SET OF JOHN LEE HOOKER SONGS FROM HIS SUPER '66 SESSION




Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy, when recording a covers tribute kind of album in recognition of the late John Lee Hooker, made an audible comment which got left on the album about the weird nature of John Lee's erratic time signatures on guitar and how hard it was to try and copy them, he said something to the effect that they were like a wacky windscreen wiper that was broken and out of control. 

Guy was about right, John Lee Hooker made a career out of playin a brand of blues guitar which no one else could either play with or keep up with. 

However eccentric and off beat his style was,
John Lee was hugely influential, without him believe it or not AC/DC wouldn't have had a quarter of the guitar riffs of his which Malcolm Young quite often copied and amplified to heavy metal proportions, and Billy Gibbons out of ZZ Top might have been a bit lost without him in the vocal stakes. 

They're just two examples in the rock world, John Lee was a major influence over so many other blues artists, especially those in the Delta blues category and heaps more rock artists. 

I am not particularly a fan of John Lee's 80's and early 90's recordings, he was really trying to be a crossover artist around that time, like the 'Black Clapton', but was not real convincing. 

He recycled one of his 60's songs for an album bearing the title MR. LUCKY, possibly the best offering of his from the latter era, but to me John Lee's best songs come from one solitary recording session way back in the year 1966. 

I am not sure if all these songs were packaged together on an album in that era, quite possibly they were, I have a John Lee album that's simply titled THE BEST OF JOHN LEE HOOKER, it was released in 1994 on the MCA label. 

The barrelhouse piano romp of ONE BOURBON, ONE SCOTCH, ONE BEER differs a lot with the doornail drone and melodramatic density of outlaw song I'M BAD LIKE JESSE JAMES. 

The cutting IT SERVES YOU RIGHT TO SUFFER showcases one of John Lee's most powerful vocals, which in 1966 was only upstaged by the virtually vocal only THE WATERFRONT, one of the most incredibly powerful and melodramatic performances in the history of the blues.

Some other classics from this '66 session include the rhythm and blues roll of STELLA MAE, I`M IN THE MOOD and another one of John Lee's vocal extravaganzas, PEACE
LOVING MAN. 

Songs that make for a great night of drinking and dancing and imagining that you are deep in Louisiana.

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