Moanin in the Moonlight & Howlin Wolf

Chilling, Electrifying and Awful Damned Good
Though it's been a couple decades since I've played "Moanin' in the Moonlight", I'm playing it as I'm writing this and it's all coming back. I'm a whole lotta years older now than when this came out. Back then I couldn't' believe this music. Not what my friends were listing to. I was a middle class white kid in the burbs, but my dad was in the music biz and he brought strange, different and wonderful stuff home and when I first heard this I knew I was gonna be a fan forever, not only of the man with the gravelly voice, but the blues too. Something about the way Howlin' Wolf does "Little Red Rooster", that sends chills up your spine, that guitar, brrr he's good. "Spoonful" has that beat, just makes you want to shake it. "Just a little spoon of your precious loves, satisfies my soul." Yeah, a "spoonful of your precious love is good enough for me," but do you think there's a little double entendre going on here? "Down in the bottom," will get you jumping. Got me jumping. It's getting me jumping again and I'm not a kid anymore. My favorite song on this record is "Back Door Man." Damn Howlin' Wolf's singing through the gravel on this one. He's singing the blues and he's singing them true. This Record is Number 2 on my list of the Best Thirteen Records of 1959.

You must own this music one way or another
The ideal compilation is the one you assemble yourself. And at this point in technological history, you don't have to pay David Geffen for the privilege. [Yeah, that's who gets paid if you buy this thing. Maybe he can invest the money in developing the ability to fit an additional song on a 66-minute CD.] But do get the music by one means or another. The blues singing on The Rocking Chair Album is just an apocalypse... demonically powerful performances. When he sings "I AM... A BACK DOOR MAN" [the capital letters feel appropriate], he makes you believe it. Next to this, Jim Morrison sounds like a belching frat boy.

American Music. This is the Howlin' Wolf CD to get.
Great deal at just several bucks and you get two albums. Contains Howlin' Wolf's greatest work. Nobody sang like Howlin' Wolf and nobody has since. I'm a white boy, like apparently most Blues fans these days (that's another story). Being where I come from musically one thing I noticed is how much this stuff straight-up **rocks**. Yeah it is technically post-war Chicago electric Blues. Put whatever technically correct label ya want. It kicks ---. Sun Record founder Sam Phillips discovered Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Ray Orbison, BB King, Jerry Lee Louis, Charlie Rich, and Howlin' Wolf. Phillips said Elvis was his *second* greatest discovery and Howlin' Wolf was his greatest. Sam Phillips: "When I heard Howlin' Wolf, I said, 'This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies'. The greatest sight you could see would be Howlin' Wolf doing one of those sessions in my studio. God, what it would be worth to see the veins on his neck, and buddy there was nothing on his mind but that song. He sang with his damn soul!..."

Excellent buy not so great packaging
Howlin' Wolf is one of the seminal blues artists. His guitar and that scritchy voice are definitive of the blues standard. This CD is actually a two-fer, a Chess compilation of his two first albums: Howlin' Wolf and Moanin' at Midnight. The packaging isn't much to be proud of. You get liner notes, but not much else and the paper's pretty disreputable. Favorites: "Back Door Man" you'll hear this one covered all over the place, but nobody does it like the Wolf. "Evil" well, doesn't the name say it? "Going Down Slow" this is an interesting perspective on the music business and money. Rebecca Kyle, August 2008

Seminal!
It's hard to over rate the impact these early HW recordings have had on rock and roll. As is well known HW and his contemporaries were hugely influential on the 60s giants like Hendrix, Clapton, the Stones, Led Zeppelin and John Mayall but countless other lesser known lights have also sprung from HW's fertile loins. Even now, 50 or so years later, these two platters still stand up to scrutiny. HW's voice is one of the most distinctive in modern music and he uses it to great effect on every track here. The lyrics are superb too, always lascivious, frequently laugh out loud funny. It's a stone classic in every way and anyone with even a remote interest in the evolution of rock music should own a copy. Also good for shaking your thang to... "We're gonna wang dang doodle ALL night long..!"