Review: Howlin' Wolf - Howlin' Wolf (1962)

Tracks: 1) Shake For Me; 2) The Red Rooster; 3) You’ll Be Mine; 4) Who’s Been Talkin’; 5) Wang-Dang Doodle; 6) Little Baby; 7) Spoonful; 8) Going Down Slow; 9) Down In The Bottom; 10) Back Door Man; 11) Howlin’ For My Baby; 12) Tell Me.

REVIEW

Howlin’ Wolf’s second LP on Chess, officially self-titled but commonly referred to as «The Rocking Chair Album» because of the front sleeve (though who could ever really imagine a guy like Howlin’ Wolf snuggling down in an old rocking chair?), is universally recognized as his finest (half-)hour — not just because of the generally high level of individual songs, but also because it is his only album from the classic Chess period to feature a certain chronological coherence. Namely, although the track running order is as chaotic as always, it is a collection of 6 singles, A- and B-sides included, that the man released for the label between 1960 and early 1962 — pretty much his entire output of two years, featuring the same core band of the Wolf himself on vocals, Hubert Sumlin on guitar, Otis Spann (mostly) on piano, and Willie Dixon — who also wrote or co-wrote most of the material — on bass. (Drummers and second guitarists were a bit more of a revolving door thing in this period and are not always easily identifiable).

If the best songs on Moanin’ In The Moonlight laid out the basic skeleton of the Wolf legend, then the material on the «Rocking Chair» album is the juicy, devilishly intoxicating flesh, meticulously grown upon those bones by what was arguably Chicago’s finest and most dangerously-sounding blues team of the earliest Sixties. As incredible as it seems, not a single one of these songs ever hit any kind of charts — but so many of them impressed themselves deeply and unforgettably in the minds of adventurous white teenagers across both sides of the Atlantic that the infamous Eno quote about the Velvet Underground (the one about «everybody who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band») would apply with far more accuracy to those Howlin’ Wolf singles. Many of us — in fact, many of our parents even — have heard ‘Red Rooster’, ‘Spoonful’, ‘Back Door Man’, ‘Going Down Slow’ performed by completely different, much more commercially successful artists; much fewer of us were persistent enough to work our way backward to the originals.

As usual, rearranging the songs in chronological order and paying attention to the songwriting credits helps clear some things up. Wolf’s very first single for 1960, released in February that year, was actually taken from a three-year old session in the summer of 1957, and both ‘Who’s Been Talkin’ and ‘Tell Me’ are credited to Burnett himself, who had a much harder time adapting old melodies to newer standards than Dixon. The A-side, with its slightly Latinized syncopated groove, sounds uncannily close to Slim Harpo’s ‘Got Love If You Want It’, recorded several months earlier, but the difference is that Wolf and his band transpose it to a minor key, and essentially the same melody that, for Harpo, was a cocky show of self-confidence, for Wolf becomes a dark tragedy. The song is memorable not so much for its stuttering rhythm or for Wolf’s harmonica solos, but rather for the looping fadeout of "I’m the causin’ of it all, I’m the causin’ of it all..." as the protagonist finally accepts the blame for his cheating behavior. This is one area, by the way, in which Howlin’ Wolf completely beats Muddy Waters — for all his imposing burliness and evil image, Wolf is completely convincing when he puts on the cloak of a Dostoyevsky-like tragic hero; Muddy never did properly reach out to the same psychological depths. On the other hand, the B-side ‘Tell Me’ is just another iteration on the rigid 12-bar form of ‘How Many More Years’ — listenable as always, but bringing no new insights to the table.

As we enter 1960 properly, though, the issue of filler gets handily resolved by letting Mr. Willie Dixon step in as the principal songwriter (and probably arranger as well) for Mr. Chester Burnett. Not only is the overall sound beginning to approach our modern, conventional ideas of production (clean, sharp, deep, with all the instruments properly separated and curated), but the overall value of the songs increases drastically with the merger of two major talents. Dixon, with his notoriously philosophical approach to the world of blues music, might have been an even more perfect partner for Howlin’ Wolf than he was for Muddy Waters — Muddy’s transformation of the blues would usually proceed from a more lightweight, almost vaudevillian angle, but Dixon’s songwriting leanings tended to outline the bleak and sinister elements of the genre, and that was undeniably the preferred domain of the Wolf. They weren’t always at their best together, but when they were at their best, nobody on the Chicago scene could touch them, and nobody across the Atlantic, not even in ten years’ time — not the Who, not the Stones, not Zeppelin — could outdo them in terms of sheer soulful depth.

