Review: John Lee Hooker - I'm John Lee Hooker (1959)

Tracks: 1) Dimples; 2) Hobo Blues; 3) I’m So Excited; 4) I Love You Honey; 5) Boogie Chillun; 6) Little Wheel; 7) I’m In The Mood; 8) Maudie; 9) Crawlin’ King Snake; 10) Everynight; 11) Time Is Marching; 12) Baby Lee.

REVIEW

Any proper account of John Lee Hooker’s recording career has to start with his earliest run of singles for the Modern label, beginning with 1948’s classic ‘Boogie Chillen’ and onward — much like the early «raw» recordings of Elvis for Sun Records, these are the songs that, according to purist enthusiasts, most directly and forcefully give you the Beast, driven by pure demonic feeling rather than any superstar ambitions or record contract obligations. However, that part of John Lee Hooker’s career is an entirely different story — from a certain point of view, his Modern period falls completely outside the Age of Rock’n’Roll, being more in line with the pre-war blues aesthetics, even despite Hooker’s predilection for the trendy modern electric guitar from the very start. Those early singles, precious as they are, are not the records that would be carried over to Europe and would influence the excited ears of British teenagers such as Eric Burdon and Keith Relf, helping them to usher in the classic era of British rhythm & blues. Heck, they didn’t even properly know how to mold them into LPs those days!

Consequently, while no blues lover’s collection will ever be representative without a serious compilation from Hooker’s early days on Modern (The Legendary Modern Recordings 1948–1954 will probably suffice), we shall begin our journey through his long (and fairly uneven) recording career with the opening of the LP era; for Hooker, this happened in August 1959, with his current Chicago label of Vee-Jay Records putting out a selection of A- and B-sides stretching all the way back to 1955 as I’m John Lee Hooker, his very first LP — as the title does indeed suggest.

Hooker’s association with Vee-Jay was far from accidental. In the second half of the 1950s, when it came to blues, Vee-Jay sort of established themselves in Chicago as the «rebelliously unsophisticated», «proto-punk-blues» alternative to the more «cultured» environment of the Chess label — this was hardly intentional, but birds of a feather do tend to flock together, and Hooker eventually ended up on the label in 1955 through his connection with Jimmy Reed, who had already been cutting singles for Vee-Jay since 1953. In fact, Jimmy himself accompanies Hooker on harmonica on his earliest singles for the label (one of those B-sides, ‘Time Is Marching’, is included on the LP), and it is no coincidence, either, that Jimmy’s own debut LP on the label, released one year earlier than Hooker’s, bears the title of I’m Jimmy Reed.

In stark contrast to much, if not most, of his Modern era output, when it was usually just Hooker and his guitar, in Chicago, following Jimmy’s example, the artist quickly got provided with his own house band — which usually included Reed’s friend and companion Eddie Taylor on second guitar, as well as a rotating set of drum and bass players and, occasionally, a bit of piano backup. He did not abandon his classic solo style completely, but for the most part, he confined it to re-recordings of his best known oldies, which he began producing around 1958–59: this album, in particular, includes new versions of ‘Boogie Chillen’, ‘Hobo Blues’, ‘Crawlin’ King Snake’, and ‘I’m In The Mood’ — all of these had been originally issued on Modern in 1948–1951, yet instead of properly «modernizing» them with a backing band, Hooker remade them in his traditional style. I am not exactly sure why; perhaps the people at Vee-Jay asked for this themselves, afraid that other labels might make more money on their former star’s back catalog than Vee-Jay would make with his new stuff.

Once again, purists will probably insist that these re-recordings are nowhere near as «authentic» as the originals, but from an unbiased position this is debatable. Obviously, the sound quality for a 1958 recording would be objectively superior to a 1948 one. Also, over those ten years Hooker’s voice — arguably the number one source for his legend, with his guitar playing skills strictly stuck at number two — had gotten at least an octave deeper and even more intimidating than it was in the late Fourties, which works wonders for his inherently dark blues material. On the other hand, there is certainly a chillin’ crudeness about the early recordings that makes them feel more earthy and Neanderthal than the slightly more melodic, more overtone-relying sound of the Vee-Jay era. All I can say is that it’s fun comparing the two, and no fun debating which ones are more «authentic» and which ones more «commercial». One other thing that I have noticed is that the new versions are typically just a tad faster — this might be just a technical effect of the mastering process, but could just as well be a side effect of John Lee Hooker going more «rock’n’roll» as a result of his constant playing with a band.

