Customer Reviews

Never Get Out of These Blues Alive

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Yes! This is a forgotten gem. Very nice stuff indeed. Whoever wrote TB-sheets (Van Morrison I still believe), this is a crying time song, thrilling. Also the duet with Van The Man Morrison is breathtakin'. And what about Charlie Musselwhite, just great. It's an old record, and you can tell, but it sounds like a real classic and as fresh as ever. Get it!

This is a very powerful type of blues, with heavy bass lines and of course, John Lee's throaty voice. Very laid back, not so much down in the dumps, but kind of grinning to yourself about your own situation... what I like to call "ballsy blues." Van Morrison and Elvin Bishop both appear on this one- and Mr. Van makes a great duet voice with Mr. Hooker... definitely my personal favorite blues album...

This is a great blues album and one of John Lee's better studio albums. Van Man shows on up the title cut, which is great. TB Sheets is one of the saddest songs very recorded. The rest of the album is pretty jumpy boogie style blues. As John Lee says this is a party album...If you can find it, Buy it.

This was the first blues album I ever heard, on some budget LP in the late '70's. An ear-opening experience. The dialogue between guitar and vocal on 'Bumblebee, Bumblebee' has a kind of expansive discursiveness (with or without chemical enhancement) that can stay with you the rest of your life.
John Lee Hooker was Spiritual. God rest him. +

To me, this is kind of the sister album to Endless Boogie. ALthough, not as much boogie blues, it retains some of the same live-in-the-studio-jammin feel to it and it came out in the early 70s. As usual, this album is dismissed by the critics because it doesn't have his most noteable songs on it. If you want some more Hooker in the same style as Endless Boogie, you'll probably like this.

I've been a JLH fan ever since my ears were opened in 1971, by a copy of
"Hooker 'N Heat". Man I have never been far from that crazy JLH beat
since. The beat of the metal presses of old Detroit, the musio running
before the storm, the expectation of something bad about to break, all
handled with an aplomb that would make our saints look radical. This
disc-"Never get out of these bluses Alive" the title saya it more
eloquent than it could have been said by anyone else, pure impact, it says
to me, "yeah things are mighty askew, and we may not be able to do much
about it, so let's put on "Never get out of these blues alive" and go
about our daily lives, the old "move along, nothing to see" I write to
the beat of John Lee Hooker, and as an added bonus feature, the 7th. and
last cut of the disc has two old Paul Butterfield Blues Band alums
playing with the Hook, Elvin Bishop, and Mark Nafalin, there is John Kahn
from Garcia & Saunders roving band of musician's playing base on cut #6.
But thats what I always loved about JLH, his ability to gather musicians
around him, and school them that needs it in the ways of them motor city
blues.

This CD, which I purchased to replace the vinyl I have owned for years, represents not well know but excellent example of Hooker in his prime.