Moanin' in the Moonlight
By Howlin' Wolf
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Track listing
Show track credits
- A1 Moanin' at Midnight 2:43
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writer
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guitar
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drums
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producer
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- A2 How Many More Years 2:58
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writer
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guitar
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piano
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drums
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producer
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- A3 Smokestack Lightnin' 2:23
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writer
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guitar
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guitar
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piano
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bass
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drums
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- A4 Baby, How Long 2:18
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writer
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guitar
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guitar
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piano
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bass
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drums
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- A5 No Place to Go 2:31
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writer
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guitar
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guitar
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piano
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bass
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drums
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- A6 All Night Boogie 2:16
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writer
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guitar
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guitar
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piano
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drums
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- B1 Evil 3:01
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guitar
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guitar
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piano
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bass, writer
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drums
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- B2 I'm Leavin' You 2:29
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writer
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guitar
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L.D. McGheeguitar
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piano
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bass
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drums
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- B3 Moanin' for My Baby 2:17
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writer
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guitar
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guitar
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piano
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drums
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tenor saxophone
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- B4 I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline) 2:47
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writer
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guitar
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guitar
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piano
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drums
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- B5 Forty-Four 3:02
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writer
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guitar
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guitar
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piano
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bass
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drums
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- B6 Somebody in My Home 2:59
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writer
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guitar
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guitar
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piano
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drums
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- Total length: 31:44
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20 Issues
- Release view [combined information for all issues]
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Moanin' in the Moonlight [p] 33 rpm, Mono
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Moanin' in the Moonlight 33 rpm, Abridged, Mono
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Evil 33 rpm, Mono
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Moanin' in the Moonlight 33 rpm, Mono
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Moanin' in the Moonlight 33 rpm, Mono
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Moanin' in the Moonlight CD Sized Album Replica, Limited Edition, Remastered
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Moanin' in the Moonlight 180 gram, 33 rpm
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Moanin' in the Moonlight Bonus Tracks, Remastered2012 CD
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Moanin' in the Moonlight 140 gram, 33 rpm2013 Vinyl 12" DOL1434
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Moanin' in the Moonlight 33 rpm
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Moanin' in the Moonlight 180 gram, Bonus Tracks
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Moanin' in the Moonlight 180 gram, 33 rpm, Bonus Tracks, Gatefold
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Moanin' in the Moonlight 180 gram, 33 rpm, Bonus Tracks, Colored Vinyl
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Moanin' in the Moonlight 180 gram, 33 rpm, Bonus Tracks, Colored Vinyl, Limited Edition2023 Vinyl 12" 8436563184468
26 Reviews
Okay let’s deal with it. Blues music is the “Devil” music. It’s been called that since probably it was literally born. Those gospel music fans and those church-goers who hated it always called it Devil music and the music devoted to the Devil as opposed to gospel music and the music created in the church.
They weren`t completely wrong. Although we blues music lovers don’t call it specifically devil music, we have to agree for some part that the bluesmen, since the beginning dealt with the concept of devil in their songs. But the artist that we are talking about here was different. If the earlier bluesmen were singing about devil, if Robert Johnson was the poor, lonely guy that was bewildered about the devil, if Blind Willie Johnson was the priest in the battle with devil, if Muddy Waters was the tough guy who sang about devil, Chester Burnett also known as Howlin` Wolf was the “Devil”.
Wolf was a huge guy. He was tall and he had a big, strong build. His voice was raspy and he was not young when he started singing. And he sang about being left out by his baby (who you instantly assume that is a young girl), and about asking for water and being given gasoline, and about being a Back Door Man. When he sang “Men don’t know, but the little girls understand.” You had no choice but believe him. And you knew from the way he sang it that he is not guilty of being a big old guy seducing little girls and making them cheating their men.
