In a new ad for Chili’s, the 36-year-old restaurant chain, an office worker in his 20s approaches the cubicle of a co-worker, and asks, “Hey Jill, you want to go to Chili’s tonight?”
She swivels in her chair, smiles, and when she speaks what comes out is the voice of the bluesman John Lee Hooker, singing, “I love that talk, when you talk like that, you knocks me out, right off of my feet.”
Looking surprised but undaunted, he says, “So, that’s a yes, or — ?”
As she nods, it is again the voice of the late Mr. Hooker from “Boom Boom” — first released in 1962 — that she incongruously lip-syncs, “Hoo, hoo, hoo.”