•
Rating: One of the greatest bluesmen of all time, a pioneer of the post-war "Detroit style" and simultaneously an enigmatic and original composer and performer, John Lee Hooker crossed the Mississippi and the entire history of the blues, from the "rural model" to the electric boogie of the '50s, continuing later as a virtuoso with small American bands of the '60s and ending with the revival influenced by the "psychedelia" of Canned Heat and in various duets with contemporary artists.
His discography is vast, but I have always preferred the handful of records recorded and released by Chess Records. Perhaps because these fully showcase his solo style: melancholic, strong, even fierce in some passages with that fiery voice and obsessive guitar. Perhaps because I am attached to the discography of the "small" label of the Chess brothers (for those who don't know, I recommend watching the movie "Cadillac Records," a fictional but still worth rediscovering story).
House of the Blues (1960) was released two years after the biting LP debut (at least the official one since he often recorded under various pseudonyms to evade contracts) and remains one of his essentially most brilliant records. Hooker plays in the studio live with only the aid of guitar and voice, thanks to the dramatically narrative approach that distinguishes him, a series of tracks that had long been part of his very original repertoire. The rhythm is aided, already abundantly present in his intense electric playing style, by marking the time with his feet, measured and constant. The songs "Women & Money" and "It's My Own Faul" come from a recording session the previous year with Vernon Harrison on piano and Eddie Kirkland on guitar, less brilliant pieces in the vocal parts. The atmosphere is hypnotic mainly due to the mechanical reverb and the right doses of delay; the sound expresses, with an alternating mix of harshness and reflectiveness, the raw and painful life in the black ghetto as opposed to the cover image that seems to take the matter back to the rural origins in Clarksdale and hence to primitive sounds. In reality, the record transmits through the figurative contradiction both the charge of repressed violence in Hooker and his compassionate nostalgia.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
07 Sugar Mama (03:16)
Sugar mama, sugar mama, sugar mama please come back to me
Sugar mama, sugar mama, sugar mama please come back to me
Bring me my granulated sugar1, sugar mama, and try to ease my misery
You've got this new grade of sugar, sugar mama, an you done made me love it too
You've got this new grade of sugar, sugar mama, an you done made me love it too
You've got this granulated sugar, sugar mama, ain't nobody else got, but you
They been braggin' 'bout your sugar, sugar mama, been braggin' all over town
They been braggin' 'bout your sugar, sugar mama, braggin' all over town
Now, the bootleggers2 want you to sell 'em enough to make whiskey,
but you won't sell 'em about four or five pounds
I like my coffee sweet in the mornin', you know, an I'm crazy 'bout my tea at night
I like my coffee sweet in the mornin', you know, an I'm crazy 'bout my tea at night
Don't get my sugar three times a day, oh, Lord, then I don't feel right
09 Louise (03:06)
Louise, you the sweetest gal I know
Louise, you the sweetest gal I know
Yeah, you made me walk from Chicago, baby,
Down to the Gulf of Mexico
Now, look a-here, Louise
Now, what you tryin' to do?
You tryin' to make me love you
And you love some other man too
Whoa Louise, baby that will never do
Yeah, you know you can't love Big Bill, baby
And love some other man too
Louise, I believe
Somebody been fishin' in my pond
They been catchin' all my perches
Grinding up the bone
Whoa Louise, baby why don't you hurry home?
Yeah you know, you know, Louise,
I ain't had no lovin', not since you been gone
Louise, you know you got ways
Like a rattlesnake and a squirrel
Now, when you start the lovin'
I declare, it's out of this world
Whoa Louise, baby, why don't you hurry home?
Yes, I ain't had no lovin' baby
Not since my Louise been gone
Louise, the big boat's up the river
Now she's on a bag of sand
Now she don't strike deep water
I declare she'll never land
Whoa Louise, baby why don't you hurry home?
Yeah you know, you know Louise
I ain't had no lovin', not since you been gone.
Loading comments slowly