There`s been this famous quote by Sam Davies, the legendary producer of early Elvis Presley songs, talking about when he first heard the Wolf he thought this is the music and the voice for him. It’s not very complicated for me to understand that. When I saw Davies in his 60s in the Rock & Roll documentary with that lewd look and that husky voice and that red beard, I thought with myself: “This guy looks like Satan.” And when I read about him saying those words on Wolf, I wasn’t surprised. Wolf was like the Devil, singing for the people who didn’t give a damn about God and redemption. More than that and more basically, He was the right guy for the people who didn’t give a damn about the conventions. The form of his songs wasn’t conventional. The way he sang wasn’t conventional. That was no surprise too, that artists like Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits became his most famous followers.
Blues is the Devil Music and isn’t.
It IS Devil music because it’s not conventional and pretty. And it isn’t Devil music because it has nothing to do with the Satanism we know about. It’s not like the Norwegian Black Metal. It’s not about burning the churches and worshipping the master of dark world or something. It just seems to some people like the Devil music because it shows the world not exactly the way church and the old Christian world wanted to show the world. And it’s about dealing with and getting along with that. It is the Earthiest of all kinds of music. And to my ears, Howlin` Wolf is the greatest artist representing that concept. And maybe that’s why he is probably my favorite Blues artist.
They weren`t completely wrong. Although we blues music lovers don’t call it specifically devil music, we have to agree for some part that the bluesmen, since the beginning dealt with the concept of devil in their songs. But the artist that we are talking about here was different. If the earlier bluesmen were singing about devil, if Robert Johnson was the poor, lonely guy that was bewildered about the devil, if Blind Willie Johnson was the priest in the battle with devil, if Muddy Waters was the tough guy who sang about devil, Chester Burnett also known as Howlin` Wolf was the “Devil”.
Wolf was a huge guy. He was tall and he had a big, strong build. His voice was raspy and he was not young when he started singing. And he sang about being left out by his baby (who you instantly assume that is a young girl), and about asking for water and being given gasoline, and about being a Back Door Man. When he sang “Men don’t know, but the little girls understand.” You had no choice but believe him. And you knew from the way he sang it that he is not guilty of being a big old guy seducing little girls and making them cheating their men.
There`s been this famous quote by Sam Davies, the legendary producer of early Elvis Presley songs, talking about when he first heard the Wolf he thought this is the music and the voice for him. It’s not very complicated for me to understand that. When I saw Davies in his 60s in the Rock & Roll documentary with that lewd look and that husky voice and that red beard, I thought with myself: “This guy looks like Satan.” And when I read about him saying those words on Wolf, I wasn’t surprised. Wolf was like the Devil, singing for the people who didn’t give a damn about God and redemption. More than that and more basically, He was the right guy for the people who didn’t give a damn about the conventions. The form of his songs wasn’t conventional. The way he sang wasn’t conventional. That was no surprise too, that artists like Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits became his most famous followers.
Blues is the Devil Music and isn’t.
It IS Devil music because it’s not conventional and pretty. And it isn’t Devil music because it has nothing to do with the Satanism we know about. It’s not like the Norwegian Black Metal. It’s not about burning the churches and worshipping the master of dark world or something. It just seems to some people like the Devil music because it shows the world not exactly the way church and the old Christian world wanted to show the world. And it’s about dealing with and getting along with that. It is the Earthiest of all kinds of music. And to my ears, Howlin` Wolf is the greatest artist representing that concept. And maybe that’s why he is probably my favorite Blues artist.
Published
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Some Wolfaholics consider everything Chester Burnett touched golden. But although his epic growl is undeniable no matter what he's bellowing, there are lots of blues-by-numbers entries I skip past on other collections. This one's the litmus.
On the comp of '50s Wolf hits that followed this one---the one with the rocking chair---nearly every song was written by Willie Dixon, with classics like "Spoonful," "Back Door Man" that drip with the raunchy libidinal innuendo the blues is boiled in.
_Moanin'_ on the other hand, is unshackled by the genre. The main songs are Howlin' Wolf originals, from the conspiracy-theory, street corner poet lyrics sung in his gravel pit voice to the McCarthy-era '50's Chicago club electric guitar riffs, and the crude cover drawing of a wolf howling at the hills.
