One of my favorite musicians was John Lee Hooker and his deeply entrancing boogie, a droning one-chord style that is one of the more direct links from American electric blues to an ancient African sound pool.
From the Mississippi Delta, his exact birth year is disputed. His earliest musical experience was with spirituals before learning to play the blues from his step-father. He left home at 14 and by the '30s was playing on Memphis' Beale Street.
In 1943, after a few years in Cincinnati, he started working at the Ford Motors plant in Detroit while playing local clubs. Around this time he went electric. His first recording, "Boogie Chillen", was a big hit for the Modern label in '49. The '50s saw him recording under various aliases (to be able to slip out of contract for work) and both writing originals and interpreting/adapting standards.
Much of his act early on was as a solo or in duo with the few musicians that could deal with his foot-stomping beat and tempo changes, but by the '50s he started using backing players and he worked his style into R&B, folk-blues and rock settings. He embraced the blues-rock generation that embraced him and it greatly added to his opportunities. He appeared in movies, played with many greats of blues & rock and became a big concert attraction and award-winning recording artist.
Hooker played with the Steve Miller Band, Van Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, Canned Heat, Rolling Stones, Santana, ZZ Top and many, many more and became an American celebrity. A wise (if informally educated) man, he made a lot of good business decisions. Late in life he opened a nightclub in San Francisco, invested in real estate and cut several TV commercials. He did pretty well for himself financially.