John Lee Hooker - The Best of Friends (2024) [Official Digital Download]

For half a century, the much-recorded bluesman John Lee Hooker has cut music so primal it blurred into itself–his albums often seem interchangeable, his great signature songs rerecorded to the nth. He defeats this tendency with The Best of Friends, a compilation on which such admiring colleagues as Eric Clapton, Jimmie Vaughan, and Bonnie Raitt help him reprise the likes of "Boogie Chillen," "Boom Boom," and "I'm in the Mood," respectively. Three of the album's tracks, among them the Grammy-winning Raitt duet, go back to 1989's mostly collaborative The Healer. Others cherry-pick his '90s catalogue, and three, including the pace-setting "Boogie Chillen," were cut for this project.

Rock and rollers cotton to Hooker because, like Elmore James and for that matter Chuck Berry, he has a hook: the boogie beat, a vamping drone that's propulsive at any speed. But reduced to slow one-chord guitar and ageless Delta vocal, as on this album's solo showpiece, "Tupelo," his groove can be pretty foreboding even though its darkness is full of subtle color. The guests, all instrumental except for Raitt and his old fan Van Morrison, open it up. Special kudos to Hispanic interpreters Los Lobos, who rock into his boogie, and Carlos Santana, who with two different bands bends "The Healer" and "Chill Out" into polyrhythmic workouts. And hey, give the drummers some–eight all told, every one of a single mind and a single beat, a beat that only gathers detail when it's stated outright.

TRACKLIST

01. John Lee Hooker & Eric Clapton - Boogie Chillen
02. John Lee Hooker - This Is Hip (Feat. Ry Cooder)
03. John Lee Hooker & Carlos Santana - The Healer
04. John Lee Hooker - I Cover The Waterfront (Feat. Booker T. Jones)
05. John Lee Hooker & Jimmie Vaughan - Boom Boom
06. John Lee Hooker & Bonnie Raitt - I'm In The Mood
07. John Lee Hooker & Ben Harper - Burnin' Hell
08. John Lee Hooker - Tupelo
09. John Lee Hooker - Baby Lee
10. John Lee Hooker & Los Lobos - Dimples
11. John Lee Hooker & Carlos Santana - Chill Out (Things Gonna Change)
12. John Lee Hooker & Ike Turner - Big Legs, Tight Skirt
13. John Lee Hooker & Charles Brown - Don't Look Back
14. John Lee Hooker - Up And Down



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