This eponymously titled album is known to Howlin’ Wolf aficionados as ‘the rocking chair album’, after the cover photo of an acoustic guitar resting against a rocking chair. But listeners expecting a comfy, quiet set of acoustic songs were in for a shock when the needle hit the grooves to Wolf’s palpitating ‘Shake for Me.’ The album tracks represent both sides of six Wolf singles released on Chess from 1960 to 1962, catching the Wolf at one his peaks. The looser down-home feel of his earlier recordings is replaced here with the punchy production and songwriting of Willie Dixon and sterling accompaniment led by Hubert Sumlin on guitar on most tracks. Also present on various sessions are Willie Johnson, Freddie Robinson, Dixon, Little Johnnie Jones, Henry Gray, S.P. Leary, Sam Lay, Fred Below, and the two Smothers brothers of Chicago blues, Abe (‘Little Smokey’) and Otis (‘Big Smokey’).
The only two songs written by Wolf, ‘Tell Me’ and ‘Who’s Been Talkin’,’ were recorded in 1957 but not released until they came out on 45 in 1960, Chess must have needed to pull material from the vaults, because that was a year Wolf apparently only did one three-song session for Chess (a pre-Koko Taylor version of ‘Wang-Dang-Doodle’ and the classics ‘Back Door Man’ and ‘Spoonful’). Dixon wrote all the other songs on the LP except for St. Louis Jimmy Oden’s ‘Going Down Slow,’ which features a spoken intro by Dixon. Considering how many of the songs here have become standards in the repertoires of countless blues and rock bands, it’s hard to fathom that none of these Wolf 45s sold well enough to make the Billboard charts.
Tracks: Shake For Me/The Red Rooster/You’ll Be Mine/Who’s Been Talkin’/Wang-Dang-Doodle/Little Baby//Spoonful/Going Down Slow/Down In The Bottom/Back Door Man/Howlin’ For My Baby/Tell Me. Released as Chess LP-1469 in 1962.
For session details of each track, see The Blues Discography 1943-1970 by Les Fancourt & Bob McGrath.
— Jim O’Neal
www.stackhouse-bluesoterica.blogspot.com