After a few years spent climbing the ranks of the Detroit blues scene, in rolls 1948 and Hooker’s “Boogie Chillen’”—a variation on an ‘old lick’ he says he heard the guys playing way back when in Mississippi—goes to the top of the charts. In the years that follow John Lee Hooker has one hit after another, backed often only by a single sideman, the great Eddie Kirkland (because he was one of the only guys who could keep up with him)! Not in the sense that Hooker played fast or fancy, in fact, Hooker himself once said, “I don't play a lot of fancy guitar. I don't want to play it. The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks”. These ten tracks have ‘mean licks’ a-plenty, and take listeners back to that early period, beginning with his earliest single, 1948’s “Sally Mae” through to 1954’s, “I Need Love So Bad”, the year before Hooker signed to Vee Jay.