Before a few days ago I’d never even heard of this album, but found it in a record collection I bought from a friend’s auntie. I was shocked to discover two things about it — first, just how unusual it is, and secondly, that it was poorly received by most critics.
The 1974 album is so much fun. Deliriously unpretentious and has one of the best song titles ever: (You’ll Never Amount to Anything If You Don’t Go to) Collage (A Fortuitous Concatenation of Events). Yeah, it’s spelled “Collage” lol, and I had to look up “concatenation.” Indie songwriters can only imagine trying to get all those parentheses past the upload bots at Distrokid, CD Baby or Tunecore these days.
There are almost 25 different musicians on this album, by my count — only two survive. The huge cast of guest musicians is kind of the album’s calling card, and the fact that it is funkier than what you’d expect from John Lee Hooker. Joe Cocker is on here — singing and playing tambourine on three tracks — just before he worked towards a comeback from a depression-fueled heroin addiction. Still struggling with alcoholism, it was around this time he recorded a cover of Billy Preston’s You Are So Beautiful which would be released a few months after the Hooker album was recorded. In addition to Cocker, the album also boasts violinist Sugarcane Harris, the Tower Of Power horns, guitarist Hollywood Fats and Funk Brothers’ Wah Wah Watson (guitar) and Ron E. Beck (drums).
It opens with Make It Funky — which is basically a funky groove jam with seemingly ad-libbed spoken-word vocals. The horns are so tight from playing together in Tower Of Power that it really doesn’t seem like a jam. Hooker’s son Robert cooks on the Rhodes. Love this track.
The first dose of Cocker is next, on a song I usually associate with Eric Clapton: Five Long Years. Needless to say, I prefer this. Not to be confused with the Colin James song. Cocker and Hooker duet. Such incredible voices, both — and I have to mention the absolutely stunning piano playing by the late Clifford Coulter. This is how you play the blues.
Speaking of blues, the next two songs are 713 Blues followed by 714 Blues. It’s almost like when The Stooges opened their first album with a song called 1969, and 1970 on the followup Fun House the next year. 713 is Sugarcane’s time to shine, atop a very funky — not at all bluesy — Clavinet groove jam. There are also guitar solos by Hooker, Fats and session man Howard Roberts. I have no idea what 713 and 714 are. Hooker mentions them several times during his ad-lib spoken lyrics. The two tracks are really just one, split in half and then fading out.
Next up is a rather funky rendition of Hooker’s famous One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer. It’s cool, but the phrasing doesn’t really work in this structure.
Flip it over and Side 2 starts with Homework, what might be the funkiest song on the record. Slow and cool mostly thanks to Coulter’s poppin’ bass and overdubbed synth — not to mention Beck’s steady, dry and funky drums.
There’s fantastic studio chatter to start Bluebird, which again sees Coulter shining on keys — this time the Rhodes. A nice, standard slow blues from the 1930s, in which Hooker asks a migrating bird to take a message to his wayward love in California. The horns are back on this one, with some tried-and-true backing refrains.
Next is the kind of track people probably had in mind when they bought the album. Settin’ On Top Of The World is the most typical Hooker song on the album due to its sparse instrumentation. That said, it takes on a very Tom Waits feel due to the kalimba throughout. Makes it anxious and pretty damn cool. Songs like this are a good example of why this album wasn’t favourably reviewed when it came out, but certainly would be now.
The final song is the one with the crazy title I mentioned above. Really, it’s four songs: I Know How To Rock, Nothin’ But The Best, The Scratch and Sally Mae. The Scratch is my favourite part because it again features Cocker on vocals. To me, this song doesn’t seem like a seamless suite or medley. It seems like parts of long jams were sewn together. It works, though. The Scratch, for example, is cool the same way as Flavor on Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’ Orange — except Cocker is Beck.
I really love it, the whole album. I think it’s perfect. Not everyone will be as lucky as I was to find this album in such great shape — and practically free. Copies on Discogs can run you $20-$60. It is on Spotify, however, so get on that.
4/5
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
