Burnin - John Lee Hooker (1962)

The very idea of a guy who lived in the modern world, had a phone number and a social security number, appeared on film and television, and yet nobody actually knows what year he was born is absolutely fascinating to me. The general consensus is that he was born in 1917, which means he was in his thirties when he started recording while holding down a janitor job in Detroit in 1948. He’d lived a full life already, performing delta and hill country blues in the south and then adapting his sound to the electric blues of Detroit and Chicago.

His early recordings were solo: just him and his tapping foot, and an almost stream-of-consciousness guitar accompaniment. As he became a bigger star he adapted his sound again to a more modern R&B combo. That’s where this classic album was born from in a Chicago session in 1961, backed by Motown Records’ house band.

The old blues singers had a weird mix of toxic masculuinity (typical for the time and setting) and real, raw emotional vulnerability (less so).

Hooker was one of the best, and this is a typically classic example of him in his prime. Recently reissued, it’s one of best recordings we get to this point in his career.