Review: John Lee Hooker - The Folk Lore Of John Lee Hooker (1961)
Tracks: 1) Tupelo; 2) I’m Mad Again; 3) I’m Going Upstairs; 4) Want Ad Blues; 5) Five Long Years; 6) I Like To See You Walk; 7) The Hobo; 8) Hard-Headed Woman; 9) Wednesday Evening Blues; 10) Take Me As I Am; 11) My First Wife Left Me; 12) You’re Looking Good Tonight.
REVIEW
By 1961, Hooker’s contract with Riverside must have run out (at least, his only other record on the label would come out in 1965 and consist exclusively of archival takes), so Vee-Jay took the opportunity to try and capture both sides of the man — the country acoustic one and the urban electric one — at the same time, with the album title (The Folk Lore Of J. L. H.) transparently following the pattern of Riverside’s The Country Blues Of J. L. H., even if far from all the songs on the album could formally qualify as examples of «folk lore». Then again, Hooker himself never made a big point of separating those two sides, and, in fact, there are those times in the studio where it’s hard to tell if the man is playing a meekly amplified acoustic guitar or a nearly unplugged electric one — or, for that matter, if his brainwaves are specifically following a «countryside» or a «big city» pattern. Not infrequently, they’re just conflating both scenes in a single messy whole.
With just a little help from Vee-Jay Records, of course, as they introduce each of the album’s sides with an acoustic track culled from Hooker’s performance at the Newport Folk Festival the previous year. ‘Tupelo’ was, of course, a standout number on The Country Blues Of John Lee Hooker, and since it was performed very close to the original, the only big difference is the overall sound — the well-isolated studio gave you the impression of a one-on-one dialog between Hooker and yourself, with the apocalyptic story transmitted directly inside your ear; the live recording gives a more «authentic» around-the-cave-fire feel, piling on an extra layer of gloomy darkness if you feel the atmosphere demands it (the only thing bringing you back to 20th century reality being a few faintly heard automobile beep-beeps in the distance). ‘The Hobo’, however, is a seriously slowed-down and «doomified» version of Vee-Jay’s own ‘Hobo Blues’, which used to be somewhat more upbeat and cocky, but now has turned back into a pensive rumination on the ugly hand of fate. (The reissued CD version adds ‘Maudie’ from the same performance, also transformed back into an acoustic number, although Hooker manages to mostly salvage the stern, martial bassline from the original electric recording).
No sooner than ‘Tupelo’ is over and done with, though, there is a quick shift to a decidedly more urban tone, as Hooker moves into the studio and, with the help of Quinn Wilson on bass and Earl Phillips on drums, launches into another of his famous tunes — at least, famous enough to later be also picked up by The Animals for their repertoire: ‘I’m Mad Again’, a three-minute perfect expression of pure, primal, steadily seeping rage. The pretext is that a certain unnamed friend cheated on the protagonist with his very own wife — a traditional motive for sure, but it could have been anything else, as long as it gives our guy the opportunity to deliver the mantra: "I’m mad with you, like Al Capone!" (Eric Burdon would later add Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay to the list of comparisons, but John Lee Hooker was probably not as much of a fan of the mighty black boxers as the young Geordie; besides, the famous Liston-Clay fight only took place in 1964, just in time to be referenced in the Animals version — as for the original song, well, I do guess that if you are based in Chicago, references to Al Capone are the most natural thing to jump off your lips at any time).
The really interesting thing about ‘I’m Mad Again’ is that it is based on more or less the same simple riff that propels the Muddy Waters / Bo Diddley ‘I’m A Man’ / ‘Mannish Boy’ series of swaggy call-outs; in fact, Hooker’s "I’m mad, I’m mad" is in itself a variation on Muddy and Bo’s "I’m a man, I’m a man", and is thus an excellent symbolic representation of what’s different between those artists. Unlike them, Hooker has little need or desire for boastful self-aggrandizing; he is far more passionate about exploring the inner workings of man’s dangerous nature, which makes his output a much more natural object of psychoanalytical study than Muddy’s or Bo’s. When Bo Diddley threatens anybody in his songs, it is typically done in a light-hearted, jokey matter; when John Lee Hooker growls "I might drown you, I might shoot you, I don’t know... gonna tie your hands, gonna tie your feet, gag you so you can’t talk to nobody...", that’s the Old Testament morality of retribution breathing down your back. To the best of our knowledge, Hooker never properly practiced what he preached (unlike Leadbelly, for instance); remember that it’s all theater, after all, but it’s damn believable theater, and much more disturbing than the relatively safe, «commercial» by comparison vaudeville stagings of Hooker’s competitors from the Chess artist pool.
