Earl Hooker (January 15, 1929 – April 21, 1970) was an American blues guitarist. Born Earl Zebedee Hooker in Clarksdale, Mississippi, his impoverished family moved to Chicago, Illinois when he was still an infant. Influenced by parents and relatives who played music, he was a cousin of John Lee Hooker and began playing guitar as a teenager. An instrumentalist, within a few years Hooker put together a band that toured the United States and made some of his first recordings for Sam Phillips at Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee.