John Lee Hooker (& The Groundhogs) | VOODOO WAGON

 This is nice and despite loads of confusion (mostly mine I confess!) this with The Groundhogs not the Hooker and The Hogs set (a fifteen track set from the first time John came to the UK) but something quite different the cover with this download is something else entirely and mentions John Mayall* - its not that either and nobody can find any collaboration with Tony and The Boys with John Lee that features John Mayall

John Lee Hooker & The Groundhogs . . .and Seven Nights - VOODOO WAGON

what ever has happened it is well worth having and is lovely quality

John Lee Hooker  . . . . and seven nights

 

JOHN LEE HOOKER‎– ... And Seven Nights (1965) Accompanied By The Groundhogs

SIDE A 00:00 Bad Luck And Trouble 04:00 Waterfront 08:15 No One Pleases Me But You 10:40 It's Raining Here 14:02 It's A Crazy Mixed Up World 18:20 Seven Days And Seven Nights SIDE B 22:00 Mai Lee 25:29 I'm Losin' You 29:20 Little Girl Go Back To School 33:12 Little Dreamer 37:32 Don't Be Messin' With My Bread

UK blues rock legends The Groundhogs released their debut album Scratching The Surface in late 1968, but they'd already been plying their trade for over half a decade.     

Formed originally as pop act The Dollar Bills in in 1962, the band toughen up their sound the following year and change their name, inspired by John Lee Hooker's 1951 song Ground Hog Blues. 

The same year, on October 21, Hooker plays his first UK show at the American Blues Festival, held at Manchester's Free Trade Hall. The final date of an almost month-long tour that consists almost entirely of shows in Germany, it features a startling lineup of blues greats, from Hooker to Big Bill Broonzy, Lightnin' Hopkins and Memphis Slim.

It's no exaggeration to say that the Manchester show plays a huge part in the British blues boom that follows, with attendees including Mannfred Mann singer Paul Jones, Alexis Korner, John Mayall, and – up from London in a battered van – Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Mick Jagger, who asks bluesman Shakey Jake Harris if he can "have a go" on his harmonica after his performance

Cut to the summer of 1964. Hooker returns for his first UK tour, and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers – featuring future Fleetwood Mac star John McVie – are the backing band. They're unable to fulfil the engagements on the final week of the tour, and The Groundhogs get the call. 

They play support and back Hooker at the next few shows, and he likes them so much – in an interview, he calls them "the number one British blues band" – that when he returns to the UK in August he asks for them. The same happens in September. And again in October. 

And then, on October 5, it's a visit to The BBC for The Beat Room, a weekly show focused on pop music and rhythm and blues. Joining Hooker on the show are crooner Tom Jones, pop singer Julie Rogers, The Kinks, and North London r&b group The Syndicats, who feature future Yes guitarist Steve Howe in their ranks. 

Hooker and The Groudhogs play two songs: the classic Boom Boom – a single on Vee Jay two years earlier – and I'm Leaving, released in 1963. And while 29 episodes of The Beat Room are recorded during its lifetime, only one – this one – isn't destroyed as the BBC continue their systematic policy of wiping recordings that exhaust their apparent usefulness. 

What we're left with is a remarkable document, as Hooker and The Groundhogs –  guitarist Tony McPhee, pianist Bob Hall, bassist Peter Cruickshank and drummer Dave Boorman – conjure up a righteous storm. It might not have been the moment that inspired the British blues boom, but it was a moment that brought the real thing into UK households. 

At the end of the year the musicians recorded an album together. A rough and ready collection, ...And Seven Nights saw The Groundhogs handling Hooker's spontaneity with relaxed aplomb

John Lee Hooker and The Groundhogs - I'm Leaving (The Beat Room, BBC Oct 05, 1964)

John Lee Hooker and The Groundhogs - Waterfront

John Lee Hooker was a guest on the BBC2 music show The Beat Room in 1964. His band at the time, the Groundhogs, had only recently started playing the blues at the suggestion of their new guitarist, Tony McPhee, who had also renamed the group after one of Hooker´s songs. Tony and the band played all of the gigs on the blossoming blues circuit and then backed Hooker on the final week of his first British tour. John liked the band so much that he always asked for them to back him on British tours and preferred to travel with them in their Commer van. In an interview of the time he called them the ‘number one British blues band’. Hooker and the Hogs’ studio recordings from this period have been issued under many different titles, but they first appeared in the US on the 1966 Verve Folkways album ...And Seven Nights (link). The song they are tearing up below, “I’m Leaving,” was not one of these, but a terrifying single (link) Hooker cut for Vee-Jay in ‘63. Footage licensed from BBC Studios Distribution

* not this one