John m. Lee

Recorded in 1995 with Germany's WDR Big Band, the album features 16 tracks with over 60 minutes of music including an a bonus track on the CD only. Dr. John arguably has never sounded better. Hisvocals are crisp and clear and joyful, as if he turned back the clock toanother time and to a jubilant state of mind.

Winding through the literally hundreds of titles in John Lee Hooker's catalog is a daunting task for even the most seasoned and learned blues connoisseur. This is especially true when considering Hooker recorded under more than a dozen aliases for as many labels during the late '40s, '50s, and early '60s. I'm John Lee Hooker was first issued in 1959 during his tenure with Vee Jay and is "the Hook" in his element as well as prime. Although many of these titles were initially cut for Los Angeles-based Modern Records in the early '50s, the recordings heard here are said to best reflect Hooker's often-emulated straight-ahead primitive Detroit and Chicago blues styles. The sessions comprising the original 12-track album – as well as the four bonus tracks on the 1998 Charly CD reissue – are taken from six sessions spread over the course of four years (1955-1959). Hooker works both solo – accompanied only by his own percussive guitar and the solid backbeat of his foot rhythmically pulsating against plywood – as well as in several different small-combo settings.

Rare 1992 UK 127-track remastered 6-CD box set compilation featuring a complete as possible collection of recordings from John Lee Hooker's Vee-Jay years, including previously unreleased tracks. Themaster expresses the passion of the blues, from blue mood to the boogie, showing his ability to transcend generations and conquer new audiences. Each disc is issued in a jewel case picture sleeve and housed in a silver embossed picture slipcase with a 28-page booklet.
John Lee Hooker was beloved worldwide as the king of the endless boogie, a genuine blues superstar whose droning, hypnotic one-chord grooves were at once both ultra-primitive and timeless. But John Lee Hooker recorded in a great many more styles than that over a career that stretched across more than half a century.

There's perfect symmetry in the way this four-disc anthology opens with a raw, solo acoustic 1948 rendition of John Lee Hooker's signature tune, "Boogie Chillen'," and then closes a half-century later with Eric Clapton teaming with Hooker on the same tune. Though the Mississippi bluesman who relocated to Detroit has been justly celebrated for his spellbinding repetitions and primal incantations, this comprehensive set shows just how much more range and depth there was to Hooker's music than basic boogie…

Two classic Hooker LPs, all digitally re-mastered, 22 solid slabs of dark, leathery, brooding nostalgia. This is the electric blues at its very roots. This stripped-bare, one man and a growling electric guitar (on most tracks) music is the stuff those guys who fled the south for the auto production lines in the north used to listen to. Hooker’s ‘talking blues’ style is well represented on Folk Lore. Great numbers like I’m Going Upstairs (and we all know what John was going up for), I Like to See You Walk and My First Wife Left Me start to haunt you like some swamp ghost. The Folk Blues tracks are no less powerful. Half A Stranger, Shake, Holler And Run, Down Child and Gonna Boogie all roll into one another to form a big, dusty landscape punctuated by mid-20th century American industry.

John Lee Hooker never abandoned his raw, gut bucket Mississippi-Delta-comes-to-the-city approach to the blues throughout his fifty-year career, and if he got a tad bit slicker towards the end of that career, it was only a tad and only by degree. There are innumerable Hooker collections on the market, and this two-disc set wouldn't be anything particularly special except that it actually charts through his entire history, beginning with the ageless "Boogie Chillen," which was recorded in 1948 and topped the R&B charts for Modern Records in 1949, through "Tupelo," which was recorded in 1993 and released on the Pointblank LP Chill Out in 1995.