And for what it’s worth, they were never better at their best than on the first of the brand new A-sides of 1960, recorded and released in early summer: ‘Spoonful’. I can hardly think of a single Howlin’ Wolf song to which Sam Phillips’ legendary description of his voice as "this is where the soul of man never dies" could apply with more clarity. The only thing is that ‘Spoonful’ is not just about the voice — it is about the melody, the arrangement, the lyrics, the entire devilish charm of it which, frankly speaking, gets diluted and trivialized with every new round of the endless discussion on whether the song is about drugs or male ejaculation. Willie Dixon actually summarized it best himself when he wrote in his autobiography: "People who think ‘Spoonful’ was about heroin are mostly people with heroin ideas".

As you can easily read in Wikipedia, the «spoonful» motif in blues can be traced way back in time, all the way back to Charley Patton’s ‘Spoonful Blues’ (which apparently was about cocaine) and even further down to Papa Charlie Jackson’s ‘All I Want Is A Spoonful’ from 1925 (which may have been about male ejaculation), and I am absolutely sure that neither of the Charlies came up with the metaphor by themselves (a little more research and you’ll probably dig up something from the 19th century, if not earlier). Melodically, though, these songs have little to do with Dixon’s composition, and their moods are light and playful; the classic ‘Spoonful’, by contrast, is a master-class exercise in stark, uncompromising musical brutality — epitomized, of course, by the monumental-in-its-simplicity bassline that emerges out of the groove on the twelfth second and keeps haunting the song, with Wolf himself occasionally echoing it on vocals ("that SPOON, that SPOON, that SPOONful..."). Of all the innumerable artists to cover the song in subsequent years, Cream — that is, Jack Bruce — understood best the stunning impact of that bassline, and tried to make it even more resplendent in its cruelty by slowing and fuzzing it down. But I’d still say it hits harder in this simple, original, fast-paced version.

In between the lyrics — which purportedly jump between different types of imagery, from sexual to gun-slinging — and the whiplash punch of Willie’s bass, ‘Spoonful’, the way I feel it, is not particularly about heroin, or semen, or tea or coffee or gold or silver, but it is about the slightest things in life that drive people to madness and violence: "Everything’s a fight about a spoonful" — the motif may have been traditional, but that particular line is a very distinct representation of Willie Dixon’s vision of the world around him, and Howlin’ Wolf is just the man to deliver that line in his finest Mephistophelian style. (That he used to accompany his live performances of the song by slapping a large spoon against his crotch is more of a titillating gimmick than a «hint» at its true meaning). Nor was he ever more terrifying than when garrotting his voice on the "men LIES about that, some of them CRIES about that, some of them DIES about that..." part of the chorus, each line punctuated by the last and most brutal notes of the bass riff. Along with tunes like John Lee Hooker’s ‘Tupelo Blues’, ‘Spoonful’ is one of the most vividly «artsy» takes on the classic blues idiom in the pre-classic-blues-rock period, and one of the creepiest musical allegories on the true nature of humanity (certainly the creepiest one-chord musical allegory on the true nature of humanity — E minor, was it?).

As for the B-side, ‘Howlin’ For My Darling’ (mistitled ‘Howlin’ For My Baby’ by some rhyme-deaf executive on the original LP, though not on the original single), its only problem is that it found itself next to ‘Spoonful’ — it is a much more shallow vamp-groove, building upon Burnett’s well-established werewolf imagery. The band sets a nice, if fairly monotonous, pattern, but it does build up an image of the lead singer as a ravenous, impatient carnivore pacing to and fro, back and forth around his eight-bar padded cell, anticipating the eventual arrival of his playmate — "if you hear me howlin’, calling on my darlin’, arooooooo....". It hardly beats ‘Moanin’ At Midnight’ in terms of atmosphere, but in terms of production it’s been a long road from 1951 to 1960, and though the lead guitar and piano still sound a bit subdued in the background, the song packs a fresh, crispy punch, also giving Dixon the opportunity to show how he can handle a fast, busy-bee bassline next to the slow and sinister one of ‘Spoonful’. (For the record, I think this is exactly the same melody you hear a decade later in the bridge section of the Doors’ ‘Wild Child’ — in a slightly different key — and it’s hardly a big surprise).

