Nesbert "Stix" Hooper was born August 15, 1938, in Houston, Texas. At sixteen he formed the Swingsters, the group that evolved through several names before becoming the Jazz Crusaders in the late 1950s, alongside pianist Joe Sample, tenor saxophonist Wilton Felder, and trombonist Wayne Henderson. Hooper studied at Texas Southern University and later at California State University, Los Angeles. His in-the-pocket, soulful drumming was one of the defining elements of the Jazz Crusaders' evolution from hard bop into jazz-funk, and remained central to the band's sound through its 1971 rename to the Crusaders and its commercial peak on 1979's Street Life. The band's own story is told in full in The Crusaders' JazzProfiles.com profile.

Hooper began a parallel solo career while still with the band, releasing The World Within in 1979. He left the Crusaders in 1983, a departure widely credited as the beginning of the end for the group's classic lineup, and continued recording as a leader for the next four decades: Touch the Feeling (1982), Lay It on the Line (1989), and a later-career run including Many Hats, Jazz Gems, and Mainstream Straight-Ahead (all around 2010), Live in L.A. and We Went West (2015), and Orchestrally Speaking (2022).

Outside his own catalog, Hooper worked sessions and stages with an unusually wide range of artists, including B.B. King, Marvin Gaye, Quincy Jones, Grover Washington Jr., Nancy Wilson, Grant Green, Arthur Fiedler, George Shearing, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Rolling Stones. He was named one of Playboy and Downbeat magazines' top three drummers ten times, and later served as National Vice Chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and president of its Los Angeles chapter.

Now in his late eighties, Hooper is one of two surviving original Jazz Crusaders, alongside flutist Hubert Laws, and performed as recently as 2024 at a Houston tribute concert honoring the late Joe Sample.

Hooper's playing is often credited as a foundational influence on the soulful, in-the-pocket jazz-funk groove that defined the Crusaders' sound and, by extension, a large swath of 1970s crossover jazz. His decades of session and touring work across jazz, R&B, pop, and orchestral settings reflect the same genre-agnostic versatility this project traces across the whole crossover era.