Customer Reviews

Two Bugs & A Roach

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

 

 

Earl Hooker's great guitar playing shines through on this recording. The "Bug" is Earl's reference to his bout with TB, which almost killed him.

Earl's an incredibly versatile player and this recording highlights the spectrum of his playing. In a 1970's interview, BB King listed Earl Hooker as one his favorite players, and offered the following analogy - "If Earl Hooker was a truck driver, he'd be able to back his rig into any space, no matter how tight..."

By the way... when Jimi Hendrix went to Chicago early in his career he played back-up for Earl & learned alot about how to use a wah-wah.... Listen closely and you'll hear Earl tearing off several riffs that later became parts of Jimi's sound.

Earl Hooker is a master of the wah pedal and slide. Noone has found a way to get a sound like his in all the years I've been listening to the blues. This album is a must have for any blues collector.

This recording is a classic for all blues fans and guitarists alike. Earl plays slide guitar with a wah pedal to give his music a unique sound that NOBODY has duplicated. If you had to choose from the ten best blues albums, this one should definately be on that list.

The liner notes call his playing "tasteful," that sounds a little wimpy, but that's not a bad assessment - he not only nails every note, but his phrasing goes beyond what is often all-to-predictable from the Chicago blues sound of the 1960s. As others have noted, EH was the master of the wah pedal; what the guy could do was incredible. How much of this song selection was played with a slide is difficult to figure; there are only a few phrases that sound slide-like, 99% of the rest sounds finger style. Could have been played with slide, but if so his precision in nailing notes is pretty mind blowing. Recording quality is, with one or two exceptions, excellent, so one can appreciate the guy's huge tone. Too bad the body of his recorded work is rather small and that he passed at a young age from TB, but some of his genius has been passed down to us through players influenced by him, Jimi among others. Apparenly he could play all styles of music, and even did a five-month gig at some redneck bar playing country and western. CD is a real gem.

This a great collection of Earl Hooker recordings from the early sixties as well as a few songs recorded in the mid fifties. Earl is so smooth and clean with his slide. Nobody sounds like him, he's a one-of-a-kind. Unfortunately there just isn't that much Earl Hooker material available. Can't get enough of the Hook!

The late great Earl Hooker was a second cousing to John Lee Hooker and a guitar player's guitar player, beloved by Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, and many other great guitarists, yet these days he's largely forgotten, having died in 1970 of tuberculosis at age 40.

But this record, his most famous, tells a story of a virtuoso who had mastered every technique in the book. Backed by other excellent musicians, Hooker is absolutely mezmerizing on such cuts as "You Don't Love Me," "Off The Hook," "Sweet Black Angel," and the title cut, a terribly poignant foreshadowing of Hooker's fatal illness.

This record is one that blues fnas will enjoy over and over again.

best cd i have ever bought---except for some other earl hooker cd's.....