At this time, the Dixon-Burnett partnership was totally on fire, with the Wolf’s first single of 1961 showing no end to the show of awesomeness. ‘Wang Dang Doodle’ may not seem to have the most imposing title in the history of music, but it is a good candidate for the scariest havin’-a-good-time party anthem released in the history of music to that point. The opening ten seconds might feel like merely a sped up variation on ‘Smokestack Lightning’, but once the Wolf enters with his vocal lines, there is a subtle increase in tempo and the song seamlessly becomes more of a variation on Bo Diddley’s ‘Who Do You Love’, echoing that song’s atmosphere of cocky, death-defying violence. Dixon’s lyrics are essentially about going to a party to have a good time, but who is going to the party? "Tell Automatic Slim, tell Razor-Totin’ Jim, tell Butcher Knife Totin’ Annie, tell Fast-Talking Fanny..." — these aren’t exactly party-going teenagers you’d encounter in a Bill Haley or an Elvis Presley party-going anthem. "I’m gonna rip it up, I’m gonna ball it up" sounds pathetically wussy next to "we gon’ break out all the windows, we gon’ kick down all the doors, we gon’ pitch a wang dang doodle all night long". Heck, when you pair those lyrics with the Wolf’s acid sandpaper torture tool delivering them, the Wu-Tang Clan themselves would sound pathetically wussy next to what we hear on this track — and this was January 1961, mind you, the month of Elvis Presley’s ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ and Bert Kaempfert’s ‘Wonderland By Night’. Go on, play ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ first and then follow it up with ‘Wang Dang Doodle’. No better way to recapture the state of mind of the typical musically curious young person at the time, soon to grow into a Mick Jagger or an Eric Burdon or a Jim Morrison.

Interestingly enough, Dixon’s original version, recorded by himself back in 1954 but not released until after the reinvention of the song with Howlin’ Wolf, was far more jokey in tone, sounding more like a classic jump-blues number from the late Forties — again, hearing it is quite instructive if one wants to see to what extent of ballsiness this kind of music had advanced by the start of the new decade, even if only a tiny handful of people were adventurous enough to appreciate that ballsiness in 1961. For that matter, even the British admirers of the Wolf hesitated to cover the tune on record — I think the first proper cover version was by Dave Edmunds’ Love Sculpture around 1968 — and yet you still hear its influence all over the place. Quite possible that the Stones were thinking about it when making their own breakneck-tempo party song (‘Rip This Joint’) in 1972 — and absolutely impossible that its fiery guitar breaks were not a major influence upon young Mike Bloomfield, whose maniacal blues-punk leads on Dylan’s ‘Maggie’s Farm’ (from Newport) and ‘Tombstone Blues’ (from Highway 61 Revisited) have exactly the same vibe to them as Hubert Sumlin’s frantically messy soloing in between the Wolf’s verses. (I assume that’s Hubert, although some sources also credit an uncredited Freddie King as second guitarist and I would certainly not be surprised if that were the case). But influence or no influence, the song itself has not really aged a day since the original release, and as inventive as Love Sculpture’s or, much later on, PJ Harvey’s covers of it might be, absolutely nothing beats the original in terms of sheer primal violence. Do not try this at home, kids.

The B-side of the single is a little slower and less flat-out ferocious, but it is arguably more recognizable for the general music fan, because most of us probably become acquainted with ‘Back Door Man’ through the Doors cover on their debut album. Now certainly Jim Morrison and his film school buddies were the first to properly appreciate and, to the best of their abilities, to amplify the doom-laden, apocalyptic vibes of dark blues heroes such as Wolf or John Lee Hooker, and their transformation of the wife-seducing sexual predator of a protagonist in ‘Back Door Man’ into an allegorical avatar of the Grim Reaper still leaves my mind blown every time I hear it. But on the other hand, they also push it too far: Howlin’ Wolf had a talent for standing (stomping, rather) on the borderline separating Sex from Death, whereas for Morrison, Death always came far more naturally than Sex (at least, as far as basic priorities go).

