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The song, a twelve-bar blues, is punctuated with a syncopated backbeat, brief instrumental improvisations, upper-end piano figures, and intermittent blues harp provided by Wolf. [6] The lyrics caution about the "evil" that takes place in a man's home when he is away, concluding with "you better watch your happy home".
Howlin' Wolf recorded "Killing Floor" in Chicago in August 1964, which Chess Records released as a single. [2] According to blues guitarist and longtime Wolf associate Hubert Sumlin, the song uses the killing floor – the area of a slaughterhouse where animals are killed – as a metaphor or allegory for male-female relationships: "Down on the killing floor – that means a woman has you down ...
Chester Arthur Burnett (June 10, 1910 – January 10, 1976), better known by his stage name Howlin' Wolf, was an American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player. He was at the forefront of transforming acoustic Delta blues into electric Chicago blues, and over a four-decade career, recorded blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and psychedelic rock.
A key element of the song is the distinctive slide guitar, played by Howlin' Wolf, with backing by long-time accompanist Hubert Sumlin on electric guitar. [23] It is one of only two of the many songs recorded by Howlin' Wolf in the early 1960s which include his guitar playing. [24]
"Spoonful" has a one-chord, modal blues structure found in other songs Dixon wrote for Howlin' Wolf, such as "Wang Dang Doodle" and "Back Door Man", and in Wolf's own "Smokestack Lightning". It uses eight-bar vocal sections with twelve-bar choruses and is performed at a medium blues tempo in the key of E. [ 5 ] Music critic Bill Janovitz ...
At Chess' studio in Chicago in January 1956, Howlin' Wolf recorded "Smokestack Lightning". [1] The song takes the form of "a propulsive, one-chord vamp, nominally in E major but with the flatted blue notes that make it sound like E minor", and lyrically it is "a pastiche of ancient blues lines and train references, timeless and evocative". [1]
In October 1954, Howlin' Wolf recorded his version, titled simply "Forty Four", as an electric Chicago blues ensemble piece. Unlike the early versions of the song, Wolf's recording featured prominent guitar lines and an insistent "martial shuffle on the snare drum plus a bass drum that slammed down like an industrial punch-press", according to biographers. [7]
They vary the chords in a 12-bar blues arrangement, which serves as a great tension-and-release pattern". [5] Jim Morrison also supplied some of his own lyrics and only used two of Dixon's verses from Howlin' Wolf's original. [12] Morrison provides the vocal, backed by Ray Manzarek on keyboards and piano, [13] Krieger on guitar, and Densmore on ...