Howlin' Wolf: Howlin' Wolf - The Rocking Chair Album [DOL]

Why you'll love it

This DOL edition expands the original twelve songs with five bonus tracks, pressed on 180g vinyl in a gatefold jacket. Rolling Stone ranked the album No. 238 among the 500 greatest albums of all time, and Mojo named it the third greatest guitar album ever.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• 5 bonus tracks

About the album

Officially it's just called Howlin' Wolf, but nobody has ever called it that. Don S. Bronstein's sleeve drawing of an acoustic guitar leaning against an empty rocking chair gave it the nickname, and some reissues eventually printed it on the cover. Inside are twelve Chess singles cut between 1957 and 1961, gathered into one of the great Chicago blues LPs.

Willie Dixon wrote most of it and plays bass, and Wolf's huge, gravelly voice tears through "Spoonful," "Back Door Man," "Wang Dang Doodle" and "The Red Rooster." Hubert Sumlin's jagged guitar lines are all over the record, with Otis Spann, Johnny Jones and Henry Gray on piano and a rotating cast of Chicago's finest behind him. Ralph Bass produced, and this edition adds five more sides from the same era, including "So Glad," "Goin' Back Home" and "Mama's Baby," so the session keeps rolling after the original twelve.

Rock bands treated it like a textbook. The Rolling Stones took "Little Red Rooster" to No. 1 in the UK, Cream stretched "Spoonful" past 17 minutes on stage, and The Doors opened their debut with Wolf's back door firmly ajar. It's a fair bet half the guitarists in your favourite records learned their manners here.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On DOL (cat# DOL929HG), a reissue of the 1962 album.