If you listen attentively to the one-chord vamp of the original ‘Back Door Man’, you might catch up on its essential similarity with the ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ / ‘I’m A Man’ / ‘Mannish Boy’ dialog between Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley — hardly surprising, given that both ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ and ‘Back Door Man’ are credited to the one and only Willie Dixon, but also quite telling in that the «epic» vibe of the grand tales of Muddy’s and Bo’s superhuman sexual exploits is twisted into a much darker, mischievous, even murderous vibe when the Wolf takes the stand. For all their awesomeness, Muddy and Bo are «front door men», carrying out their conquests quite openly, in broad daylight; Wolf delivers the mantra of "I am... back door man!" in a voice that clearly suggests he’s been sent on this Earth to disrupt order, not establish it, and his modus operandi is decidedly different from that of his peers — "when everybody’s trying to sleep, I’m somewhere making my midnight creep". If you need more than that one line to explain why the Wolf’s singles did not sell so well in 1961... well, no, I believe you do not, not really. Let Muddy and Bo eat their pork and beans. Real men know the value of chicken.

With two phenomenal singles in a row, it was probably time to take a little break, so the next couple of songs was not nearly as adventurous, even if both still sounded fine. ‘Little Baby’ was an updated take on Little Walter’s ‘My Babe’ from 1955 (itself a reworking of the old-timey spiritual ‘This Train’) — however, Dixon did write a new set of lyrics for Wolf, turning the song from a regular love serenade into a creepy stalker anthem: "You go to court and I’ll come along / You go to jail and I’ll throw your bond...". Note how everybody in the world covered ‘My Babe’ at one point or another, but absolutely nobody ever covered ‘Little Baby’ (I think the Stones were the first band of any note to attempt their own take — and they only did it as late as 1995, on their Stripped album). The B-side, ‘Down In The Bottom’, was likewise a rewrite of the old ‘Meet Me In The Bottom’, set essentially to a rougher-hewn, choppier, punkier variation of ‘Rollin’ And Tumblin’. A stellar performance by the standards of any regular blues artist in 1961, but only a minor effort by the standards of the Dixon-Burnett tandem at the peak of their powers.

The power gets fully restored by the end of 1961, though. The fast-paced ‘Shake For Me’ feels like an early precursor to the much better known ‘Killing Floor’, which ended up reusing the same rhythm and riff, but with better production, tougher bass, and somewhat more meaningful lyrics. ‘Shake For Me’ does have a comparatively more melodic, smoothly flowing, proto-Page-like lead guitar break with some cool bends and vibratoes (either Hubert Sumlin again or relative newcomer Jimmy Rogers on the instrument, I cannot be sure). But the one that will be more familiar to everybody is ‘Red Rooster’ — this time, through the Stones cover, which, if you remember, hit No. 1 on the UK charts in late 1964, allegedly the only straightforward 12-bar blues song to ever hold that honor. Not a lot of original songwriting from Willie here, as the melody is traditional and the lyrics largely recycle old Walter Rhodes and Charley Patton bits, but that’s hardly a problem.

Compared to everything that came before, ‘Red Rooster’ is very low-key for Wolf: minimal, barely audible percussion — light and sparse taps on the bass — distant and subtle piano rolls from Johnny Jones — and three quietly interlocking guitar parts, the most memorable of which, the mysterious and suggestive slide rolls, is apparently played by the Wolf himself. (In the Stones’ version, it would be taken over by Brian Jones, who was probably very happy about being able to measure up to the Dark God Of The Blues at least in one respect). It does have a bit of a leisurely, «barnyard» vibe to it, which may have been Dixon’s intention (amusingly enough, Willie always denied the overt sexual connotations of the song, insisting that he really wrote it about an actual rooster in the barnyard — such a modest guy!), and this only helps Wolf’s personality to shine through even more distinctively than on the loud, heavily amplified electric recordings.

It is interesting that of all the innumerable cover versions of ‘(Little) Red Rooster’ out there on the market (starting off with Sam Cooke’s rendition on Night Beat, which he also somehow managed to turn into a solid American hit), only two — the original and the Stones cover — successfully pull off the slowly-paced, subtly-practiced slide guitar magic. Everybody else either speeds up the song, or replaces its hooks with something less effective (like the rooster-imitating organ riff on Sam’s version, which sounds too theatrical in comparison), in any case, it usually becomes just a standard old 12-bar blues. Wolf, on the other hand, plays much the same way he sings — in bold, rough brushstrokes, punishing the strings rather than caressing them à la Muddy Waters. (Brian Jones also would have a gentler approach, but he would achieve individuality through tone and pitch rather than pure power). This constant pushing action certainly belies Dixon’s claims of the tune’s relative innocence, if you know what I mean. Then again, whoever said that «barnyard» would be synonymous with «innocence» in the first place? There are tales we could tell, you know...

