John Lee Hooker: "High Priced Woman". Scarce acetate. Pye Records, 1964. Blues.

	£		26
	$		34

John Lee Hooker:

High Priced Woman b/w Sugar Mama

Acetate, probably of Pye International release: 7N.25255, 1964

Here is a rare and unusual find. I always buy unlabelled records and other mystery items whenever I see them. You never know what is going to be in the grooves. Mind you, having said that, in fifty years of record collecting, I’ve only ever had three or four of such items turn out to be interesting.

This is one of the interesting ones. I bought this completely un-marked acetate about twenty years ago at a car boot sale. Putting it on the turntable revealed it to be unmistakeably by John Lee Hooker. The tracks are High Priced Woman b/w Sugar Mama so I think it is pretty much 100% certain to be one of the acetates produced as part of the pressing process for the Pye International single release of those recordings in 1964. John Lee Hooker had originally recorded these two songs in 1952. I don’t know whether he recorded new versions for the Pye release or not.

It’s not a good idea to play acetates very often so, apart from playing this one when I first got hold of it to identify the tracks, I had never played it since. I did listen to a short section of each side yesterday just to confirm that my memory was correct. Both sides have crackle and hiss (as has been the case with the handful of other acetates I have owned) but otherwise the recording plays OK.

There's not much to show in the images. The acetate is simply a black disc. The grooves cover around the same area of the surface as on a regular vinyl record. The central area where the label would be on a record, is simply flat and bank. Sometimes acetates have pasted-on paper labels with hand-written titles, recording dates and so on - but there is no sign that that was ever the case here. The second, off-centre hole in the central area is something to do with the manfacturing process and is often seen on acetates.

I’ve included an image that shows the playing surface, which is quite marked and rubbed - but of course, acetates are about the artefact not about the playing quality. They are a direct connection back to the studio process when the record was first released. There is every chance that this is the only surviving acetate of this particular release. The metal core of the acetate is visible around the spindle hole and in a tiny dink to the outer edge (see images). This latter is outside the run-in grooves so does not affect the acetate’s playability.

The acetate was in a rather unusual polythene sleeve when I bought it (see image). I don’t know whether that was a standard thing to keep acetates in in the studio or just something that a later owner had put it in. Anyway, I will include this original sleeve plus a card sleeve with the record.

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