John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker – Burnin’ (Expanded Edition) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:08:02 minutes | 2,09 GB | Genre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Craft Recordings

In late 1961, John Lee Hooker stepped into a Chicago studio for a single-day session with Motown’s tight, swinging house band—which by then had propelled hits by Stevie Wonder, The Temptations and Marvin Gaye—and went electric. The menacing bluesman, who had established his brand as a bad-ass with a bad, if occasionally regretful, attitude, had been releasing country blues records for more than a decade, the kind that showcased his ability to wrestle with his psyche and channel those emotions through a helpless acoustic guitar and barked-out mumble of a voice. Armed with the outfit that became the Funk Brothers (guitarist Larry Veeder, bassist James Jamerson, keyboardist Joe Hunter and drummer Benny Benjamin), Hooker banged out eleven hardened, gripping electric blues songs that came out in 1962 as Burnin’. Those tracks were echoed in Bob Dylan’s similar electric turn three years later and their spirit resonated through the proto-metal of Cream and Led Zeppelin.
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John Lee Hooker – Travelin’ (1960/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 30:46 minutes | 303 MB | Genre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Music Manager

Travelin’ is an album by blues musician John Lee Hooker, recorded in Chicago in 1960 and released on the Vee-Jay label.

The Penguin Guide to Blues Recordings wrote that “Travelin’ “was the first of Hooker’s Vee-Jay albums to be recorded at a single session. Cut from the same cloth, the performances have little variety in texture and not much in tempo.”
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John Lee Hooker – The Real Folk Blues (1966/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 37:41 minutes | 720 MB | Genre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Geffen

The Real Folk Blues is an album by blues musician John Lee Hooker that was recorded in Chicago in 1966 and released by the Chess label. Additional tracks from the sessions were released as More Real Folk Blues: The Missing Album in 1991.
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John Lee Hooker – The Real Blues (1970/2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 28:41 minutes | 563 MB | Genre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Tradition Records

“John Lee Hooker was truly a seminal blues artist. Many of his songs are part of America’s blues music treasury,” said blues historian and Founding Executive Director of the GRAMMY Museum Bob Santelli. “In addition to impacting blues history, Hooker’s music influenced great rock bands like the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Yardbirds and ZZ Top. We’re thrilled to honor the King of the Boogie’s legacy and tell the story of his incredible career in his own home state.”
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John Lee Hooker – That’s My Story (1960/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 44:50 minutes | 442 MB | Genre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Music Manager

That’s My Story is a studio album by American blues musician John Lee Hooker, released in April or May 1960 on Riverside Records. The album was recorded in one session on February 9, 1960 at Reeves Sound Studio in New York City. It was produced by Orrin Keepnews and features the rhythm section from saxophonist Cannonball Adderley’s group, which included bassist Sam Jones and drummer Louis Hayes.
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John Lee Hooker – Sings John Lee Hooker (1982/2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 24:26 minutes | 440 MB | Genre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Archive of Folk & Jazz Music

John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1912 or 1917 – June 21, 2001) was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie. Hooker was ranked 35 in Rolling Stone’s 2015 list of 100 greatest guitarists.
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John Lee Hooker – Live At Montreux 1983 (2020 Remaster) (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:05:47 minutes | 876 MB | Genre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mercury Studios

The legendary bluesman John Lee Hooker brought his boogie style blend of rhythm & blues to deliver two blistering performances at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1983.

Joined by The Coast-to-Coast Blues Band they cover an impressive set of hits from across his career including ‘Boom Boom”, “Crawlin’ King Snake” and his very first single “Boogie Chillen’”.​
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John Lee Hooker – Live At Montreux 1990 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:00:47 minutes | 731 MB | Genre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mercury Studios

New York, NY (October 1, 2020)—On November 6th, The John Lee Hooker Estate and Eagle Rock Entertainment will release John Lee Hooker Live at Montreux 1983 & 1990 as a 2-LP set, digital video & digital audio.
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John Lee Hooker – Hooker ‘N Heat (1971/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:26:30 minutes | 3,37 GB | Genre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © EMI – EMI Records (USA)

When this two-LP set was initially released in January 1971, Canned Heat was back to its R&B roots, sporting slightly revised personnel. In the spring of the previous year, Larry “The Mole” Taylor (bass) and Harvey Mandel (guitar) simultaneously accepted invitations to join John Mayall’s concurrent incarnation of the Bluesbreakers. This marked the return of Henry “Sunflower” Vestine (guitar) and the incorporation of Antonio “Tony” de la Barreda (bass), a highly skilled constituent of Aldolfo de la Parra (drums). Sadly, it would also be the final effort to include co-founder Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson, who passed away in September 1970. Hooker ‘n Heat (1971) is a low-key affair split between unaccompanied solo John Lee Hooker (guitar/vocals) tunes, collaborations between Hooker and Wilson (piano/guitar/harmonica), as well as five full-blown confabs between Hooker and Heat. The first platter focuses on Hooker’s looser entries that vacillate from the relatively uninspired ramblings of “Send Me Your Pillow” and “Drifter” to the essential and guttural “Feelin’ Is Gone” or spirited “Bottle Up and Go.” The latter being among those with Wilson on piano. Perhaps the best of the batch is the lengthy seven-minute-plus “World Today,” which is languid and poignant talking blues, with Hooker lamenting the concurrent state of affairs around the globe. “I Got My Eyes on You” is an unabashed derivative of Hooker’s classic “Dimples,” with the title changed for what were most likely legal rather than artistic concerns. That said, the readings of the seminal “Burning Hell” and “Bottle Up and Go” kept their familiar monikers intact. The full-fledged collaborations shine as both parties unleash some of their finest respective work. While Canned Heat get top bill – probably as it was the group’s record company that sprung for Hooker ‘n Heat – make no mistake, as Hooker steers the combo with the same gritty and percussive guitar leads that have become his trademark. The epic “Boogie Chillen No. 2” stretches over 11 and a half minutes and is full of the same swagger as the original, with the support of Canned Heat igniting the verses and simmering on the subsequent instrumental breaks with all killer and no filler. The 2002 two-CD pressing by the French Magic Records label is augmented with “It’s All Right,” with a single edit of “Whiskey and Wimmen.”
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John Lee Hooker – Hard Times (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 48:18 minutes | 450 MB | Genre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Delta Music

John Lee Hooker (Coahoma County, Mississippi, August 22, 1917 – Los Altos, California, June 21, 2001) was a highly influential American #blues singer, guitarist and songwriter.

John Lee Hooker could be said to embody his own unique genre of the blues, often incorporating the boogie-woogie piano style and a driving rhythm into his masterful and idiosyncratic blues guitar and singing. His best known songs include “Boogie Chillen” (1948) and “Boom Boom” (1962).

There is some debate as to the year of John Lee Hooker’s birth, 1915, 1917, 1920, and 1923 have all been cited, 1917 (the date on his grave marker in Oakland, California) is the one most commonly cited although Hooker himself claimed, at times, 1920.
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John Lee Hooker – It Serves You Right To Suffer (1966/2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 32:37 minutes | 642 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Pono Music |  © Impulse! Records/Geffen Records

Anyone hearing this 1966 album for the first time may well be startled at the unfiltered passion and power of John Lee Hooker in his earlier days; a surprise when comparing Hooker’s later recordings with those made in the 1960s. His unmistakable raw voice has fully matured here, but his incantory style of singing appears markedly finer and more flexible. And then there is the perfect gem of a rhythm group whose sinewy sounds fill the grooves with merciless gravitational force: Barry Galbraith on second guitar, Milt Hinton on bass, William Wells on trombone and David “Panama” Francis on drums.

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