New Rough Guide To Blues Legends: John Lee Hooker and Bessie Smith

Many of Hooker’s biggest and best hits are featured on this collection. ‘Boogie Chillun’ is one of his most famous tracks. His rich buttery vocals riff above a spellbinding guitar drone and the musicians signature foot-tap. Another popular tune, ‘Crawlin’ King Snake’ spotlights Hooker’s voice with his signature soft and chalky sub-tone. The guitar line slithers around scrunched blues chords. On ‘Hobo Blues’ Hooker’s guitar part swoops from repeating mid-range patterns to thick earthy bass lines. The version of ‘I Love You Honey' from 1958 on this album is a reminder that Hooker was equally as charming in a positive and romantic swing mood. 

 

Hooker’s boogie style brought him to fame and influenced generations of musicians who came after him. This album celebrates Hooker’s cool boogie accent on the aptly named tracks, ‘Low Down Midnite Boogie’, ‘Too Much Boogie’ and ‘I’m A Boogie Man’.

 

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Bessie Smith sang with a kind of heartfelt emotion and raw unfiltered passion that could only come from someone with first-hand experience of the deep dark shades of the blues. In her short but kaleidoscopic life Bessie knew poverty, fame, wealth, love, lust, and  the dangerous lure of liquor all too well. Enjoy an excellent compendium of Bessie’s finest work on this Rough Guide.

The opening track on this album is Bessie’s debut recording from 1923, ‘Down Hearted Blues’. An upbeat tinkling piano line underpins Bessie’s honeyed vocals that wind around the blues scale with ease. Also featuring is one of her most successful hits, ‘A Good Man Is Hard To Find’, a growly lament and bitter ode to good honest men, who Bessie tells us are increasingly ‘hard to find’. Continuing on the vein of unsatisfactory men, Bessie tackles cheeky double-entendres with an unmistakeably mischievous tone on ‘I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl’.

Her seminal version of ‘St Louis Blues’ featured here includes Louis Armstrong’s immortally strong cornet playing. The dream duo play in a perfectly anguished yet languorous mood. Bessie is also equally at home investing syrupy Tin Pan Alley songs with a deep level of emotion. ‘Muddy Water’ is transformed from a plodding simple song to a hazy bluesy masterpiece. Later in her career Bessie began to favour a soulful swing to a slow blues tempo. Husky and rasped vocal slides characterize the gently swinging ballad, ‘Gimme A Pigfoot And A Bottle Of Beer’.

This Rough Guide also features a bonus disc of those artists who were contemporaries with, and were influenced by, the legendary Bessie Smith.