Search - John Lee Hooker :: Trilogy

Rambling unfocused selection, but good stuff at a good price

happydogpotatohead | New Orleans, LA USA | 05/18/2000

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Basically this is a lot of stuff tossed into one big pot and stewed together. There's no apparent logic to the selection, and some of the sources are a bit dubious; on the first CD in particular I hear vinyl noise, and the recording quality varies, sometimes from song to song.BUT...there is some awful good stuff on here, and at a very hard-to-beat price for three CD's that are around an hour each. There's no way to tell when this stuff was recorded; I suspect it was from the 50's and 60s, when John Lee would basically record for anybody who fronted him some cash. As a result some of these recordings have a real guerilla blues, down-home sound. The first CD mostly consists of John Lee by himself, his big ole foot slamming into the floor, his distorted, honking, blaring guitar, and him growling, singing, mumbling and sometimes shouting over the ensuing racket. This is John Lee at his most primitive. The sound is raw, but if you aren't used to raw-sounding blues recordings by now you shouldn't even be listening to the blues. The recordings are generally clear; it just sounds rude, crude, and vicious. About 3/4 of the way through the first disc a band consisting of snare drum, bass and piano begins to accompany him. Some of these recordings are pretty trashy, but for the most part they work.The second disc is John Lee with a band. John Lee is not easy to play music with because he tends to turn a 12-bar blues into a 13, 16, or 9-bar blues at will. The unnamed band accompanying him doesn't sound bad at all, but occasionally they have to scramble to keep up with John. Still, they connect with John more often than not and rock out. There are some strong songs and performances on this disc, and some lesser-known songs that will be interesting to blues scholars.The third disc is definitely from the early 60s and features John Lee with a band again. It seems like the band is a little bit better connected with him than on the 2nd disc. It almost sounds like most of the material is from the same session as the second disc. No way to tell, because there are no liner notes. On the inside of the box is a small 2-page insert which basically gives you the names of the songs on each disc and a couple of pictures of John Lee from the late 50s or early 60s wielding an Epiphone electric.Overall I would say this CD is worth having. It's not expensive and there's a ton of material on here, and most of it is of good quality. More importantly, the performances from John are strong throughout. Fans of cleaned-up, sanitized, digitized blues will not be happy with this, but for people who regularly listen to imitators like Jon Spencer, here is the real, rough, crude, barfightin', low down dirty article. The two missing stars are for the absolute lack of sequencing and the total absence of liner notes/musician credits. The three stars are for the fact that it's a big fat hunk of John Lee Hooker's music at a dirt cheap price, and the performances are definitely worth buying this for."

Awesome rare Hooker at a bargain price.

K. R. Fisher | Pasadena, CA USA | 04/02/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a great CD. The first CD alone is worth the purchase price. It consists of rare sides transcribed from old 78's from obscure labels like Chance, Staff, Acorn, Regent and others (1948-1950). Plus 5 live tracks w/backing by Muddy's band circa 1960. The sound quality is reasonable considering the source but some of the performances are blood curdlingly awesome. If you don't have any Hooker the other CD's have a lot of his best Vee-Jay sides. There is absolutely no documentation with the CD's except for a track list but it's all killer stuff."