John Lee Hooker Chess Compilation Mad Man Blues/Chess Masters

Hi,
some weeks ago I pulled out an old John Lee Hooker Compilation gathering his singles from the 40s & 50s. I didnt really remember this collection and was pretty surprised, I like it much more than his popular stuff from the 60s. Only problem with this release: its a CD and not a pretty good one I think. So I started looking for LP collections of this stuff and first got me "Alone", the Specialty Records compilation which is pretty good.

Now I'm about to buy one of the Chess compilations as well. It looks like there are only two options "Mad Man Blues" from 1973 and "CHess Masters" from 1982, both double LPs. Can anyone recommend one of them soundwise? There are also 80s reissues of the "Mad Man Blues" as well. I know that some of the 80s Chess reissues are pretty renowned, some of them are done by Steve Hoffman I think but I couldnt find any info on this for the mentioned compilations. I would appreciate some advice, thank you.

 

ok, obviously I wasnt careful enough, besides these compilations there are also some albums that collect the Chess singles, for example "Sings And Plays The Blues" which was reissued as part of the "Chess Original Masters" series and thus should be pretty good, right?

 

so, for "House Of The Blues" there also several mono releases on PYE & Marble Arch which are rather cheap, any experience?

 

Bump

 

The only thing you need for JLH's 50s Chess recordings is the 1997 "Complete 50s Chess Recordings" 2-CD set. Be sure to get the US version with the black and gold cover, not the Euro digipak with the blue/purple cover.

The various vinyl compilations over the years are sometimes full of fake stereo, edited versions and other nonsense.