDIA at the time, regularly featured Hooker's song.

[16] In 1950, he recorded a faster version with different lyrics as "Boogie Chillen' #2" for Bernie Besman's Sensation label (also issued by Regal).

[39] The first two takes from the September 1948 Detroit recording session began appearing on various compilation albums in the 1970s, sometimes with the titles "John Lee's Original Boogie" and "Henry's Swing Club".

From the 1960s onwards, Hooker recorded several studio and live renditions of "Boogie Chillen'",[40] with guest musicians such as Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones.

1 chart status and its success, together with that of the Hooker hits that followed, inspired record companies to search out the new electric generation of country bluesmen".

[44] "Boogie Chillen'" was added to the U.S. National Recording Registry in 2008, which noted that "the driving rhythm and confessional lyrics have guaranteed its place as an influential and enduring blues classic".

[46] "Boogie Chillen'" has inspired several songs, beginning in 1953, when Junior Parker recorded his interpretation titled "Feelin' Good".

2", either directly or indirectly, include the radio hits "On the Road Again" by Canned Heat in 1968, "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum in 1970, and "La Grange" by ZZ Top in 1973, "Shake your Hips" by The Rolling Stones in 1972.

[51] When the ruling did not favor the publisher, the U.S. Congress was persuaded to amend the Copyright Act in 1998 to protect many songs recorded before 1978 from entering the public domain.

[51] However, Gioia noted, "Nonetheless, his [John Lee Hooker's 1948] spontaneous performance in a recording studio had led to a substantial change in U.S. intellectual property law".