Eagle Rock Announces ‘John Lee Hooker Live at Montreux 1983 & 1990’
The two-concert release will be available as a 2LP set and in digital video and audio.
Two landmark performances by seminal bluesman John Lee Hooker will be released on November 6. The John Lee Hooker Estate and Eagle Rock Entertainment will present John Lee Hooker Live at Montreux 1983 & 1990, available as a 2LP set and in digital video and audio. Watch a trailer for it here:
The set captures one of the true blues originators in action at the famous annual festival, sharing his rhythm and blues boogie across two blistering performances. John Lee is joined at both shows by the Coast to Coast Blues Band, and with them he offers many of the signature songs of his long and peerless career. They include “Boom Boom,” “Crawlin’ King Snake” and “Boogie Chillen,’” Hooker’s first-ever single, which became a US R&B No.1 in February 1949.
The new package will bring the music of the blues frontiersman, four-time Grammy winner and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient to an even wider modern-day audience. In 1983, at the first Montreux concert, “Boogie Chillen’” became a 13-person jam featuring guitarist Luther Allison, harmonica great Sugar Blue and a horn section. At that show, Hooker also performed such gems as “It Serves Me Right To Suffer,” “Hi Heel Sneakers,” “Boom Boom” and “Crawlin’ King Snake.”
Blues healing
By the time of the second performance in 1990, his name was on the lips of a whole new generation of admirers after the release the year before of his revelatory, Grammy-winning album The Healer. Hooker’s band that night featured an additional guitar and saxophone, as well as female vocalist Vala Cupp.
The Healer, produced by Roy Rogers of the Delta Rhythm Kings, featured such guests as Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, George Thorogood, Canned Heat, Robert Cray and Charlie Musselwhite. Indeed, the Montreux show included that album’s “I’m In The Mood” (which went on to win a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Performance) and an encore of “The Healer.”
John Lee Hooker Live at Montreux 1983 & 1990 is released on November 6. Pre-order it here.
The full John Lee Hooker Live at Montreux 1983 & 1990 tracklist is:
1983 – LP 1
SIDE A
1. “It Serves Me Right To Suffer”
2. “I Didn’t Know”
3. “Hi-Heel Sneakers”
4. “If You Take Care Of Me, I’ll Take Care Of You”
5. “Boom Boom”
SIDE B
1. “Worried Life Blues”
2. “I’m Jealous”
3. “Crawlin’ King Snake”
4. “Boogie Chillen’”
1990 – LP 2
SIDE A
1. John Lee Hooker Introduction
2. “Mabel”
3. “I’m In The Mood”
4. “Crawlin’ King Snake”
5. “Baby Lee”
SIDE B
1. “It Serves Me Right To Suffer”
2. “Boom Boom“
3. “The Healer”
4. “Boogie Chillen’”
