The John Lee Hooker Cocktail

The legendary John Lee Hooker recorded Amos Milburn’s original 1953 One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer in his own version of One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer in 1966 For Chess Records on the album Real Folk Blues. Hooker took this popular drinking blues song and made it his own laying down new lyrics and narrative to the story of a man in a bar at closing time looking to quickly consume enough booze to drown his sorrows. Later, George Thorogood would record the song for his 1977 debut album George Thorogood and the Destroyers where he would combine One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer with another Hooker hit, “House Rent Boogie”, providing more of a backstory for the bar patrons pursuit of accelerated inebriation. One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer is a great tune that has evolved from it’s original 1953 Amos Milburn version through the John Lee Hooker recording and then Hooker, Thorogood collaborations. The song has been covered by several artists since and serves as the inspiration for this week’s Stave & Slide featured cocktail. While not quite representative of the spirit of simplicity of the song, and not intended to knock you off your at home bar stool, the drink combines all three ingredients of the tune, no easy feat, and puts them together in a surprisingly delicious and refreshing way. This is Stave & Slide’s riff on Greg Seider’s original John Lee Hooker mixed up at Summit Bar in NYC.