John Lee Hooker

Album Reviews:

1959: I’m John Lee Hooker [1955–1959] 10/10

1963: Live at Sugar Hill [live 1962] 8/10

1966: It Serve You Right to Suffer 8/10

1966: The Real Folk Blues 7/10

1969: That’s Where It’s At! [1961] 6/10

1991: More Real Folk Blues: The Missing Album [1966] 6/10

Compilation Reviews:

1991: The Complete Chess Folk Blues Sessions [1966] 8/10

1991: The Best of John Lee Hooker [Music Club, 1958–1966] 5/10

2016: The Modern, Chess & Veejay Singles Collection 1949–62 [1949–1962] 9/10

I’m John Lee Hooker (1959)

It’s in him and it got to come out

Are you Texas Slim? Are you Birmingham Sam? Or are you Little Pork Chops? There’s only one man who can confidently reply with “I’m John Lee Hooker!” and still answer the question. Consisting of singles from the second half of the 1950s, this selection – technically a compilation, but it’s in the vein of how early blues albums were put together – almost by definition features a row of stand-out tracks. Hooker’s style was always set apart from current blues trends, although he followed their transformations closely. This is partly due to the sheer amount of travelling that Hooker undertook – like the bluesmen of yore, Hooker never stopped roaming. So, what he had was his basic style of foot-stomping and guitar-grinding which he could attune to this or that trend he picked up along the way.

This makes for a mixture with several centrifugal forces: For example, Hooker does play with bands, but is ultimately unconcerned with a band sound (as opposed to Muddy Waters) – a combo, to him, is really just another layer to lay his never-ending foot stomps on, to stress the insistent train-track rhythm even more. Where others looked for new song patterns, Hooker looked for ways to lag behind the band or his own foot. Where others searched for country blues role models, Hooker simply saw himself as a natural extension of blues legacy – no need to look back, the groove is right here, right now. This album has solo and combo tracks, and while Hooker did record and re-record these songs willy-nilly, the versions of “Boogie Chillun”, “Crawlin’ Kingsnake”, “Dimples” and so forth gathered together in this set pack a certain punch you won’t find anywhere else. Additionally, this album is a huge influence on the blues rock acts from the 1960s, popularizing crawling drags and throaty, menacing forward-momentum of mid-tempo hypno-boogie. Hooker and his incidental way of recording with or without accompaniment, of dropping into the studio for a great session or a forgettable drink, really is the blues. The same stuff in an endless row of interesting variations. He’s John Lee Hooker – a classic.

Live at Sugar Hill (1963)

The highway looks so lonesome

There are two John Lee Hookers inside you: One is an electrified boogie-train rattling down the tracks, one is a reptile crouched in the nearby ditch, only moving when you’re not looking. On this record, Hooker plays slow chords and cautious licks as if reluctantly giving away a secret, and mutters interjections of blues lines only occasionally – or so it seems. This extremely subdued (but electric) solo set is a small miracle, in a sense, and has Hooker pushing through songs in a meandering, but confident way – the guitar chops and deep vocals function both more like interjections, at the very lower limit of what is perceivable as groove. It’s absolutely wonderful, and, within the context of the genre, a unique take on blues. The way Hooker makes minute shifts in intensity, the subtle way he bends strings… the sound ironically has a lot to do with what college audiences expected from old, supposedly “rural” blues musicians during the early 1960s folk revival, Hooker adapting an “unplugged” sound, where his e-guitar exists briefly between pauses. Hooker also displays some unusual blues patterns, like the eerie “Run On Babe” which doesn’t change chords and has a restless forward momentum – it’s just an all-around mesmerizing performance. I like Hooker with his electric combos, but when he has to command space by himself, he really lives up to it.

It Serve You Right to Suffer (1966)

Your doctor put you on milk, cream and alcohol

What’s a blues album, anyway? Up to the mid-1960s, mostly collections of disparate singles or simply a selection of this or that session put on LP. Hooker, with his erratic recording routine, is especially unconcerned with the concept of „an album“, even more than his contemporaries. However, in the mid-1960s, this album (for Impulse!, no less) stands out slightly among his output. What’s the secret? Hooker didn’t play comfortably with bands – too idiosyncratic, too loose, too improvised where his rhythmic patterns and vocal interjections, which of course made his style unique, irritatingly interesting. This is a challenge for participating musicians, but this record finds a weird solution: Instead of accompanying Hooker, the band simply (seemingly) ignores him. Especially on the amazing opener, they play a steadfast, forward-driving rhythm completely in the pocket – giving Hooker the opportunity to play around them, fall back, stay on a groove, jump in where he pleases, lose or gain tempo… it is marvellous to behold. He himself sounds positively surprised (I’m clearly reading that into this, but it’s so fun if you give a close listen). The rest of the album is no slouch, displaying varying tempi and blues patterns – slow, ballads, boogie blues –, a bit of Hooker’s entire repertoire in a tightly controlled set-up that, to everybody’s surprise, completely liberates him. Great!

