One needn’t rhyme to make meaninful poetry, a point John Lee Hooker proved time and time again throughout his prolific career. This compact disc of twenty tracks recorded by the Mississippi-born moaner between 1950 and 1954 for Specialty Records, seven of them previously unissued, finds him alone in the studio with just his own fierce guitar accompaniment or rocking out with the kind of raucous combo he often performed with at bars along Hastings Street in Detroit. While most of the selections are Hooker’s unique compositions, he also puts his stylistic stamp on Percy Mayfield’s “I Need Love So Bad” and Roscoe Gordon’s “No More Doggin’.”