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This is a decent JLH disc. Great music, which is no surprise. But then I got to the song 'My Dream.' Blew me away. Just something about this one that makes me want to get a good stiff drink and drift away for a bit.
The first two cuts on this cd are spectacular. And if you dig this, you've got to listen to the soundtrack from The Hot Spot. The duet with Bonnie Raitt won them a Grammy. This was my first, and still one of my most prized blues cd's. One of my favorite movies, Don Johnson, Virginia Madsen, Jennifer Connelly, and Charles Martin Smith. Very film noir, and Hooker's soundtrack kills.
But, "The Healer" is just a classic song that trancends genres. Hooker was supposedly pretty down-and-out. On this song Carlos Santana proves his frequent assertion that all of the best modern music is derived from the blues. More than worth having. The other cuts also stand tall. He topped the blues charts for nearly a decade after this came out. With a new foundation, John Lee went on to make 5 or 6 strong selling albums.
The music on "The Healer" is great. The title song, "The Healer" is by itself worth the price of admission and earns my 5 stars for this cd, even before listening to another cut. When this album was released I heard that Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt rescued a no-longer-sought-after John Lee by making one of the first "collaboration" projects. It's one of those rare songs I can listen to at any time, love it and never tire of it. The rest of the cd is very, very good. The Hooker-Raitt song smolders - a singnature Raitt performance. So, guess what - he used the same collaboration idea that he used to rescue John Lee. He was putting out very good cd's every year which went nowhere on the charts.
But, having him collaborate with well-known younger artists (including Carlos and Bonnie) gave him a new twist to his music and a much broader audience. Kharma. Carlos places John Lee into a stone cold Latin context and the two of them come out with, of course, amazing Latin Blues. Simultaneously intense and totally relaxed. Well, sometime around the year 2000, Santana's own sales had become pretty meager and rather irrelevant in the record business. That resulted in his "Supernatural" cd, a huge multi-million seller, one of the biggest sellers of the last decade.
Very bluesy, awesome listening. I had to buy another for myself it is so good. Soulful. My husband borrowed my original 2 years ago and never returned it. A real keeper for your music collection.
I am actually listening to this CD right now. I think this is a fine addition to your collection if you like either blues or rock or both. Hooker's blues never really sound sad. This is the modern-age John Lee Hooker at his best. The Healer marked re-birth of John Lee's activity in modern blues. If you are looking for pure John Lee, though, this isn't your CD. It is awesome. And as is true with most Hooker recordings, this is one is very energetic.
In this CD, pretty much every song, with the exception of a couple, is a collaboration with someone, whether it's Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, Los Lobos, George Thorogood, or Charlie Musselwhite. This CD is very smooth, romantic, laid-back, classy, and has very good sound quality. Somehow he manages to perform even the saddest lyrics in the way that it would sound energetic rather than depressing, possibly because of his constant sense of rhythm (on other CDs, you can hear him stomp his foot in many, maybe most, songs he performs, especially in earlier work). He is a class act and aged like fine wine.
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