Impulse
The ABC owned jazz label, Impulse, released many works by John Coltrane and Charlie Mingus. Hooker’s session paired him with Jazz Bassist Milt Hinton, Bop Guitarist Barry Galbraith, Swing and Blues Drummer Panama Francis and even Dickie Wells on Trombone.

Several other Hooker releases paired him with Jazz rhythm sections with outstanding results. Hookers timing was sporadic at best and he rarely followed the standard blues chord progressions. Jazz musicians seemed to be more able to keep up with his eccentric timing and style.

A 7" 33 rpm Juke Box EP was also released from this session.

King
Syd Nathan started the King label in 1943 in an old cold storage building in Cincinnati, Ohio known as "The Ice House" In 1947 he bought controlling interest in the DeLuxe label later moving those operations to Ohio in 1951. Later subsidiary labels releasing Hooker material were Federal and Audio Lab.

Most of King’s 78 releases were Joe Von Battle recordings leased under the alias Texas Slim. Many would be reissued on King LP 727, John Lee Hooker Sings the Blues, finally giving proper credit to John Lee although his cousin Earl Hooker ends up somewhat slighted. *Three of the tracks are his and were mistakenly added to the John Lee compilation.

The original release of King 727 was the black King label with silver lettering. Later issues would have the picture of a king on the label. The 1988 reissue of 727 was on a blue label with King across the top in silver letters

727 John Lee Hooker Sings the Blues ( 16 Selections, Every One A Pearl), 1960
Reissued as KLP-727 in 1988
Wandering Blues/Heart Trouble Blues/I'm Gonna Kill That Woman/Slim's Stomp/Don't You Remember Me/The Numbers/*Poor Joe/*Stomp Boogie/Nightmare Blues/Moaning Blues/Don't Go Baby/Thinking Blues/Late Last Night/Devil's Jump/*Who's Been Jivin' You/*Race Track

*Earl Hooker recordings from a November, 1952 session in Florida.

Lauren
The Bernie Besman label, Lauren, was based in Culver City, California. Articles and letters from the time period seem to indicate that Besman had had bigger plans than just these two singles.

Fancourt's discography lists these as stemming from a March 1961 session in Culver City with the remaining tracks, some with extra instrumentation dubbed in, ending up being issued on Galaxy 201 (John Lee Hooker) in 1962, Green Bottle 3130 (Johnny Lee) and United Artists 127 (John Lee Hooker's Detroit) in 1974.

I had previously mentioned the possibility that these had been from an earlier session. Dave Sax was kind enough to contact me and help me straighten this out. The 1961 date is in fact correct. Besman, it seems, had not received permission from VeeJay to record Hooker and thus conveniently omitted the fact that he was currently recording Hooker in articles and letters of that time period.

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