John Lee Hooker – The Cream

Well here’s a brand new, 2024 re-release of another John Lee Hooker album that I was previously unaware of – from 1977 (released in 1978), a live recording titled “The Cream,” but having nothing to do with the band, of course. (The label, Tomato, was a small independent without big distribution, so perhaps it’s not surprising that I never ran across this – though Rhino did a CD release in 1989, peak time for my John Lee Hooker fandom. Nevertheless, it looked entirely unfamiliar to me.

This is a live recording from Palo Alto, with two of the same musicians who backed him on “Black Night Is Falling,” recorded the same year, as well as several more. As a result, this rocks out more than that record. Mostly familiar JLH riffs and songs – but as always, he does them differently every single time. (There’s also the confusingly credited “T.B. Sheets,” which is generally credited as a Van Morrison song, which he first recorded in 1967, that is here credited entirely to John Lee, and which on his “Never Get Out of These Blues Alive” is credited to both.)

I bought this in May 2024, and, like the other recent live JLH additions to my collection, have played it over and over and over. Ain’t nothing wrong with any John Lee Hooker.