Moanin' in the Moonlight

Howlin' Wolf

album cover

The Howl of the Wolf

"When I heard Howlin' Wolf," Sun Records founder Sam Phillips recalled, "I said, 'This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies.'" The singer, songwriter, and blues harmonica master Wolf, né Chester Burnett, who didn't begin his recording career until the age of forty-one, had that effect on people. He used his voice as a harrowing instrument—his favorite devices included a wounded animal cry and a mumbled, guttural growl. Each amply demonstrated how he earned his stage name. His repertoire of primal expressions drew equally on anger and pain, and were completely convincing: This singer wasn't trying to simulate some abstract feeling—he was chasing it down, delivering it whole. His feral lunges on stage and his dogged pursuit of emotional truth were known to scare people.

Phillips heard him in 1951, when Burnett, from small-town Mississippi, was still making his living as a farmer and playing juke joints on the side. Phillips persuaded the singer to do some sessions at the Memphis Recording Service—the small studio Phillips ran while launching Sun Records. The first dates yielded several regional hits—among them "Moanin' at Midnight" and "All Night Boogie," which both appear on the first Howlin' Wolf "album," Moanin' in the Moonlight.

Pretty soon, word of this singular talent spread. Chess Records snapped Wolf up, and convinced him to move to Chicago in 1953. From then on, the recordings combined the raggedness of rural blues—Wolf claimed that as a boy, he'd been taught by the pioneering Charley Patton—with the rhythmic sophistication of hard-swinging Chicago blues.

The combination, exemplified on this collection by snarly tracks from Memphis and several with a snapping Chicago bomp, remains devastating. No blues singer swaggers the way Wolf does: He might not be polished, his phrases might not be pretty, but he's completely committed to them. He believes with an intensity that simply can't be dismissed. It doesn't take long with Moanin' to realize Phillips was right: This is where the soul of man never dies.

Genre: Blues
Released: 1959, Chess
Key Tracks: "Smokestack Lightning," "All Night Boogie"
Catalog Choice: The Back Door Wolf
Next Stop: Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings
After That: Various Artists: The Real Folk Blues
Book Page: 371