You don’t exactly have to scour the world to find a decent compilation of John Lee Hooker’s key recordings. A scan of any online music retailer’s stock will allow you to virtually customize your choice: Whether you’d prefer an exhaustive box set or something not quite so elaborate, Hooker’s early sides or something from his later years, the choices are innumerable. This new single-disc collection aims to corral the most essential tracks cut by the blues giant over his long career—for the Vee-Jay, Specialty, Riverside and Stax labels—onto a single CD. It does a commendable job. Naturally, it’s the primal early waxings that still best define Hooker’s gift to the American music lexicon: “Boogie Chillun,” “Boom Boom” and “Dimples” lead off the package because they arguably remain Hooker’s most important and durable creations. This is the sound that hooked young blues aficionados on both sides of the Atlantic—the Stones and The Animals, Canned Heat, The Doors and Dylan, too. But what Whiskey & Wimmen offers that’s more valuable, in its concentrated brevity, is an opportunity to focus on some of the tracks that don’t get cited as often in overviews of Hooker’s canon: the ornery “Big Legs, Tight Skirt,” the lascivious “Grinder Man” and others. While a few of the later tracks suffer from production faux pas (backing vocalists are not welcome here), this 16-track collection serves as a tidy and estimable intro to an indispensable body of work.