BLUES AND DUES

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

John Lee Hooker doesn't just sing the blues, and he doesn't just play the blues on his guitar. He is the blues. Along with a handful of American musicians, such as Robert Johnson, B.B. King, Bessie Smith and a few others, Hooker helped establish in the cultural imagination what being a blues performer is all about. When Hooker sings, it's with an ocean-deep voice that grumbles and growls and sometimes soothes; his guitar playing has a wise, twangy authority.

Hooker is fond of using collaborators to enliven his music--also, no doubt, to broaden his audience--and on his new album, Don't Look Back, he's chosen his partners deftly. The band Los Lobos backs Hooker on a virile version of Hooker's classic song Dimples, and Irish pop star Van Morrison contributes some cagey vocals on the aching ballad The Healing Game (Morrison also produced the album).

Don't Look Back is a good album but not a perfect one; a few of the numbers such as Ain't No Big Thing tend to drag. But there are moments of dark, understated glory here that make you forgive the occasional missteps. The title track is the headiest moment; when Hooker sings, "I'm gonna live for the future/ not the past," using that rumbling, Richter-scale voice to toss off decades of heartbreak, the listener is touched with a redemptive awe. Hooker is 79 years old now, and has all but stopped touring. "I'll go out once in a while," he says. "I've paid my dues." Paid in full. Just one spin of Don't Look Back should convince anyone of that.

--By Christopher John Farley