The Best Of John Lee Hooker: 20th Century Masters Of The Millennium Collection [

Performer: John Lee Hooker
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Includes liner notes by Joseph Laredo. All tracks have been digitally remastered. This is part of MCA's 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection series. Composer: John Lee Hooker. The end of the millennium made it easy for the music industry to put the stars of the 20th Century into historical perspective, a mutually beneficial phenomenon that provided both new marketing opportunities and a chance for the uninitiated to discover the musical treasures of the past. Such is the opportunity afforded by the 20TH CENTURY MASTERS series. John Lee Hooker is certainly one of the most important figures in the history of the blues, and this compilation does an admirable of job of covering his prolific career in a single disc. For some reason (licensing issues?), many of Hooker's best-known songs ("Dimples," "Boogie Chillun," "Crawlin' King Snake") are absent. However, this makes room for lesser-known, equally worthy cuts. The stoic, sinister "I'm Bad Like Jesse James" and the harrowing "It Serves You Right to Suffer" show Hooker in all his footstomping, electric guitar snakecharming glory.

John Lee Hooker is the most elemental of the electric blues giants. His spooky musical minimalism--plaintive yet powerful vocals coupled with guitar work alternately haunting and toe-tapping--has inspired countless artists, from contemporaries like Slim Harpo to acolytes the Rolling Stones. Few, however, can summon up the inexplicable erotic charge at the heart of Hooker's best performances. The patented "boogie" rhythm upon which seemingly every blues-rock and hard rock band of the 1970s wrought variations was virtually invented by Hooker. One of the most-recorded post-war bluesmen, Hooker released records on countless labels, working much of the time in Detroit and Chicago. He kept working well into his eighties, his style growing ever more refined and penetrating.

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