Blue Thumb and Bluesway Recordings
The year 1969 was an important one in Earl Hooker's career. He again teamed up with Junior Wells and they performed at higher-paying college dates and concerts, including Chicago's Kinetic Playground. This pairing did not last long and in May 1969, and after assembling new players, Hooker recorded material that was later released as Funk. Last of the Late Great Earl Hooker. Also in May, after being recommended by Ike Turner (with whom he first toured in 1952), he went to Los Angeles to record the album Sweet Black Angel for Blue Thumb Records with arrangements and piano by Turner. It included Hooker's interpretations of several blues standards, such as "Sweet Home Chicago" (with Hooker on vocal), "Drivin' Wheel", "Cross Cut Saw", "Catfish Blues", and the title track. While in Los Angeles, Hooker visited the clubs and sat in with Albert Collins at the Ash Grove several times and jammed with others, including Jimi Hendrix.
After the Blue Thumb recording session, Earl Hooker and his band backed his cousin John Lee Hooker on a series of club dates in California; afterwards John Lee used them for his Bluesway Records recording session. The resulting album, John Lee Hooker Featuring Earl Hooker – If You Miss 'Im ... I Got 'Im, was Earl Hooker's introduction to the Bluesway label, an ABC subsidiary and home to B.B. King. This led to recording six more Earl Hooker-involved albums for Bluesway in 1969: Earl Hooker's Don't Have to Worry and albums by Andrew Odom, Johnny "Big Moose" Walker, Charles Brown, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry.
Hooker's Don't Have to Worry included vocal performances by Walker, Odom, and Hooker as well as instrumental selections. The session had a "coherence and consistency" that help make the album another part of Hooker's "finest musical legacy". Touring with his band in California took Hooker to the San Francisco Bay area in July 1969, where he played club and college dates as well as rock venues, such as The Matrix and the Fillmore West. In Berkeley, he and his band, billed as "Earl Hooker and His Chicago Blues Band", performed at Mandrake's, a local club, for two weeks as he recorded a second album for Arhoolie. Titled Hooker and Steve, the album was recorded with Louis Myers on harmonica, blues keyboard player Steve Miller, Geno Skaggs on bass, and Bobby Robinson on drums. Hooker shared the vocals with Miller and Skaggs.
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