Ace Records is celebrating the late blues legend John Lee Hooker (1912 or 1917 – 2001) with a historic new box set. Due on May 29, Documenting the Sensation Recordings 1949-1952 accomplishes just that feat. When Ace purchased Sensation Records from Bernard Besman, a number of Hooker sides were among the acquisition. Besman had previously sold some of Hooker’s recordings to United Artists and Greene Bottle. Until now, Ace hadn’t completed research into the total contents of the acquisition. Over 3 CDs and 71 songs, the label has now brought together all…

With a style that synthesized Mississippi Delta blues through the urban Midwest during the mid-20th century and beyond, John Lee Hooker was the blues. And now, to celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday, Craft Recordings is prepping a five-disc box set, to be released next month. King Of The Boogie collects a track for every year since Hooker’s presumed birth in 1917. The son of a sharecropper raised almost entirely on church spirituals, Hooker ran away from home at a young age, playing on Beale Street in Memphis for a…