Blues legend John Lee Hooker stretched out his already lengthy I Hate(d) The Day I Was Born to nearly 20 minutes in San Francisco in 1964.

Do you want to hear nearly 20 minutes of John Lee Hooker moaning the blues? Complaining at length about the day he was born? Over a droning one-chord groove?

Of course you do!

It just rolls along at its leisure, as deep and dark and murky and mysterious, and as powerful and elemental, as the Mississippi River.

There’s a bass that’s not so much walking as strolling – ambling alongside that mighty river – punctuated by a drum that lazily marks time as if time doesn’t matter.

There are beautiful piano runs that flutter lightly and skitter like a skein of ducks taking flight.

And there’s John Lee Hooker’s magnificent guitar, growling and sputtering and twanging – and popping up now and then to play a beautiful solo.

He recorded it a few times but this one was live in San Francisco in 1964 when Hooker, notably vague about his birthdate – except that he hated it – was in his early 50s.