The Real Folk Blues (1966)

Album: Genre Acquisitio , 7/10 | Released: 1966 | Specific Genre: Electric Detroit Blues | Main Genre: Blues, Electric Blues | Label: Chess

We’re gonna get together one day

Recorded during the fad when weathered blues artists had to turn in a supposed “real folk blues” album for Chess (hilariously, these albums were mostly electric and the same artists where then plunged into psychedelic rock productions a little later), Hooker’s entry captures him in an amplified combo setting, rocking through a number of mid-tempo shuffles delivered in his classic off-the-cuff format, with lyrics and song titles seemingly made up on the spot. It’s never quite clear when and how Hooker chooses to contribute his vocal interjections, groans, semi-screams and throaty one-liners. It’s mostly good stuff, but Hooker had been at it for years and years now – the blues genre just had started to be part of the “album” concept, but even with famous numbers like “One Bourbon” or “Peace Loving Man”, Hooker made more important albums.

Having said that, this album features an absolutely astounding track, a track completely out of the expected for Hooker or electric blues. The album closer, “The Waterfront”, is clearly inspired by the old standard (“I Cover the Waterfront”), but what he does with it can only be described as a Hooker-ism. It is clearly the old familiar song – but also not, it’s as if he heard it on the radio in the 1930s and now tries to re-play what he half-remembers. It’s a weird, introspective rumination, no boogie, no Hooker-growls – just a lyrical, wonderfully subdued version of some old standard – in a broad sense, the way Hooker appropriates this piece of pop history really is “folk” music. Hooker – could he have been a gentle, crooning trad-pop vocalist? Fantastic track.

That’s Where It’s At! (1969)

Your fancy chords don’t mean nothing if you ain’t got that beat

In a different set of circumstances, Hooker would have been a figure from the Canterbury Tales, sitting on the town square and muttering incomprehensible couplets to himself. Records like this make me think that this guy’s brains were short-circuited by the blues at some point (in a good way) – it sounds as if he snuck into someone’s recording studio, recorded this set of slow-motion electrified delta blues for someone else to find in the morning. Hypnotic, dragging, solo guitar and feet stomps – it sounds as if Hooker retreats into his own sound. To release these esoteric 1961-tracks in 1969 is a bit awkward because Hooker was arguably at the absolute height of his popularity, at least with the in-crowd. Even weirder, there is an uncredited bass guitar on some tracks, as well as an uncredited male vocalist with whom Hooker trades lines on “Feel So Bad”. I also love the fact that “Please Don’t Go” and “I Just Don’t Know” are clearly from one semi-continuous take, with a sort of stop-start in between them. Anyway – if you want to turn someone off the blues, this could be the record: mono-maniacal, minimalistic, slowly moving. But for the Hooker-infected, it is probably more representative of the music Hooker was rooted in than his contemporary projects with hip young rock bands – “I don’t care about the fancy stuff, I just like the old-time stuff”, as he declares on “Slow and Easy”.

More Real Folk Blues: The Missing Album (1991)

I can’t do the shimmy, but when it comes to lovin’ I’m a lovin’ fool

With John Lee Hooker, there’s always more. This 1991 “missing album” (marketing speech) consists of the remaining tracks Hooker recorded in 1966 for the “real folk blues” series by Chess and the album of the same name. These tracks were neither lost nor elusive – just a session that rightfully gets its due in 1991, good stuff. The sound is Hooker with an amplified combo, changing between his raucous boogie and his slow delta drags. The Hooker staple “This Land Is Nobody’s Land” in its slow admonishing is really good, and overall, these tracks are about as good as the other tracks of the session, published as The Real Folk Blues (1966). A surprising highlight is “House Rent Blues” – Hooker recorded a myriad variations of this motif, but this one has a neat piano accompaniment and is even more focused on the narrative, with a downtrodden beat and a deadpan, fatalistic delivery. The way the track fades away with Hooker not making ends meet and stating in a defiantly defeated manner “I’m gone…”, is really cool.