In any case, while the re-recordings all seem quite decent to me and fully deserving of being part of the Hook’s legend, they still reflect a chunk of his older, pre-Chicago life. His new life truly begins with the lead-in track on this album, simply called ‘Dimples’. Who didn’t know ‘Dimples’ in the early Sixties? Everybody knew ‘Dimples’. The Animals did a great version of ‘Dimples’ that, in my opinion, was in many ways superior to the original — but inevitably lost some of its rowdy caveman spirit. "You got dimples in your jaw – you my babe, I got my eyes on you". With this song, Hooker showed that he was not above crossing over to the pop market — without sacrificing an ounce of his bluesy authenticity. For all of Jimmy Reed’s appeal to the unsophisticated, pop-loving crowds, this is faster, catchier, and farther removed from the stereotypical 12-bar blues formula than pretty much anything Reed did at the time. If not for Hooker’s scary, growling, stalker-ish voice, this could have been real big with the kids — as it is, the recording was probably creeping out most of the conventionally-minded teenagers, not to mention the parents, back in 1956. (Come to think about it, with current attitudes it would have probably been creeping out most of the young people in 2022 just as well).

Transitioning to the ‘Dimples’ style wholesale would be too much even for Hooker at the time, though; most of the other recordings that Vee-Jay selected from his 12 or so singles recorded between 1956 and 1959 are more conventional and Jimmy Reed-ish, though on the whole, Hooker favored faster tempos than Jimmy. A typical example is ‘I Love You Honey’, which was a minor R&B chart success for Hooker in 1958: strong, prominent boogie bass — free-flowing, old-school piano accompaniment from Joe Hunter — and a nagging, insistent vocal that sounds a bit like Reed (but on fewer drugs and with more teeth in his mouth, metaphorically speaking). It’s a pleasant track, but it has neither the voodoo magic of Hooker’s solo recordings, nor the dark pop enchantment of ‘Dimples’.

Much improved is something like ‘Maudie’, recorded about a year later, which departs from the same territory as ‘I Love You Honey’, but features a much stronger Hooker presence — here, Hooker’s ‘Boogie Chillen’-derived rhythm guitar, sounding like a knife rhythmically sharpened on stone steps, is far more prominent, and his voice is far deeper and more threatening (that "Maudie, why did you hurt me, I love you baby, you been gone so long" bit should have sent any real life Maudie running to the nearest police department). Melodically, there is absolutely nothing here in 1959 that hadn’t already been done two hundred times earlier, but it does a good job of polishing the Hooker formula to a shinier state than ever before — that guitar-voice combo, with just a tiny bit of echo and a solid metronomic rhythm section putting some meat on the bones, could not be beaten even by such Chess competition as Muddy Waters.

Most of the other songs (including bonus tracks from the same era that can be found on some CD editions) predictably recycle the same formula; the rhythmic peculiarities and poppy geometry of ‘Dimples’ are more of a lucky exception in this case than a standard example of Hooker’s creativity. But if we refrain from worrying about the monotonousness and prefer to instead concentrate on the impact of the general sound, Hooker’s uniqueness quickly comes through even after he has been placed in the same general musical context of the 1950s’ Chicago blues band sound.

What I mean is, where Muddy entices us with his swagger and cockiness, while Howlin’ Wolf comes across as a theatrically malevolent demonic presence from the red-hot depths of Hell itself, John Lee Hooker plays the role of that grim, moody, silent, mysterious loner in the corner, mumbling out something frightening, if barely comprehensible. His is less of an "I’m gonna come out and get you!" or an "I’m gonna rule the world with my evil powers!" vibe than a "Don’t mess with me, leave me alone to brood" vibe. Stuff like ‘Dimples’, in a way, is the spiritual predecessor to Ian Anderson’s "sitting on a park bench, eyeing little girls with bad intent" theme — if there is one old bluesman I could easily identify with Tull’s Aqualung, it would be John Lee Hooker. Sure enough, it might be a much creepier vibe than Muddy’s or Wolf’s, but if the blues ain’t about being creepy, then what the hell is it about in the first place? If you want to keep your mind all clean and sanitized, just stay away from these dudes altogether.

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