John Lee Hooker – Free Beer and Chicken

When Jazz went electric, there were cries from the purists. When folk went electric, Dylan was dubbed “Judas” (at the 1966 Manchester concert with “The Band”). When the blues went electric it was part of a physical migration of predominantly black southern rural musicians into the urban north. This is how we got the “Chicago” blues.

Perhaps it was simply a matter of fact of modern urban culture, but the response to electric blues was much more positive – until it started wandering off in various directions: psychadelia; eastern fusions; open-ended jams – anywhere away from where purist cops tend the musical gates.

These departures began in the mid-1960s, when white college kids began a blues revival in an electric and increasingly psychadelic (blame the drugs?) mode.

By the 1970s, both blues and jazz were delving into fusions of various world rhythms, but leaning heavily towards soul-funk grooves that are still influencing up-and-coming musical artists, most notably in hip-hop and jam-bands.

John Lee Hooker’s Free Beer and Chicken is one of the best examples of blues-funk you may ever treat your ears to. But it’s not just the crisp, back-bone-slide grooves, or the wonderful minimalism in the added arrangements of horns, violin, keyboards, and even Kalimba (on Sittin’ on Top of the World), that make this album so great – it’s how intimate it sounds!

AMG reviewer Eugene Chadbourne describes “Free Beer and Chicken” as a “collection of tracks that were salvaged from some ambitious but never finished project involving dozens of guests”.

Chadbourne’s statement is likely based on expectations he has for Ed Michel, the legendary jazz producer responsible for Free Beer and Chicken. I think Mr. Chadbourne misses the point of a record like this. It isn’t about some grand project. It’s an intimate glimpse of Hooker in the studio where we get to hear the making of a record with a legend. So the record is more or less a documentary, which is highligted by Michel’s style of editing and mixing.

Free Beer and Chicken reminds me of the Captain Beefheart records of the “Trout Mask Replica” era, where plenty of intimate little clips between the “cast and crew” (in the case of TMR, the distinction might be difficult) are woven into the final offering, reminding us all that at the end of the day, this is just another record.

And that’s ok by me.

Track List:

1) Make It Funky (Hooker) 3:23
2) Five Long Years (Boyd) 6:02
3) 713 Blues (Hooker) 5:57
4) 714 Blues (Hooker) 1:39
5) One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer (Hooker) 3:33
6) Homework (Hooker) 4:27
7) Bluebird (Hooker) 5:25
8) Sitting on Top of the World (Chatmon, Vinson) 3:24
9) (You Never Amount to Anything If You Don’t Go To) Collage (Cocker, Hooker) 5:56