{"id":12980,"date":"2017-07-19T05:30:52","date_gmt":"2017-07-19T09:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=12980"},"modified":"2017-07-19T07:42:05","modified_gmt":"2017-07-19T11:42:05","slug":"album-review-john-lee-hooker-whiskey-wimmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/07\/19\/album-review-john-lee-hooker-whiskey-wimmen\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: John Lee  Hooker &#8212; Whiskey &#038; Wimmen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-12981\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/hooker_whiskey_wimmen.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"351\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/hooker_whiskey_wimmen.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/hooker_whiskey_wimmen-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/hooker_whiskey_wimmen-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>John Lee Hooker<\/strong> was one of the most important blues artists of his \u2013 or any other \u2013 generation. With a style that managed at once to be thoroughly authentic and somehow commercial, Hooker&#8217;s output has become part of the American musical lexicon.<\/p>\n<p>After a stint on a smaller label, Hooker signed with Vee-Jay, for whom he recorded a substantial number of singles, including the 1962 hit \u201cBoom Boom.\u201d But \u2013 as best as I can tell, and I could be wrong on this \u2013 Hooker didn&#8217;t seem to have had his Vee-Jay era work compiled on an album, at leat not during the time he was signed to the label.<\/p>\n<p><i>Whiskey &amp; Wimmen: John Lee Hooker&#8217;s Finest<\/i> corrects that. And even if I&#8217;m wrong \u2013 even if there&#8217;s a Vee-Jay album release in the period 1955-1965 that spans this material \u2013 the vinyl LP <i>Whisky &amp; Wimmen<\/i> is an essential compilation. In addition to excellent sound \u2013 clearly drawn from master tapes, which is never a given when we&#8217;re talking about the work of classic blues artists \u2013 the set boasts detailed annotation (who played on what, release date, chart position if any). And if that weren&#8217;t enough, a nice essay from blues historian Bill Dahl, plus some vintage photographs, rounds out a winning set packaged in a study gatefold sleeve.<\/p>\n<p>The instrumental accompaniment on some of the tracks \u2013 \u201cI Love You Honey\u201d from 1958, for example \u2013 is delightfully loose-limbed. But that quality only adds to its appeal. Whether he&#8217;s backed by a band, or (as on several cuts) only by brother Earl on bass, John Lee Hooker delivers tour-de-force performances on vocal and guitar. The music on <i>Whiskey &amp; Wimmen<\/i> is both historically monumental and a hell of a lot of fun. If you appreciate Hooker even a little bit, and if you own a turntable, this record should be a no-brainer purchase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Lee Hooker was one of the most important blues artists of his \u2013 or any other \u2013 generation. With a style that managed at once to be thoroughly authentic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12981,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,19,49,65,73],"tags":[1182],"class_list":["post-12980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-compilation","category-new-release","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-john-lee-hooker","cat-9-id","cat-19-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12982,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12980\/revisions\/12982"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}