Entertainment For Lively Minds
John Lee Hooker box set - help needed
I recently acquired a John Lee Hooker box set - Blues is the Healer. A 10 disc set for under a tenner - bargain! And worth many times more than I paid for it, IMO.
Downside is that, although it is a nicely presented box, there is vanishingly little information about the tracks. The name, basically - no dates, band members etc.
The early discs are fairly easy - they're the early Besman recordings, complete with 78 hiss. However the later discs, some with full band, are more difficult to pin down. Disc 10 sounds like a complete live session and I'm guessing that other discs also have some sort of thematic unity - if only the compiler had told us what it was.
So... is there anyone from the WM sufficiently versed in Hooker to make some informed guesses as to provenance?
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Track Listing
CD 01:
01. Leavin' Chicago
02. Wednesday Evening Blues
03. My First Wife Left Me
04. Sally Mae
05. War Is Over (Goodbye California)
06. She Was in Chicago
07. Boogie Chillen
08. Henry's Swing Club
09. Stomp Boogie
10. Who's Been Jiving You
11. Black Man Blues
12. Shake Your Boogie
13. Poor Slim
14. Mercy Blues
15. Boogie Woogie
16. Helpless Blues
CD 02:
01. Good Business
02. Goin' Mad Blues
03. Morning Blues
04. Boogie Awhile
05. Tuesday Evening Blues
06. Weeping Willow Boogie
07. Hobo Blues
08. Miss Lorraine
09. Do the Boogie
10. Do The Boogie (Alt)
11. 609 Boogie
12. Road Trouble
13. Christmas Time Blues
14. Drifting from Door to Door
15. Hobo Blues
16. Howlin' Wolf
CD 03:
01. Crawling Kingsnake
02. Alberta
03. Wayne County Ramblin' Blues
04. Talkin' Boogie
05. I Love To Boogie
06. Graveyard Blues
07. Must I Wait Till Your Man Has Gone
08. Cotton Pickin' Boogie
09. Hoogie Boogie
10. Huckle Up Baby
11. Whistlin' And Moanin' Blues
12. Momma Poppa Blues
13. Burning Hell
14. Sailing Blues
15. Black Cat Blues
CD 04:
01. Miss Rosie Mae
02. Highway Blues
03. Don't Go Baby
04. The Numbers
05. Weeping Willow Blues
06. Forgive Me
07. Howlin' Wolf
08. Playing the Races
09. Wednesday Evening
10. Let Your Daddy Ride
11. Queen Bee
12. I'm In The Mood
13. Tease Me Baby
14. Turn Over A New Leaf
15. Women In My Life
CD 05:
01. House Rent Boogie
02. Wandering Blues
03. Questionnaire Blues
04. Real Gone Gal
05. Feed Her All Night
06. My Daddy Was A Jockey
07. Little Boy Blues
08. How Long Must I Be Your Slave
09. Ground Hog
10. Mean Old Train
11. Catfish
12. Do My Baby Think Of Me
13. Three Long Year's Ago
14. Strike Blues
15. Grinder Man
CD 06:
01. Walkin' This Highway
02. Four Women In My Life
03. I Need Lovin'
04. Find Me A Woman
05. Mad Man Blues
06. Hey Boogie
07. Louise
08. High Priced Woman
09. Union Station Blues
10. Ground Hog Blues
11. Leave My Wife Alone
12. Ramblin' By Myself
13. Dreamin' Blues
14. Just Me And My Telephone
15. Walkin' The Boogie
16. Sugar Mama
CD 07:
01. Please Don't Go
02. I Don't Want Your Money
03. Hey Baby
04. Bluebird
05. Walkin' The Boogie
06. Love Blues
07. Lonely Boy Boogie
08. Apologize
09. The Journey
10. Worried Life Blues
11. Down At The Landing
12. You Have Two Hearts
13. Blues For Big Town
14. Women And Money
15. Rock House Boogie
CD 08:
01. Too Much Boogie
02. Need Somebody
03. Please Take Me Back
04. Gotta Boogie
05. Stuttering Blues
06. Pouring down Rain
07. Love My Baby
08. Misbelieving Baby
09. Wobbling Baby
10. Goin' South
11. My Baby Don't Love Me
12. I Ain't Got Nobody
13. Real Real Gone
14. Guitar Lovin' Man
15. Blue Monday
16. My Baby Put Me Down
CD 09:
01. Boom, Boom
02. I Want To Hug You
03. House Rent Boogie
04. Wand Ad Blues
05. I'm So Excited
06. Hard Headed Woman
07. I Wanna Walk
08. Onions
09. What Do You Say
10. Keep Your Hands To Yourself
11. Send Me Your Pillow
12. She Shot Me Down
13. I Want To Shout
14. I'm Leaving (Baby)
CD 10:
01. Baby Baby
02. I Feel Good
03. Going Home
04. We Are Cooking
05. Looking Back Over My Day
06. Dazie Mae
07. Stand Back
08. Call It The Night
09. Roll And Rumble
10. Bottle Of Wine
11. Baby Don't Do Me Wrong
Extreme close-up!
Waaaah!!!!
edit: ah, it's been sorted
What happened?
I missed it - but thanks to whoever sorted it.
the whole tracklist
was on the main forum and in the first post, I think Eagle Eye Lewry was on the case pretty quickly, and sorry, I can't help you out with this
weegieman LOL
This is the problem with cheap compilations.
As EU copyright laws currently allow anyone to issue recordings that first came out over 50 years ago, the market is flooded with compilations of varying quality.
The good ones (from the likes of Proper, Naxos and JSP) do contain detailed sleeve notes. However there's a lot of shoddily put together stuff out there where tracks have just been thrown onto the CD willy-nilly; sometimes tracks will have the incorrect title, or be credited to the wrong artist.
The transfer of the recordings can be shoddily done too. I've come across several compilations of this nature where all of the 78 transfers have been covered in digital reverb - I presume this was added to simply cover-up the fact that they'd transferred the recording from some other label's CDs and added the reverb to hide the distinctive pattern of 78 surface noise.
The EU is extending the mechanical copyright period from 50 to 70 years shortly, so many of these compilations will soon disappear from the marketplace.
Interesting
I have to confess to being unaware of that. There is certainly a plethora of cheap 10-disc sets from the same company, many in a jazz/blues vein.
The answers
Just in case anyone else is ever interested in this, I found the answers courtesy of Claus Röhnisch, author of the John Lee Hooker sessionography: http://web.telia.com/~u19104970/johnnielee.html
The first 8 discs are, as I suspected, in more or less chronological order, covering his 1948-53 output.
Disc 1: 1-8 very first Besman and Barbee sessions ; 9-16 early Barbee sessions
Disc 2: 1-5 Barbee; 6-7 Besman; 8-13 Barbee; 14-16 Besman
Disc 3: 1-2 Besman; 3-8 Barbee; 9-15 Besman
Disc 4: 1-2 Idessa Malone; 3-4 joe von Battle; 5-15 Besman
Disc 5: 1-2 Idessa Malone; 3-11 Gotham 1951; 12-15 Besman
Disc 6: 1-4 Besman; 5-16 Chess 1951
Disc 7: 1-14 Chess; 15 Bihari (Modern)
Disc 8: 1-4 Bihari; 5-16 Herny Stone 1953
Disc 9: 1-14 Vee-Jay sessions 1957-1963
Disc 10: 1-11 recorded in France in 1969 [Released as 'I feel good', I think]
Thanks again to Claus Röhnisch whose JLH site is well worth a visit.