Artist: JOHN LEE HOOKER
Album: JACK O’DIAMONDS - 1949 RECORDINGS (CD)

Year: 2004
EAN/UPS: 5034504127920
Media type: CD

Lost for more than 50 years, these sessions--engineered by cartoonist and blues fan Gene Deitch at his home in Detroit-- feature a young Hooker performing solo on acoustic guitar. The clarity and intimacy of the recording is astounding. While the bluesman's sound got leaner and meaner over the years, there is an intensity here that dazzles, all the more so for the minimalist setting. In addition, Hooker's repertoire at the time included spirituals and songs he learned growing up, many that he never recorded again. JACK O' DIAMONDS, then, amounts to a very unique document from this blues legend.

Navigating John Lee Hooker's mammoth, multi-label discography can be a formidable task, one made no less daunting by a slew of compilations and reissues of early material. Given the superior quality of these performances, however, with their dark, spare atmosphere driven by Hooker's hypnotic, primitive riffs and soulful, understated singing, JACK O' DIAMONDS: 1949 RECORDINGS is a buried treasure.

TRACKLIST:

1. Guitar Blues Instrumental
2. Two White Horses
3. Trouble in Mind
4. Catfish Blues
5. John Henry
6. How Long Blues
7. Ezekiel Saw the Wheel
8. Jack O' Diamonds
9. Waterboy
10. Six Little Puppies and Twelve Shaggy Hounds
11. In the Evening When the Sun Goes Down
12. Old Blind Barnabas
13. Moses Smote the Water
14. Spoken Interlude
15. Rabbit on the Log
16. Come and See About Me
17. 33 Blues
18. She's Real Gone
19. I Wonder
20. Untitled Slow Blues