He’s fealty to the early blues singer convinced Patton to teach him guitar. He watches, he listens and begins to mimic Patton. All night, he’s out here as the men come and go a or maybe leave with a woman. Picture the young Wolf, hanging outside the roadhouse windows, hoisting himself up or standing on some boxes, to peer inside and watch Patton perform. He learned his guitar playing and much of his showmanship from Charlie Patton. His parents split and he worked his way back and forth between a mother – who did not want him – and a father who left him behind. Like so many great Blues artists, Howlin’ Wolf, born Chester Arthur Burnett, was born and raised in the Mississippi Delta. His singing grows in strength because of the tone set by the music from the opening singular note from Sumlin’s guitar. While Wolf’s voice remains the focus, it is the musicianship of the backing band that makes the song work. He had a band for the ages backing him: Hubert Sumlin and Willie Johnson played electric guitars, Hosea Lee Kennard on piano, Willie Dixon on bass guitar and Earl Phillips on drums. Howlin’ Wolf recorded “Smokestack Lightning” in the Chess Records studios in 1956. This is not a song about the idea of raw sexual emotion it is raw sexual emotion. The song becomes the means for dealing with this situation, the way to play out the hurt, anger, lust and longing. “Smokestack Lightning” anticipates much of the rock ‘roll to follow (how many hours did Mick and Keith spend listening to Howlin’ Wolf), though this song is the essence of the blues. Why won’t he see her anymore? Is she dead or did he slay her with his love? Did he put her on the train or did he hop the train and leave her behind? The song lets the mystery flourish and his moaning, groaning and singing makes it all possible. Listen to these lines and ask if he’s leaving her or killing her? Then the enigmatic line, “Let her, go ride.” He’s sending her away or is he hopping the train or is he taking her for a ride right then and there? He trails off to a growl, “ Whoo hoo, whoo hoo.” Don’t worry about the refinements cause his voice can mean both. He’s calling out to the train or maybe the train is his woman, begging it or her to stop. The Dylan line – “I don’t know if I should kiss you or kill you” comes to mind. The singer’s trying to figure out what to do with his woman. In the next verse, the train and woman co-exist, maybe even merge. He’s angry, he’s hurt, he’s confused and he sinks it all into his voice: Picture him standing large in the doorway of a shack, looming over her. The moaning now comes from a wounded sexual animal, a primordial sound that comes from a place where Wolf has no words to say what he’s feeling so we only his voice, guttural and shaking, “ Whoo hoo, whoo hoo.” In the next verse, Wolf switches the train for his woman: In an interview, Wolf said he grew up listening to, among others, Jimmie Rodgers and he sought to imitate Singing Brakeman’s yodel, only his came out as a howl and that did Wolf just fine. (Johnny Cash sang about the same train in “Folsom Prison Blues.”) He moans over his fate, a moan full of anger, loneliness and darkness. Imagine this big man bent low with crops and off in the distance he hears the train, or sitting alone at night, the sound of the train rising, the “smokestack lightning.” That train is gold, freedom, the world passing him by cause he’s stuck in the darkness of Mississippi. Wolf says he learned all he needed when working the fields of Mississippi, where he was born and grew up. In the first verse, the singer calls out: One can ask exactly what the song is about even as the grunts and howls of Wolf convey all you need to know. Like many great songs, “Smokestack Lightning” contains great mystery. Men be careful cause there’s always the chance for trouble. Women be careful cause the Wolf’s hard to resist. The music shakes your foundation, rattles your walls and makes you quiver in fearful joy. It’s backed by the one of the best blues bands ever, drums and bass working together, Hubert Sumlin’s guitar as rough and ready as Wolf’s voice. The voice comes from someone who’s taken beatings and given them out too someone who’s known love and been betrayed by love, someone who knows raw sex of Biblical proportions. Wolf’s voice rises from somewhere deep within, it scrapes, growls, stretches and punches it’s full of broken stones and smashed metal, heartache and sinew. Gaze upon Howlin’ Wolf in all his raging glory, six foot six and three hundred pounds, eyes wide as hubcaps and shining bright as headlights, mouth like a junkyard dog, smiling like a man about to have his way. Imagine sitting in a small dark club on the Southside of Chicago. You can listen to the original recording here and see a live performance from 1964 here.
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