To some extent, that’s what happened with ablaze, the fourth album he released on Vee-Jay. Unlike Chess, his Windy City rival, Vee-Jay was not primarily known for blues. They specialized in harmony, gospel, jazz, and soul groups, eventually becoming a major blues artist when indifferent bluesman Jimmy Reed began racking up big hits for the label in the late 1950s. Reed opened for him the door to Hooker, whose incoherent 1958 hit “I Love You Honey” and his lazy 1960 walk “No Shoes” demonstrate a clear debt. That is not the case with ablaze. For this session, Vee-Jay enlisted a group of Detroit musicians who worked hard at the various labels run by Berry Gordy, Jr., the businessman who worked hard to keep his Motown label afloat in the early ’60s.
Many years later, these musicians would be called the Funk Brothers, a group immortalized in the 2002 documentary Standing in the shadows of Motown, but in 1961 they were struggling to make ends meet, so they were happy to go to Chicago to make a little more money than Detroit. Hooker had a connection to the Funk Brothers through Joe Hunter, a pianist who worked on the same Motor City circuit as Hooker. This familiarity allowed Hooker to adapt to the rhythms set by drummer Benny Benjamin and bassist James Jamerson. The beats were streamlined compared to the idiosyncratic beat Hooker played solo, but they felt vibrant and vital, somewhere between contemporary R&B and the dwindling market of urban blues.
In this 60th anniversary reissue, ablaze it has been remastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog tapes; there’s an audiophile vinyl edition of the stereo mix, along with a CD that has both stereo and mono mixes, plus an alternative of the lively “Thelma” shuffle. Listening to it now, it’s striking how modern the album seems to be mid-century. Jamerson and Benjamin keep the rhythm bouncing, Hunter decorates the margins with runs that also drive the beat, and guitarist Larry Veeder adds texture and color to Hooker’s basic boogie, while Hank Cosby and Andrew “Mike” Terry hammer out riffs, rhythms and melodies with his greasy saxophone. All the extra instrumentation doesn’t allow Hooker to delve into his grooves, a loss that doesn’t seem especially painful while ablaze turns. These club-tested musicians allow Hooker to take detours as unexpected as the Champs’ “Tequila” riff on “Keep Your Hands to Yourself (She’s Mine),” which in turn allows him to sing about all kinds of eccentricities: He complaint about women processing their hair, swears she’s about to turn the page now that it’s 1962, implores a lover “Let’s do it,” then lists her household needs in “Drug Store Woman,” stating that he’d rather have bath water waiting than a woman “in lipstick and powder, with her hair done up”.
The anchor of the whole thing is “Boom Boom,” which was not merely their last big hit, but arguably their biggest. The Funk Brothers help keep their lean three-chord stomp so slippery and catchy that it reads not like backwoods blues but inner-city pop. “Boom Boom” became her only Billboard crossover hit: it peaked at number 60, compared to number 16 on the R&B chart, eventually making its way into both the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Hall of Fame. of Rock and Roll Fame, a position assisted by his adoption. British Invasion blues-rockers like the Animals and Yardbirds. ZZ Top surely heard it, too: With its “aw-haw-haw-haw” chorus, it’s more clearly an antecedent to “La Grange” than “Boogie Chillen” itself. As fundamental as “Boom Boom” is, ablaze it’s not simply a single surrounded by nice too-rans. The Funk Brothers helped Hooker hone his modernity, allowing him to play with contemporary trends in a way that accentuated how he always existed in the moment, letting the times take shape around his elemental boogie.
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