Burnin' (Expanded Edition)

John Lee Hooker

Released on 1/1/62 by Craft Recordings
Main artists: John Lee Hooker
Genre: Blues

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In late 1961, John Lee Hooker stepped into a Chicago studio for a single-day session with Motown's tight, swinging house band—which by then had propelled hits by Stevie Wonder, The Temptations and Marvin Gaye—and went electric. The menacing bluesman, who had established his brand as a bad-ass with a bad, if occasionally regretful, attitude, had been releasing country blues records for more than a decade, the kind that showcased his ability to wrestle with his psyche and channel those emotions through a helpless acoustic guitar and barked-out mumble of a voice. Armed with the outfit that became the Funk Brothers (guitarist Larry Veeder, bassist James Jamerson, keyboardist Joe Hunter and drummer Benny Benjamin), Hooker banged out eleven hardened, gripping electric blues songs that came out in 1962 as Burnin'. Those tracks were echoed in Bob Dylan's similar electric turn three years later and their spirit resonated through the proto-metal of Cream and Led Zeppelin.

How scary is Hooker on Burnin'? The first verse of the first song, "Boom Boom," opens with him cracking four vocal gunshots—"boom boom boom boom"––and declaring, "I'm gonna shoot you down/ Right off your feet/ Take you home with me/ Put you in my house." Unless his shots are metaphors for Cupid's arrows, the "boom boom boom boom" that ends the verse connotes something much darker. Creepy? Upsetting? That's Hooker all over Craft Recordings' expanded and newly remastered version of Burnin', which also includes an alternate take of "Thelma" and both the stereo and the mono versions of the album's original eleven tracks. Granted, Hooker does reveal a more vulnerable side from time to time ("Lost a Good Girl," "Let's Make It"). But as anyone who's binged true crime shows knows, when a man says, "Now look, buddy/ Keep your hands down/ To yourself/ 'Cause she's all mine/ All my property," as Hooker does on "Keep Your Hands to Yourself," someone's going to be in jail by sunrise and nobody's hitting the hay without some serious blues. © Randall Roberts/Qobuz

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Burnin' (Expanded Edition)

John Lee Hooker

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Boom Boom (Stereo)