John Lee Hooker – Live at Cafe Au-Go-Go

Next up in the new John Lee Hooker acquisitions: Live at Cafe Au-Go-Go. Recorded in New York City in 1966, originally released in 1967, this features about the best backing Hooker could have: Muddy Waters, Sammy Lawhorn, and Luther Johnson on guitars; Otis Spann on piano; Francis Clay on drums. The songs are more familiar than the last JLH record, too, with classics like “I’m Bad Like Jesse James” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer.”

This was a 2023 RSD Black Friday release, one of the few that I was violently interested in that time around. It gets played over and over. John Lee Hooker occupies a space in my life – and has for 30 years – that The Beatles once occupied, that Elvis Costello long occupied. It’s a space where putting on a John Lee Hooker record is always the right answer. And one record always leads to another.