John Lee Hooker: Hooker [Shout! Factory - $59.98 - 4 CDs]

John Lee Hooker was among the most important musicians of the latter half of the 20th century. He took the spare and lonesome sound of pre-World War Two acoustic blues and electrified it for the modern aesthetic, bridging two distinct eras of the genre. Hooker is everything one would want from a box set. It encapsulates a vast swath of musical history, showing both the personal evolution of a legendary musician and the gradual transformations that occurred in the genre. The tracks are impeccably well-chosen and lovingly remastered. The liner notes, with a compelling bio from Ted Drozdowski and highly detailed track listings, are enjoyable and an excellent resource. And, unlike many artists, John Lee Hooker’s music never turned downhill. On too many box sets (or even two-disc compilations), a halving of the act’s material would suffice. But any trimming here would be a crime. [Amazon]

Full PopMatters review

John Lee Hooker - I’m Leaving

Tori Amos: A Piano: The Collection [Rhino - $74.98 - 5 CDs]

For the Tori freak in everyone’s family, Rhino has just released A Piano: The Collection, a five-CD, 86-track box set that is packaged as a facsimile piano keyboard and includes a 60-page booklet of press photos and liner notes. A Piano collects a handful of tracks from all but one of her albums along with a healthy number of B-sides and several previously unreleased songs. While Boys for Pele is disappointingly underrepresented and Strange Little Girls strangely absent, the box set happily resurrects mid-‘90s B-sides favorites like “Upside Down” and “Cooling” as well as “Mary”, “Here. In My Head”, and “Frog on My Toe”. The book reminds its readers of Amos’ renegade status in the music industry and her continuing obsession with gardens. [Amazon]