John Lee Hooker's 1962 album
Burnin' is one of the most revered titles in his discography. While his earliest sides featured only his guitar and a stomp board, he also cut sides with a second guitarist or harmonicist. During the late 1950s, he usually played in Detroit with his
Boogie Ramblers.
Burnin' was recorded in a single day in a Chicago; it paired
Hooker for the first time with a full, live electric band in the studio. The musicians were brought in from Detroit, all session aces familiar with
Hooker from his years of playing clubs on Hastings Street: keyboardist
Joe Hunter (not
Ivy Joe Hunter), bassist
James Jamerson, guitarist
Larry Veeder, and drummer
Benny "Papa Zita" Benjamin, with saxophonists
Hank Cosby and
Andrew "Mike" Terry -- the very first incarnation of
Motown's globally renowned house band,
the Funk Brothers.
The set opener is single "Boom Boom." It growls to life with saxes, piano, and shuffling drums offering a rowdy vamp. At the midway point,
Hooker, playing in an uncharacteristically tight fashion, delivers a shout worthy of
Ray Charles, then delivers a stop-time guitar hook, signaling the band to rise up and drive the boogie. (The single charted at R&B and in the Hot 100.) It's followed by "Process," a slow walking blues offering steamy piano and sax work.
Hooker's leads thread the verses, his shambolic shuffle working just behind the drum kit shuffle. "Lost a Good Girl" was one of the guitarist's club staples, a real crowd-pleaser for dancers thanks to its laconic Chicago-meets-New Orleans groove. His reading of
Leroy Carr's classic "Blues Before Sunrise" is rendered as an elegant piano and horn-driven walking blues with killer solo guitar work from
Hooker, cutting jagged lines between verses. He answers with the house-rocking "Let's Make It," another of his live nuggets. The dialogue between horns, piano, snare, and
Hooker's sung cadences are lusty, strident, boastful, and fun. His guitar shuffle is loose, almost buzzy, but swings like mad. While there isn't a weak moment here, there are other highlights, too, such as the low-down, sexy "Drug Store Woman" and the woolly "Keep Your Hands to Yourself (She Belongs to Me)," which makes full use of the propulsive vamp in "Tequila." He hits the seam exactly where jump blues meet rock & roll on the raucous closer, "What Do You Say?" [In 2023,
Craft Recordings commemorated the album's 60th anniversary with a reissue. It is newly remastered from the original analog tapes by
Kevin Gray and presented in various editions: The 180-gram black vinyl offers a stereo mix of the original album inside a tip-on jacket with the original design. There are also a variety of limited-edition color pressings; some include a T-shirt showcasing the album art. The expanded CD and digital editions offer mono and stereo mixes, plus a previously unreleased alternate take of "Thelma" captured during the November 1961 session.] ~ Thom Jurek
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