John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1912 or 1917 - June 21, 2001 was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist.
The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style
adaptation of Delta blues that he developed in Detroit. Hooker often incorporated
other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi hill country blues.
He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s-1940s
piano-derived boogie-woogie.
Hooker was ranked 35 in Rolling Stone's 2015 list of 100 greatest guitarists and
has been cited as one of the greatest male blues vocalists of all time. (Wikipedia)
There is a particular way to approach a set like 16 Original Albums & Bonus Tracks,
and it usually begins with accepting what it is rather than what the title suggests.
Issued in Germany in 2015 by Documents in association with Intense Media, the box
gathers ten discs of early John Lee Hooker recordings, built from material originally
released across the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The physical presentation suggests abundance more than narrative.
Ten discs, sixteen album titles, and a final disc of bonus tracks, all laid out in a way
that invites long stretches of listening rather than careful study.
The sequence does not behave like a run of original LPs. Instead, it moves in blocks,
albums grouped together, styles overlapping, familiar songs appearing in slightly
different forms as the discs turn.
Early on, the core of Hooker’s sound settles in.
Solo performances, electric and acoustic, built around repetition and rhythm rather
than strict structure.
Tracks from Burning Hell and I’m John Lee Hooker introduce that steady pulse,
voice and guitar moving together in a way that feels self-contained.
From there, the set widens. Studio recordings with fuller backing sit alongside
more stripped performances, yet the underlying approach remains unchanged.
Because the material comes from multiple original sources, the pacing develops
through accumulation. One song leads into another with a similar tempo,
then shifts slightly, then returns again. The effect is less about contrast and
more about immersion. Variations in recording quality, arrangement, and session
context become part of the listening rather than interruptions.
By the later discs, the repetition has its own logic.
Certain phrases, rhythms, and melodic patterns reappear often enough to feel
like a language rather than a set of songs.
The final disc of bonus material extends that feeling, adding more sides
without changing direction.
This set does not organise the material into a strict narrative,
it simply lays it out in volume, allowing the sound to build through time and familiarity.
It plays like a long, continuous field of early Hooker recordings. (Butterboy)
