· LIMITED EDITION CLASSIC LPS · 180 GRAM VINYL - AUDIOPHILE PRESSING · INCLUDES 2 BONUS TRACKS

This essential LP release includes Hooker’s sensational album, Travelin’, originally issued by Vee-Jay Records in 1960. His association with that label (from the 1950s to the early 1960s) marked a creative peak for Hooker. Travelin’ (also known as the “No Shoes” album) contains some of Hooker’s best material and is widely regarded as an essential blues classic. Songs like “Canal Street Blues” and “Whiskey and Wimmen” are deep, heavy, slow and dark, while “No Shoes,” and “I’m a Stranger” are the very essence of despair.

In 1960, when these sides were cut, Hooker still had a large audience in the primarily AfroAmerican blues community and was known to a lot of Jazz lovers as well. During this period he was able to channel years of pent up emotion caused by the extremely difficult life he led. He was forced to contend with loneliness, isolation, poverty, defeat and hunger in the brick and concrete squalor of the black ghettos that were about to explode in revolt. There is no question that John Lee Hooker and the blues were intimately acquainted. He was a true original who was often imitated, but never equaled.

In addition to the original masterpiece, this vinyl collector’s LP contains 2 bonus tracks from the same period: the great “Little Wheel” and “Maudie.”

PERSONNEL: JOHN LEE HOOKER, vocals and guitar, plus: Lefty Bates (guitar), Sylvester Hickman (bass), Jimmy Turner (drums). There is no guitar or bass accompaniment on “Solid Sender”. “I Can’t Believe” is a solo recording by John Lee Hooker (vocals and guitar).

Recorded in Chicago, Illinois, March 1960.

* BONUS TRACKS “LITTLE WHEEL”: John Lee Hooker (vocals and guitar), Eddie Taylor (guitar), Everett McCrary (bass), Frankie Bradford (piano), Richard Johnson (drums). Recorded in Chicago, Illinois, June 23, 1957. “MAUDIE”: John Lee Hooker (vocals and guitar), Eddie Taylor (guitar), Earl Phillips (drums). Recorded in Chicago, Illinois, January 22, 1959. SIDE A: 01 NO SHOES 02 I WANNA WALK 03 CANAL STREET BLUES 04 RUN ON 05 I’M A STRANGER 06 WHISKEY AND WIMMEN 07 LITTLE WHEEL * SIDE B: 1 SOLID SENDER 2 SUNNY LAND 3 GOIN’ TO CALIFORNIA 4 I CAN’T BELIEVE 5 I’LL KNOW TONIGHT 6 DUSTY ROAD 7 MAUDIE *