There's creeping unease, and the sense the songs were plucked off piles of twisted steel in a sprawling Chicago auto salvage graveyard in mid-January. On "Moanin' at Midnight," you don't know who's knockin' on his door, or who's calling on that intrusive telephone. On "How Many More Years," he wonders how much longer you're going to be "dogging" him, with no clarity about who you are or why you're so intent on bugging him. On "Evil," there's some "evil goin' on." "Somebody in My Home" warns of more hostile intrusions.
On the comp of '50s Wolf hits that followed this one---the one with the rocking chair---nearly every song was written by Willie Dixon, with classics like "Spoonful," "Back Door Man" that drip with the raunchy libidinal innuendo the blues is boiled in.
_Moanin'_ on the other hand, is unshackled by the genre. The main songs are Howlin' Wolf originals, from the conspiracy-theory, street corner poet lyrics sung in his gravel pit voice to the McCarthy-era '50's Chicago club electric guitar riffs, and the crude cover drawing of a wolf howling at the hills.
There's creeping unease, and the sense the songs were plucked off piles of twisted steel in a sprawling Chicago auto salvage graveyard in mid-January. On "Moanin' at Midnight," you don't know who's knockin' on his door, or who's calling on that intrusive telephone. On "How Many More Years," he wonders how much longer you're going to be "dogging" him, with no clarity about who you are or why you're so intent on bugging him. On "Evil," there's some "evil goin' on." "Somebody in My Home" warns of more hostile intrusions.
Published
Some of the best blues music I've ever heard. Scratch that. Some of the best music I've ever heard. Spooky, raw, authentic. Perfect.
Published
Collecting much of the Wolf’s most essential 50s work into one concise, 30-minute album, Moanin’ in the Moonlight isn’t just a great encapsulation of plugged-in blues, but is also a snapshot of musical history - far from just blues, you can hear how Howlin’ Wolf’s distorted guitar work would go on to help shape rock and roll in the years to come. While it can sometimes get a bit same-y towards the end, what we have here is nothing short of proficient set of recordings, dripping with passion in both Wolf’s playing and singing.
9/10
9/10
Published
Howlin' Wolf can SCREAMMMM! Dude has the most menacing voice ever, and all these songs are stone-cold classics in his hands.
Published
No hesitation to call this one of the great stone cold badass albums of all time, there's hardly anything before or even since that has this attitude and in my mind it's maybe the earliest record I love for that reason, same reason I love a Motorhead album. It's an LP compilation that opens with his first few singles which were recorded in fucking *51 and 53*, go check those charts and look what else was big at that time and then consider how this hits your ear and how squashed and blown out those songs are, even when this did finally come out in 59 it's the same year as records like Kind of Blue or the Marty Robbins album, a year after Rumble came out and years before many of his contemporaries were playing electric and well before they were playing it this raunchy. So for its time I would call this just about the toughest record around, it may not be outwardly rude or anything but there's something about it that's just meaner and still makes you scowl. That powerhouse raspy voice remains unequaled and Jack White built a whole career around trying and wishing to amount to even a tiny fraction of it. Smokestack Lightnin is as classic as it gets, there's a blues show named after it that I listen to on the local public radio jazz station on fridays so they'll play cuts from this and that's what really drilled it into me that this is perhaps the great monument of electric whiskey blues. There's some space in the recordings too like it already sounds like it's coming out of a small radio on a porch across the street under moonlight and I definitely played it plenty on my old porch when I lived at a house that had one. If there was one album to sip straight bourbon to on a hot night it might very well be this one.
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Just a perfect blues compilation really, there are more exhaustive ones for sure but historically this and the rocking chair album were the ones that hugely influenced the burgeoning 60s rock scene.
There just isn't enough that can be written about that voice really but the musicianship is also tremendous
There just isn't enough that can be written about that voice really but the musicianship is also tremendous
Published
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A1
Moanin' at Midnight
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A2
How Many More Years
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A3
Smokestack Lightnin'
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A4 Baby, How Long
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A5
No Place to Go
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A6 All Night Boogie
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B1
Evil
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B2 I'm Leavin' You
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B3 Moanin' for My Baby
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B4 I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)
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B5 Forty-Four
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B6 Somebody in My Home
Published
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