The rest of the album, unfortunately, does not quite live up to the dark brutality of ‘I’m Mad Again’. Most of the other songs are rather predictable and modest expansions on the well-known Hooker stylistics, all set to familiar minimalistic guitar grooves and previously explored lyrical imagery. ‘I’m Goin’ Upstairs’ continues the «I’m going away, nobody needs me here» vibe of ‘Hobo Blues’; ‘Want Ad Blues’ makes space for a little sexual self-advertising (again, very modestly stated next to the usual Chicago blues swagger); the title of ‘I Like To See You Walk’ is pretty much self-explanatory; and the cover of Eddie Boyd’s ‘Five Long Years’ is a little misplaced, because it’s a soulful song about self-pitying ("if you’ve ever been mistreated, you know just what I’m talkin’ about..."), and that’s not exactly Hooker’s «native vibe», if you know just what I’m talkin’ about. This one’s more for the likes of B. B. King or Eric Clapton.
On the second side of the LP, we get treated to a piece of relatively fast boogie: ‘Hard Headed Woman’ has nothing to do with the Elvis classic under the same title, and its lyrics are far more routine than the Bible-stuffed verses of Claude Demetrius — though the basic sentiment (women just ain’t no good) remains more or less the same. More interesting is the presence on the recording of both Jimmy Reed (who blows a bit of barely noticeable harmonica in the background) and his trusty sessionman, William "Lefty" Bates, who complements Hooker’s choppy rhythm playing with stylistically similar choppy, stingy, torn-and-frayed electric lead licks; for about a minute and a half, with Lefty’s aid the track turns into one of those wild and snappy guitar jams that would eventually become the bread and butter for the likes of ZZ Top.
Most of the time, however, the atmosphere is comparably more relaxed (though still suspenseful); soon after ‘Hard Headed Woman’, for instance, we get Hooker’s amusing take on the «sentimental ballad» genre with ‘Take Me As I Am’, which I could only describe as «what would happen if, just for a brief moment out there, John Lee Hooker would suddenly want to be Sam Cooke». Honestly, I am not sure if the song was intended to be taken seriously or parodically — you can hardly ever tell with this kind of artist, of course, so perhaps both at the same time. (I often ask myself this question with all sorts of later artists, from J. J. Cale all the way up to Ween, but it’s not that often that it comes up while talking about a song recorded back in 1961, mind you). Even the lyrics beg that question: "If you can cook and be a good housewife / You don’t have to wear lipstick and powder... / If you can cook, then it’s all that I need" — come on now, didn’t we just hear from Muddy Waters not too long ago that "I don’t want you to bake my bread, I don’t want you to make my bed"? Surely this kind of «regressive» attitude cannot be anything other than sarcastic. Even the acoustic accompaniment, which sounds like somebody desperately practicing to master some doo-wop chords and to be able to serenade one’s sweetheart with wildly exaggerated «romantic licks», sends out hints that this stuff is not to be taken seriously. However, when you think to yourself of all the innumerable «lo-fi», rough ’n’ crackly, covers or imitations of Tin Pan Alley ballads done by your average indie kid with an acoustic guitar in his bedroom at the turn of the millennium, do remember that there’s nothing new under the sun and that the roots of this approach go all the way back to Mr. Hooker (at the very least).
In the end, like so many of John’s albums, this one ends up relatively unsurprising, fairly monotonous, largely predictable, and yet thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time. Perhaps Vee-Jay Records thought that, with the folk craze going around the country, its title would significantly raise sales among the regular customers of Greenwich Village and the Newport Festival — but while Hooker did go along with their promotional ideas (over which he probably had no control anyway), there is not a single sign here of his shifting his musical, lyrical, or spiritual priorities, and in the overall atmosphere of 1961, this kind of conservatism is actually quite admirable.
Only Solitaire reviews: John Lee Hooker