Graveyard Blues [CD]

This album is great. The negative reviews are misguided - referring to Wes Montgomery or Charlie Christian is pointless. If you wish to hear technical mastery coupled with great feeling and improvisation - Montgomery and Christian are perfect. If you wish to hear dark intense blues SINGING (NOTE - SINGING), propelled by a primal boogie beat bashed out by old shoes on a wooden board, and with an insistent, hypnotic, fantastically monotonous guitar (which is infinitely inferior in virtuosity to Django or Wes) then buy this CD. If you want to hear something else then buy something else. Simple as.

If you are looking at these reviews in order to decide if this is a cd worth buying, then the answer is a resounding YES. John Lee Hooker wasn't a guitar virtuoso, but he was a virtuoso bluesman and this cd has some of his best work. If you love the blues, then you need to own this cd (and if you don't love the blues, why are you wasting everyone's time reviewing a blues cd)

I don't get it. I seriously doubt whether the three 1-Star reviewers own or have ever even listened to this album. They certainly haven't a clue as to when it was recorded (1948-1950), since they refer to "guitarists of the past 30 years". Notice that none of them used a real name. I am quite familiar with the excellent jazz guitarists they mentioned (Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, Django Reinhardt) and I would have included Grant Green and Kenny Burrell to that list. Someone also mentioned Andres (not Andre) Segovia, a great classical guitarist. Julian Bream and John Williams were also fine classical guitarists. Were all of these artists better technically than Johnnie Lee? Yes. Does that mean that Hooker didn't make inspired, moving and very good music? Of course it doesn't. If technical perfection was all that was needed to make good music, then Joe Satriani, Eddie Van Halen and the like would be at the top of the heap. I like nearly every kind of music, with the exception of hip-hop, 80's hair bands, techno-synth rock and most anything being recorded today. Every musical genre has its share of excellent guitarists, including the blues. While John Lee Hooker may not have been the best, he could make you "feel it" more than most. I would also add that I'm NOT a far left liberal. To the contrary, I'm fairly conservative. The idea that political ideology has anything to do with advancing blues is preposterous. I guess I should actually say something about this album. It is a very good collection of songs Hooker recorded for Speciality Records between 1948 and 1950, although it's not as good as his Modern recordings. (well I tried to insert the product link, but it didn't work. Just type in Hooker Modern, and it should take you there) If you like Hooker by himself (mostly), this is a good choice of early material. If you prefer him with some backup (usually bass and drums), go for his Vee-Jay recordings.