John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker's raggedly loose modal approach to the blues made a virtue of raw simplicity, and his records -- and he recorded tons of them with countless labels under his own and various other names -- are all built on the same template, which means that essentially any one of them is going to give you the real deal. This collection offers versions of three of his more famous songs each of which Hooker recorded several times, "Boom Boom," "Boogie Chillen'," and "Crawlin' King Snake," so it can't be said that it doesn't present a fair introduction to Hooker, but at ten songs, it is pretty brief and therefore hardly essential. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide