The Wolf doth protest too much, methinks.
Chester "Howlin' Wolf" Burnett was probably covering his bases when he grumbled openly about the album's arrangements. As a Chicago blues man of unquestionable pedigree he would likely have wanted to closely guard his reputation. Dipping his toes in the cesspool of psychedelic rock was a risky move.
And so it was that Chess Records producer Marshall Chess turned Burnett's antipathy into a marketing ploy, issuing an album cover that spelled it out in black and white. Chess did hope that fans would take note of his own implicit message, that Howlin' Wolf was now a top exponent of electric blues despite the star's earlier misgivings, but the ploy largely backfired. Sales were sluggish.
The album sets Howlin' Wolf's trademark growl against a sea of snaking wah-wah guitar effects and funky bass lines. Using the same backing band that similarly dressed up label mate Muddy Waters' Electric Mud album, Chess places his crotchety artist in the middle of a weird sonic experiment and hopes for the best.
It's true that there's a clumsiness about this attempt to modernise Howlin' Wolf's sound. Most noticeable is the lack of flexibility in the rock music structure, which constrains the blues man's usual tendency to trim or extend bars. But conversely there's a new and compelling edge to these Howlin' Wolf classics, one that says get up and groove. Spoonful is the least successfully transformed, but Smokestack Lightning, The Red Rooster and Back Door Man are a rare treat.
This one-off trip doesn't diminish the work Howlin' Wolf had produced to that point. It simply stands as one of the earliest and best examples of the remix concept, one that saw the artist fully engaged in the process.
