Review: Howlin Wolf's 'Howlin' Blues: Selected A & B Sides, 1951 - 1962'

Sometimes I get a bit concerned that regular Psychobabble readers might be under the impression that I'm so dazzled by free records that I tend to go easy on them when it comes time to write my reviews. The truth is, most of my reviews skew toward the positive because I almost always review records by artists I really like and I've rarely encountered bungled pressings. Some mastering jobs may be too bass- or treble-heavy, or may feature some unwanted distortions, but such problems are rarely egregious, so I'll mention them in my reviews but refrain from harping on them.

Review: 'Confessin' the Blues'

In the sixties, The Rolling Stones slid the world a welter of great singles and LPs, but the most profound thing they delivered was an awareness of the blues that spread like a sweet, sweet virus. After hearing the Stones’ sometimes weedy, sometimes powerful remakes, white kids who’d never before heard the names Muddy, Howlin’, or Slim suddenly got hip to what had already been happening in the music world for some twenty years.

While giving the Stones too much credit is totally patronizing to the artists who helped them a hell of a lot more than Mick Jagger and Keith Richards ever helped anyone else, they are probably the best white rockers to curate a collection like Confessin’ the Blues. Many of the songs Mick and Keith chose for this double-disc set are numbers the Stones covered during their most vital decade: the title track by Jay McShann & Walter Brown, Muddy Waters’s “I Want to Be Loved” and “I Just Want to Make Love to You”, Slim Harpo’s “I’m a King Bee”, Howlin’ Wolf’s “The Red Rooster”, Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain Blues”, Jimmy Reed’s “Bright Lights, Big City”, Amos Milburn’s “Down the Road Apiece”, etc. Appropriately, a song they didn’t play but appropriated in a significant way begins the set. While neither Chuck Berry nor Bo Diddley were strictly blues artists, they were signed to the crucial home of Chicago blues, Chess Records, and highly inspirational to the boys, so key numbers such as “Carol” and “Mona” makes appearances too.

Ultimately, the Stones-connection is a bit of window dressing since most of these tracks were not in that band’s repertoire and since you will forget all about Mick, Keith, and Charlie as soon as the opening bars of “Rollin’ Stone” start grinding. Essentially, Confessin’ the Blues is a fine starter blues compilation, at least in terms of the track selection. The excessively trebly sound does little service to the depth of these records.