20th Century Masters: Collection

Includes liner notes by Joseph Laredo.

All tracks have been digitally remastered.

This is part of MCA's 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection series.

The end of the millennium made it easy for the music industry to put the stars of the 20th Century into historical perspective, a mutually beneficial phenomenon that provided both new marketing opportunities and a chance for the uninitiated to discover the musical treasures of the past. Such is the opportunity afforded by the 20TH CENTURY MASTERS series. John Lee Hooker is certainly one of the most important figures in the history of the blues, and this compilation does an admirable of job of covering his prolific career in a single disc. For some reason (licensing issues?), many of Hooker's best-known songs ("Dimples," "Boogie Chillun," "Crawlin' King Snake") are absent. However, this makes room for lesser-known, equally worthy cuts. The stoic, sinister "I'm Bad Like Jesse James" and the harrowing "It Serves You Right to Suffer" show Hooker in all his footstomping, electric guitar snakecharming glory.