John Lee Hooker - The Folk Lore Of John Lee Hooker & Folk Blues + 4 Bonus Tracks (2014)

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. If there’s still anyone out there reading this magazine who hasn’t at least one Hooker album in their collection, then you’re still a long way from qualifying as a blues aficionado. So this is a good place to start. 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.
Hooker has always been, and will remain, one of that Holy Trinity with Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, the men who form the very bedrock of dark, primeval music. Original, inspirational, often imitated, but never duplicated. What is there to say about this CD other than … you need it? Play it in the dark with a bottle of Jack Daniels – it’ll either scare you to death or thrill you out of your skin.