Closing things off is Wolf’s and Willie’s first single of 1962, released around the same time as the album itself. ‘You’ll Be Mine’ is another ass-shakin’ blues-rocker in the vein of ‘Shake For Me’, memorable mainly for its somewhat strange guitar break, mixing classic blues licks with occasional Chuck Berryisms, and, of course, Wolf’s delivery of the hookline: despite the generally gallant nature of the lyrics, he chants "you’ll be mine, you’ll be mine" in an evil, cartoonish chuckle that would rather make one think of Richard the Third than Romeo or Tristan. The B-side was much more impressive: despite not being an original composition, ‘Going Down Slow’ (originally recorded with an urban blues vibe by St. Louis Jimmy Oden and Roosevelt Sykes on piano in 1941) was absolutely owned by the Wolf and it is probably this particular version which made this particular blues into such a textbook classic.

It is almost frustrating that they did not think of closing the LP with this number, which would give it a strong thematic coherence. Not only is it suitably stately-epic, with the slow tempo and the doom-laden chords, but it is also reinvented as a dialog between the LP’s principal masterminds: Wolf sings the original verses, while Dixon throws in some ad-libbed spoken observations that reinforce his status as court philosopher of the blues ("I did not say I was a millionnaire, but I said I have spent more money than a millionnaire!"). As they trade the spoken and sung lines between themselves, the song acquires a double lining — the Wolf represents the outer body, blurting out its testament to the surrounding next of kin ("I have had my fun if I never get well no more..."), while Dixon is like the hidden, contrastively calm and collected rational conscience summarizing the results of the protagonist’s life. Somewhere in between the two rests Hubert Sumlin’s guitar, laying down series of scorching arpeggiated electric licks that have been imitated many times over, but hardly ever surpassed. In short, another textbook lesson on how to take a stereotypically generic 12-bar blues and work it into a tragedy of Shakesperian proportions.

Looking back on this incredible run of singles, it is hard to find a suitable equivalent for the Dixon-Burnett line of collabo­ration — perhaps something like Townshend-Daltrey might spring to mind across the Atlantic, though in that case the balance would be shifted too far in Pete’s favor (after all, Roger never wrote or played much, while the Wolf had a much greater role in these recordings than just singing). The unquestionable truth is that both needed each other: without Willie by his side, the Wolf lacked the means for properly modernizing the blues, whereas Willie, despite being a decent singer in his own right, could never inject as much tension and electricity in his own recordings as when working with Mr. Burnett. Together, they were unstoppable in breathing new life into the (at least) forty-year old blues genre, and ensuring, along the way, that approximately 70-80% of what we call «classic blues-rock» pretty much grew out of «The Rocking Chair Album». And not just classic blues-rock, either: the blues-rock heroes embraced the musical backbone of the record, eventually reducing it to tropes and clichés — but somebody like Captain Beefheart, for instance, embraced its «ugly», trance-like, shamanistic vibe while deconstructing and mutating the music. There was something here for both the heroes and the villains of rock music, the conformists and the rebels, the sane ones and the nutters. Still is, actually.

It should be noted that the Wolf’s run of classics was far from over — there would be classics like ‘I Ain’t Superstitious’, ‘Three Hundred Pounds Of Joy’, ‘Killing Floor’, etc. in the next couple of years — but (a) these will be covered in subsequent reviews, as this one has already overstayed its welcome as is, and (b) no subsequent Howlin’ Wolf LP would boast such a heavy concentration of genius across a mere 12 tracks. The presence of ‘Spoonful’, ‘Back Door Man’, and ‘Red Rooster’ alone would deserve a monumental appraisal from every single fan of Sixties’ music, but pretty much every single song here has its own story to tell and its own fresh new twist on traditional blues values to present to the listener. Only one thing is unfortunate about the ol’ rocking chair: after you have listened to it too much — like I have done while preparing this review — most of the «blues» albums recorded by black and white bluesmen alike in the decades that followed will feel limp and perfunctory by comparison. Creative reworking of the blues idiom into something new, as carried out by Cream or The Doors or Led Zeppelin, would be okay because it steers your mind into a different direction; but if we talk about regular covers of the 12-bar stuff by even the most versatile and sensitive artists, well... prepare to memorize a phrase like «yeah, well, not too shabby, but sure as hell ain’t no Howlin’ Wolf and Willie Dixon circa 1961».

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