220: Live at Café au Go-Go, by John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker (USA)
Live at Café au Go-Go (1967)
8 tracks, 35 minutes
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Unlike Skip James, another blues artist who featured here a couple of weeks ago, there’s no shortage of recordings by John Lee Hooker, from any stage of his career as a musician. From cutting sides while working as a janitor in a Detroit steel mill in the 40s to recording with Carlos Santana, Miles Davis and Van Morrison in the 1990s, his career was as varied as his sound was unique.

But instead of going for some of his perhaps more recognisable albums – or even those that feature his most famous singles of ‘Boom Boom’ or ‘Boogie Chillun’, as good as they are – I’ve gone for this rather low-key live recording from 1966. I think it’s so easy to remember John Lee Hooker as the popstar bluesman that he became, with ultra-polished recordings, cheesy production and guests for days, but it’s what he did before that that sets him apart. There’s a grit inherent in his work – in his voice, in his lyrics, in the tone of his guitar and the way he played it. It all sounds like a dirt road in the middle of a desert.

For this album, it’s not even like his solo recordings that you could very easily imagine being played in some lonesome town somewhere in the middle of the American nowhere. He’s already a big deal by this point, and you can tell that just by looking at the credits: engineered by the legendary Rudy Van Gelder of Blue Note fame, accompanied by Otis Spann on piano, and also with Muddy Waters adding his guitar to John Lee’s now and then, entirely without fanfare. The important thing is that it sounds raw. This is the real deal: a group of musicians that learnt their trade in the Mississippi delta, who plugged in, moved to Chicago and took the blues to the future while never forgetting the roots.

Everything is so simple. The songs are either in a 12-bar-blues or just stay on one chord all the way through, the licks are short and modest and the timing is very loose, but it’s clear that every one of these musicians are experts in what they do, because every note is in exactly the right place. There’s nothing too much or too little, and it all allows John Lee’s rough but subtle voice to cast its spell over the whole thing. Just listen to ‘Heartaches and Misery’, a lesson on the meanings of the blues and a rumination of why he does what he does; everything lines up so perfectly that you will believe every single word he says and understand it to your core.

John Lee Hooker, for all his music is recognisable, went through many different phases in his recording career, but I think none are as potent as when he just relaxed, kept things on the down-low and didn’t just play Blues Music, but really played the blues. At the Café Au-Go-Go in 1966, John Lee Hooker and his band were definitely channelling the real blues.