B.B. King calls Earl Hooker one of his favorite guitarists. Indeed, this late, underrecorded master of melody, rhythm, and especially slide was a giant whose renown was diminished by his premature death from tuberculosis at age 40 in 1970 and his relatively small number of recordings as a leader. Much of this CD features Hooker as a sideman, backing singers Lillian Offit, Harold Tidwell, and A.C. Reed. Too bad, because it's the instrumentals that make this disc worth owning. Hooker's slide is sweet and buttery on tunes like The Leading Brand and Blues in D Natural. He tips up the tempo for his own arrangement of Junior Wells's theme song, which Hooker called Rocking with the Kid. And his sly picking in organ-combo tunes like The Bright Sound and Off the Hook are textbook blues guitar genius. --Ted Drozdowski