Howlin' Wolf: Moanin' in the Moonlight (mono mix, 4 bonus tracks) [FRIDAY MUSIC]

Why you'll love it

This mono 180g edition adds four bonus tracks from the 1950s to the original twelve. Moanin' in the Moonlight won a W.C. Handy Award in 1987 and sits at No. 477 on Rolling Stone's 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums.

This edition

• Mono mix
• 4 bonus tracks
• 180g vinyl
• Limited edition

About the album

Chester Burnett was in his forties and had been singing the blues for decades by the time this, his first album, came out on Chess in 1959. It gathers singles from across the 1950s, starting with two cut in July 1951 at Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Service, "Moanin' at Midnight" and "How Many More Years," which the Chess brothers bought and put out that August.

From there the Wolf moved to Chicago, and the recordings followed under Leonard and Phil Chess and Willie Dixon. "Smokestack Lightnin'" is the crown jewel, a hypnotic, one-chord howl that bands have been chasing ever since; "Evil (Is Goin' On)" is a Dixon song he owned outright; and "I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)" and "Forty-Four" show off that enormous, gravel-and-thunder voice. Willie Johnson's guitar on "How Many More Years" is cited by Robert Palmer as the first record with a distorted power chord. The bonus tracks, including "Rockin' Daddy" and "So Glad," fill out the story.

Don S. Bronstein designed the original cover, and Billboard editor Paul Ackerman wrote the sleeve notes. When Chess advertised it in Billboard in August 1959, the magazine printed the title as Howlin' at Midnite, which, to be fair, also describes the album perfectly.

Also at Kops: more Howlin' Wolf on vinyl · browse Blues

Tracklist

Listen

On Friday Music (cat# 6785442), a reissue of the 1959 album.