John Lee Hooker – It Serve You Right To Suffer (2025 Remaster) (1966/2025) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

John Lee Hooker - It Serve You Right To Suffer (2025 Remaster) (1966/2025) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz] Download

John Lee Hooker’s style of guitar playing has been imitated but never matched. The iconic bluesman’s 1966 album It Serve You Right to Suffer for Impulse! was unusual because it teamed him with a jazz ensemble rather than a typical blues band. This setup was part of Impulse!’s broader effort to explore and expand the boundaries between jazz, blues, and other genres.

The collaboration was partly driven by the growing interest in the blues among jazz audiences in the 1960s. Hooker’s raw, emotional music resonated with the improvisational spirit of jazz. Impulse! wanted to showcase his talents in a new light by pairing him with a sophisticated jazz rhythm section — guitarist Barry Galbraith, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Panama Francis. These musicians had deep jazz credentials but were flexible enough to adapt to Hooker’s deeply personal and rhythmically unique style.Given Hooker’s unpredictable timing and piss-poor track record recording with bands, this 1965 one-off session for the jazz label Impulse! would be a recipe for disaster. But with Panama Francis on drums, Milt Hinton on bass, and Barry Galbraith on second guitar, the result is some of the best John Lee Hooker material with a band that you’re likely to come across. The other musicians stay in the pocket, never overplaying or trying to get Hooker to make chord changes he has no intention of making. This record should be played for every artist who records with Hooker nowadays, as it’s a textbook example of how exactly to back the old master. The most surreal moment occurs when William Wells blows some totally cool trombone on Hooker’s version of Berry Gordy’s “Money.” If you run across this one in a pile of 500 other John Lee Hooker CDs, grab it; it’s one of the good ones. – Cub Koda

Tracklist:

1-1. John Lee Hooker – Shake It Baby (Album Version) (04:20)
1-2. John Lee Hooker – Country Boy (05:37)
1-3. John Lee Hooker – Bottle Up & Go (02:25)
1-4. John Lee Hooker – You’re Wrong (04:19)
1-5. John Lee Hooker – Sugar Mama (03:12)
1-6. John Lee Hooker – Decoration Day (Album Version) (05:06)
1-7. John Lee Hooker – Money (Album Version) (02:23)
1-8. John Lee Hooker – It Serves You Right To Suffer (Album Version) (05:12)