{"id":30012,"date":"2025-10-27T05:30:41","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T09:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=30012"},"modified":"2025-08-28T16:28:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T20:28:40","slug":"album-review-john-lee-hooker-boom-boom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/27\/album-review-john-lee-hooker-boom-boom\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: John Lee Hooker \u2013 Boom Boom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"John Lee Hooker\u2019s recording career began in 1948 with the release of his landmark (and r&b #1) single \u201cBoogie Chillen.\u201d Though intended as a demo recording, the side was wildly successful and set a standard for the blues. Hooker\u2019s sustained fame proceeded through distinct eras: in the 1950s to early \u201860s, he placed several more songs on the r&b single chart. After taking part in the traveling American Folk Blues Festival in Europe, he became a sensation there and in the UK.<\/p>\n

Remarkably, though, his successful run as an \u201calbum artist\u201d came late in his career, between 1971 and the years just before his death in 2001. And it was only in 1989 and beyond that John Lee Hooker truly became an album act on an international level.<\/p>\n

Gauging his success through the lens of album sales and chart positions misses the larger point of his importance, but it does help to explain the appearance of Hooker\u2019s 1992 album, Boom Boom<\/i>. Taking its title from one of his best-known songs, the album \u2013 produced by longtime associate, Bay Area guitarist Roy Rogers \u2013 Boom Boom<\/i> leveraged the man\u2019s gravitas with an approach designed to appeal to a wider audience, one whose introduction to the blues often came from blues-adjacent (if sincere) artists like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Led Zeppelin.<\/p>\n

Standing in sharp contrast to the lo-fi aesthetic of \u201cBoogie Chillen,\u201d 1992\u2019s Boom Boom<\/i> brings modern production values and full-band arrangements to Hooker\u2019s music. It also pairs the venerated bluesman with a few high-profile names, Robert Cray and Albert Collins among them.<\/p>\n

On the opening title track, he\u2019s joined by Jimmie Vaughan, fresh off his departure from the Fabulous Thunderbirds. And while in lesser hands the rocking combo\u2019s sound and fury could have drowned out the name artist, even at age 80 Hooker remains in command. The recording likely succeeded in drawing new listeners into Hooker\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m Bad Like Jesse James\u201d is more faithfully representative of Hooker\u2019s style, with his sinister and quiet vocals intertwining with equally spare (yet supremely effective) guitar licks. The song has nothing else, and doesn\u2019t need it. The band does return on \u201cSame Old Blues Again,\u201d and guest guitarist Cray serves up a tasty solo.<\/p>\n

But \u201cSugar Mama\u201d is vintage Hooker: just the man and his guitar. The album continues to change things up, balancing solo tracks rooted in signature Hooker style with more contemporary cuts. \u201cBoogie at Russian Hill,\u201d however, has it both ways. Collins is searing on lead guitar, and the band chugs along, but anyone listening will know that it\u2019s still the John Lee Hooker Show.<\/p>\n

\u201cHittin\u2019 the Bottle Again\u201d is a showstopper, with Hooker and a National Steel guitar. \u201cBottle Up and Go\u201d applies subtle band backing to a classic. The haunting \u201cThought I Heard\u201d is as spare as can be, and all the better for it. \u201cI Ain\u2019t Gonna Suffer No More\u201d is a deft balance of classic and modern. And that description is an apt way to sum up Boom Boom<\/i>, a late-period gem of an album from the blues master.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Lee Hooker\u2019s recording career began in 1948 with the release of his landmark (and r&b #1) single \u201cBoogie Chillen.\u201d Though intended as a demo recording, the side was wildly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,64,65,73],"tags":[1182,5709],"class_list":["post-30012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-reissue","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-john-lee-hooker","tag-roy-rogers","cat-9-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30012","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=30012"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30023,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30012\/revisions\/30023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}