I think the reason why these tracks were relegated might be that Hooker plays a few songs here that are arguably cover versions by other artists – Hooker always took what he wanted but usually transformed it through the power of his own style, just enough to avoid copyright issues. So, hearing him play Otis Rush’s “I Can’t Quit You, Baby” comparatively straight, or Robert Petway’s classic “Catfish Blues”, is actually refreshing now, but might not have been the ‘real folk blues’ Chess wanted from Hooker in the mid-1960s. Good, shuffling stuff, pretty relaxed boogie, but best acquired on the disc collecting the entire 1966 session, The Complete Chess Folk Blues Sessions (also 1991).

The Complete Chess Folk Blues Sessions (1991)

I got what I want, I don’t need your ad no more

Well, indeed: Combining Chess’s The Real Folk Blues (1966) and 1991’s More Real Folk Blues: The Missing Album (1991, MCA), this is the obvious and best way to get an important album from Hooker’s mid-1960s period as well as the neat remaining session tracks – they are about as good as the original album tracks, with less highlights, but a good opportunity to hear Hooker do ‘straight’ covers (for his standards) of famous blues standards next to more good material. Chess’s idea of “folk blues” for the series was arguably inspired by the (artistic) success of Muddy Waters’ unplugged album Folk Singer (1964), but they chose to record the Real Folk Blues series in the contemporary style of these artists: amplified, urban, Chicago style, harkening back to the Delta, but presenting “folk blues” as something happening ‘right now’ – probably more in line with the factual influence these Chess blues legends had on the British Invasion of the time. Blues by real folk, rather than real folk blues, so to speak – anyway, good disc here, a necessary addition to a John Lee Hooker collection.

The Best of John Lee Hooker (1991)

Fellahs, never get behind on your rent

A true early CD-era-collection, cramming as much stuff on one disc as possible – these discs where important back then, mind you. Music Club was a British label specializing in putting out these kinds of compilations for “older” music styles – Hooker’s disc here consists of late 1950s material (for Vee Jay records) up to mid-1960s tracks (for Chess). He was at the height of his popularity, re-recording songs, putting out albums from sessions reliably – so on the one hand, these tracks are good to excellent, some legendary, on the other hand they are just an assemblage of previously released tracks, either on album-collection (which you’d want to have, like I’m John Lee Hooker) or, in case of the lesser known tracks here, on earlier compilations like 1980s’ This Is Hip (Charly R&B). So, when I got this as a teenager, this was a useful disc, although it did give me the (false) impression back then that this is the “best of”-period for John Lee Hooker – and this skips over his first decade altogether. While it does collect what later would be seen as formative tracks for the international blues and rock scene, there is no systematic thought about it, it’s just a “bunch of good tracks”. Obsolete as an object, but as a lengthy disc of his ruggedly amplified Detroit boogie blues with a combo, fair enough.

The Modern, Chess & Veejay Singles Collection 1949–62

Boogie woogie is a thing you can’t get away from, it rides you all the time

Ah, the king of the endless boogie – and of the myriad pseudonyms. Hooker played the boogie blues wherever he could and wherever there was a market for it. He changed pseudonyms instead of chords and devoured labels like little pork chops. This collection addresses the obvious problem – that compiling early Hooker is a nightmare, a material one as well as a question of copyrights and licensing – head on, as the liner notes make clear:

“He recorded prolifically under a number of names, but this great value 101-track 4-CD collection focuses on the singles he released under his own name (or in the case of some Chess singles, as John Lee Booker) on the Modern, Chess and VeeJay labels from 1949 through to 1962.”

Hooker ended up making his best recordings under his own name (not as, say, “Texas Slim”), so in terms of importance, this collection only misses some major hits on labels other than Modern, Chess & Veejay. And it does a thorough job in many respects, as this collection, for instance, contains the entire [Album28738, The Legendary Modern Recordings 1948–1954]. As for pure quality of the material here – well, I’d say this is impeccable. Nearly covering his first 15 years, including the entire landmark-compilation “I’m John Lee Hooker”, this collection here is shock-full – I mean to the very brim – with classics, standards, brilliant cuts and whatnot. The slow drudging “Tupelo”? The overplayed, but indestructible “Boom Boom”? The song to start and end entire discourse patterns about rural vs. urban blues, “Boogie Chillun”?

I won’t continue – Hooker’s quasi-atavistic, but urban boogie blues is impossible to place in the usual ways to generalize blues tradition, and a hundred-and-one good to legendary tracks in a very, very well-made, diligently catalogued package with detailed recording and publishing information is a ravishing thing. It’s still not all of Hooker’s essential work – but how could it be? However, it is one hell of a boogie ride.