The Great John Lee Hooker

VINYL FORMAT. After a few years spent climbing the ranks of the Detroit blues scene, in rolls 1948 and Hooker's "Boogie Chillen" - a variation on an "old lick" he says he heard the guys playing way back when in Mississippi - goes to the top of the charts. In the years that follow, John Lee Hooker has one hit after another, backed often only by a single sideman, the great Eddie Kirkland (because he was one of the only guys who could keep up with him!). Not in the sense that Hooker played fast or fancy; in fact, Hooker himself once said, "I don't play a lot of fancy guitar. I don't want to play it. The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks." These ten tracks have "mean licks" a-plenty, and take listeners back to that early period, beginning with his earliest single, 1948's "Sally Mae" and its B-side, "Boogie Chillen," through to 1954's, "I Need Love So Bad," the year before Hooker signed to Vee Jay.