Brooklyn-based jazz guitarist and vocalist Dida Pelled takes on “Dimples” by John Lee Hooker and reframes it without altering a single word. The result is playful, provocative, and unmistakably hers. American Blues Scene is exclusively premiering the video for Pelled’s rearranged rendition today.
Rather than defaulting to the song’s traditional swagger, Pelled softens and sharpens it at once: jazz-inflected vocals wrap around fluid, harmonically rich guitar lines. Where Hooker’s version carries a fixation, Pelled introduces ambiguity and agency. Devotion versus possession becomes the subtext of her interpretation.
As Pelled shares with us:
When John Lee Hooker wrote ‘Dimples,’ he captured the obsession that comes with a fresh love. I’ve always wondered whether ‘you’re my babe, I got my eyes on you’ was meant to feel comforting or controlling. I wanted my version to be unambiguously queer with the reckless energy of a U-Haul lesbian. My wife and I star in the music video, and our U-Haul is a horse named Domino. We shot it at Jamaica Bay Riding Academy and welcomed the year of the Fire Horse with breathless make-outs in the hay.
This is the second chapter in a three-part visual story for my album I Wish You Would. The first single, ‘Hesitation Blues,’ set the scene of love at first sight. It was shot in a strip club in my wife’s rural Idaho hometown. We wanted to corrupt the meet-cute, flip the gaze, and get a little deviant with it. This is my first recorded blues album, and with ‘Dimples,’ I am really putting my heart on my sleeve and my ass on the line.
I Wish You Would, Pelled’s fifth album and first fully blues-centered recording, grew organically from years of live performance rather than from a preconceived studio concept. “The idea behind this was to do the repertoire I had been doing for years, but which I hadn’t recorded yet,” she says. “We thought deeply about the songs, and I picked the ones that have really stuck with me.”
The album draws largely from classic blues writers, including Howlin’ Wolf, Billy Boy Arnold, and Dave Van Ronk, while also reaching into jazz sources like pianist-composer Mary Lou Williams. She’s joined by a rhythm section capable of matching her elasticity at every turn: pianist Sullivan Fortner, bassist Tony Scherr, and drummer Kenny Wollesen — musicians whose collective résumé spans jazz, folk, indie, and beyond. Their interplay gives the record both looseness and precision, allowing Pelled to stretch phrasing, bend time, and flirt with genre without losing the blues’ core pulse.
What makes I Wish You Would compelling is not just the repertoire, but the perspective. Pelled doesn’t treat the blues as historic museum material. She inhabits, tests the edges, questions its assumptions, and expands its point of view.
Dida Pelled Concert Dates:
April 1 – New York, NY – Mezzrow
April 10-12 – San Francisco, CA – Black Cat
June 17 – New York, NY – Joe’s Pub
