Wolf comes off like a cousin to Captain Beefheart with a wah-wah-soaked acid-rock update of blues standard “Spoonful.” The open-ended frame of Wolf's 1956 hit “Smokestack Lightning” allowed for the furthest-out feel of all, eventually becoming an echo-laden, fractal eruption. Not only do the musicians slather Wolf biggies like “Evil,” “Down in the Bottom,” and “Back Door Man” with a Chicago-hardened version of San Francisco electric sunshine, they even do a little deconstruction, subverting the contours of tunes like “Little Red Rooster” (here retitled “The Red Rooster”) and “Tail Dragger” for a trippy, funhouse mirror effect. He didn’t like his electric guitar at first either.” The artist’s misgivings notwithstanding, the band that gave Muddy’s fortunes a boost made a slamming, psychedelic meal of Wolf’s canon. It declares in unabashedly titanic type, “This is Howlin’ Wolf’s new album. You don’t have to look further than the front cover for proof that Wolf was more skeptical of the prospect than Muddy had been. Calling on the same crew of producers and players, the result was 1969’s psychedelic blues classic, The Howlin’ Wolf Album. Sufficiently emboldened, Chess spun his barber chair around and lined up Howlin’ Wolf as the next customer for hip-ification treatment. In 1968, Electric Mud was the leading cause of blues purists tearing their hair out, but it did exactly what Marshall intended, becoming Muddy’s first album to appear on Billboard’s Top 200 chart.
Jimi Hendrix’s assistant would later tell Cosey that the guitar hero would listen to the track for pre-show fortification.
#Paint it black tuning free
There were only two non-blues songs: Muddy's magisterial rumble rules a Cream-like, fuzz guitar-fronted version of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” by The Rolling Stones (who’d taken their name from a Muddy lyric and covered his music) that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Cream’s Disraeli Gears and “Herbert Harper’s Free Press News.” The latter, written by Sidney Barnes and Robert Thurston, is a straight-up social commentary on politics, the Vietnam War, and the turbulence of the times, shot through with fire-alarm guitar licks and a fat, funky groove. Most of the tracks were rebooted versions of staples from Muddy’s repertoire, like “Mannish Boy,” “(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man,” and “I Just Want to Make Love to You.” But they were awash in crushingly heavy rock riffs that cast the classic tunes in a new light. But he trusted Marshall enough to leave his regular band at home for 1968 sessions overseen by Marshall, saxophonist/arranger Gene Barge, Rotary Connection leader Charles Stepney and populated by players from the Connection’s axis, including jazz guitarists Phil Upchurch, Roland Faulkner, and Pete Cosey (who was also a part of Miles Davis’ 70s fusion period). Muddy was none too eager to get a paisley-powered makeover. hit, “Pictures of Matchstick Men”) and The Wildweeds.īut barely an eye blink later, Marshall was concocting a plan to swing some of that cool cred over to Chess Records’ blues barons. With this in mind, he created Chess’s Cadet Concept imprint, initially designed to capture the attention of the “kids” with heady psych/soul/jazz hybrid The Rotary Connection (including a young Minnie Riperton) and rockers on the rise like Status Quo (the label hosted their lone U.S. The label had taught the world to love Chicago blues, but by 1967, twentysomething Marshall reckoned his dad’s company had to catch up or get left behind. The train started rolling in the mind of Marshall Chess, son of Chess Records co-founder Leonard Chess. British Invasion covers of classics from the Chess and Sun catalogs rallied a new audience, leading to reissues and new releases from the bluesmen marketed to the younger crowd.īut by the late 60s, the countercultural explosion had pulled rock fans further from away the genre’s musical roots, so a few savvy souls decided to do something about it.
By mid-decade, the UK and US rock stars who’d learned their lessons from the old-schoolers’ 50s recordings did their heroes a good turn by bringing the spotlight back to them. Giving the greats their dueīaby boomer rockers and Chicago blues originators spent a good portion of the 60s doing a dizzying do-si-do together. And the impact was as unforeseen as it was long-lasting. The psychedelic blues period for Chicago titans like Muddy and Wolfand first-generation rock’n’rollers like Bo, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard wasn’t a long one but it blasted a hole in preconceptions on either side of the stylistic fence. It was the Age of Aquarius, and the blues was busy being psychedelicized. After psychedelia came to a boil in the late 60s, the blues and rock heroes of the 50s took a brief but thrilling walk on the wild side, with fuzz guitars, wah-wah effects, and epic jams to the fore.
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