In contrast to his often (always?) irascible peer Howlin’ Wolf (a/k/a Chester Burnett), John Lee Hooker was most amenable to collaborations. Bonnie Raitt, Los Lobos, Carlos Santana, and Charlie Musselwhite, among others, appeared on his 1989 album The Healer, produced by guitarist extraordinaire Roy Rogers (more about him in a later installment). Meanwhile, the boogie-blues icon himself appeared on The Healing Game, the 1997 album by one of his proteges, ‘The Belfast Cowboy’ himself, Van Morrison. In that same year, Big Head Todd and his Monsters not only covered Hooker’s “Boom Boom” (shown here in a fifty-year old rendition), but also invited the man to perform with them on the studio track thereof from their own record Beautiful World.
