Solo Performer: John Lee Hooker (vocals, guitar).
Producer: Bill Grauer.
Reissue producer: Orrin Keepnews
Recorded at United Recorders, Detroit, Michigan on April 20, 1959. Includes liner notes by Alan Bates.
Digitally remastered by Phil De Lancie (Fantasy Studios, Berkely, California).
This is part of Riverside's Original Blues Classics series.
A 1959 recording that was inexplicably not issued in the United States until 1992, BURNING HELL ranks among Hooker's most edgy and focused performances. A companion piece to THE ACOUSTIC BLUES OF JOHN LEE HOOKER, it finds John Lee singing country blues accompanied only by his own acoustic guitar--something he rarely did after traveling North from the Mississippi Delta.
Tackling several originals as well as tunes associated with Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins and Big Bill Broonzy, Hooker shows himself to be an excellent interpreter who could have held his own with Delta bluesmen of any era. Although his guitar playing is pretty raw, even by blues standards, John Lee more than compensates with his powerful, resonant voice. Several tracks, including "Burnin' Hell" and "You Live Your Life And I'll Live Mine" are downright frightening in their intensity. Although Robert Jr. Lockwood is often indentified as Robert Johnson's successor, this album would seem to indicate that Hooker is the most likely candidate to have a hellhound on his trail.
