John Lee Hooker - The Real Folk Blues (1966) {2026 Chess Records 75 Series}

The 1966 John Lee Hooker album Real Folk Blues is the latest of several Chess Records' Real Folk Blues albums to be reissued for 2026 as part of the Chess Records 75 Series from Chess Records and Acoustic Sounds.

Whereas the rest of the LPs in the series by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and others were compilations of older recordings, the Hooker album was newly recorded in May of 1966 in Chicago.

Hooker was his inimitable and spontaneous self, reworking some of his older songs and improvising new ones, accompanied by his Detroit guitarist Eddie Burns and Chicago sidemen Lafayette Leake and S.P. Leary.