The Standard School Broadcast
John Lee Hooker
BMG
28 February 2025
It’s rare these days for previously unreleased recordings by a classic blues artist to emerge – especially material of the quality to be found on The Standard School Broadcast Recordings by John Lee Hooker. Largely unheard since 1973, the eight long tracks on the new release by BMG provide a bold new perspective on Hooker‘s work in the 1970s. Astonishingly coherent, the recordings easily rival other John Lee Hooker albums of the period, including 1971’s Hooker’ N Heat and Endless Boogie and 1972’s Never Get Out of These Blues Alive.
Like other older blues artists still active in the 1970s (B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters), John Lee Hooker faced a career downswing as the music he coinvented became subsumed in a haze of corporate rock music. The symptoms were apparent on both Endless Boogie and Never Get Out of These Blues Alive, where a well-meaning but overeager gaggle of rock musicians – Elvin Bishop, Carl Radle, Jim Gordon, Steve Miller, Van Morrison, and others – imposed rigid structure on Hooker’s naturally fluid and minimalist style of blues.
Hooker was better served by blues rockers Canned Heat on Hooker’ N Heat, where Hooker was pushed high in the mix in left in command of the arrangements. Overall, however, Hooker recordings of the early 1970s were sorry dilutions of the great man’s incomparable style.
The Standard School Broadcast Recordings go some way toward restoring Hooker’s legacy in the period. The eight tracks on the album were commissioned by the Standard School Broadcast, an institution sponsored by Standard Oil and devoted to promoting American history and music appreciation in schools in the Western United States. Televised broadcasts would be fed into classrooms via the NBC network, and custom phonograph records were distributed for educational use. Only three of Hooker’s eight tracks, “Sally Mae”, “Hard Times”, and “Should Have Been Gone”, were ever broadcast. The other five lay preserved on the original analog tape reels for over half a century.
The recordings are special in part for their no-nonsense production, which avoid embellishments fostered by commercial pressures to “polish up” Hooker’s sound. Hooker’s guitar and voice – still strong and resonant at around age 60 (his birthdate is a matter of conjecture) – dominate the tracks. A three-piece backing band, including longtime bassist Gino Skaggs, drummer Ken Swank, and pianist Robert Hooker, provide sympathetic accompaniment without crowding up the mix. Robert Hooker, John Lee’s son – just 20 years old at the time – stands out as a nimble keyboardist well-attuned to this father’s idiosyncratic approach to the blues. Some of the best moments involve father and son engaging in impromptu call-and-response as the tracks unfold in the studio.
Many of John Lee Hooker’s trademarks are here. “Rock With Me”, an uptempo boogie, primarily dwells on one chord as the musicians rally around Hooker’s improvised vocals. Another fast number, “Should Have Been Gone”, is an interpolation of Hooker’s 1963 single “I’m Leaving”. While the clinical studio environment tames some of the incendiary fire of Hooker’s early live performances of “I’m Leaving”, backed by the Groundhogs, the song remains a potent demonstration of Hooker’s influence on the blues-rock genre.
The most crucial material on The Standard School Broadcast Recordings are the slower-tempo numbers, including the lengthy opening vamp “Bad Boy”, the meditative “Hard Times”, and the searingly autobiographical “I Hate the Day I Was Born”. On these tracks, Hooker and his band strike an almost trance-like groove over which the singer’s half-spoken vocals evoke a haunting portrait of struggle and survival. The CD and streaming versions also include an unaccompanied performance of “Sally Mae”, originally the flipside (as “Sally May”) of Hooker’s 1948 single “Boogie Chillen”. A perfunctory “Coast Recorders Jam” – which sounds more like a soundcheck recording than a fully committed performance – concludes the set.
BMG’s newly released edition of The Standard School Broadcast Recordings features all eight tracks on CD with detailed liner notes describing their inception. The LP version omits “Sally Mae” and “Coast Recorders Jam” for length, although the six remaining tracks are the best of the bunch. While the album offers few new insights into John Lee Hooker’s unparalleled blues legacy, hearing this unearthed material for the first time is the next best thing to a trip back in time.
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