Howlin' Wolf - 1952-53 Chess Discography Reimagined

Howlin' Wolf's first album was released by Chess Records in 1959. But by that time, he had recorded enough songs for several albums, not counting tracks that were released by RPM Records.

With this blog entry, I put together three Howlin' Wolf albums that could have existed during his first couple of years of recording, including all the songs he recorded at Memphis Recording Service (later to be known as Sun Studio).

 

THE HOWLIN’ WOLF

SIDE A

1. The Wolf is at Your Door (Howlin’ for My Baby)

2. Look-a-Here Baby

3. California Boogie

4. My Troubles and Me

5. Worried All the Time

6. Chocolate Drop

7. Getting Old and Grey

SIDE B

1. Moanin’ at Midnight

2. Smile at Me

3. Mr. Highway Man (Cadillac Daddy)

4. California Blues #1

5. My Baby Walked Off

6. Howlin’ Wolf Boogie

7. How Many More Years

Two of the tracks, "Moanin' at Midnight" and "How Many More Years" were recorded in July 1951 and issued as a single. The remaining tracks were recorded at two sessions in December 1951 and January 1952. So, I can see this album being released in the spring of 1952.

One track I didn't include was "Baby Ride with Me (Ridin' in the Moonlight)," which was recorded in May 1951 at Memphis Recording Service. This is because he recorded it again in September 1951, and this second version was issued on RPM Records (which issued three of his singles and later a compilation album).

Some of his early releases were credited to The Howlin' Wolf, so that's what I titled what would have been his debut album.

 

COME BACK HOME (April 1952-October 1952)

SIDE A

1. Saddle My Pony

2. (Well) That’s All Right

3. Color and Kind

4. Sweet Woman (I’ve Got a Woman)

5. Decoration Day

6. My Last Affair

SIDE B

1. Oh Red

2. Everybody's in the Mood (All in the Mood)

3. Bluebird

4. Dorothy Mae

5. Come Back Home

6. Drinkin' C.V. Wine Blues

All of these tracks were recorded during two sessions, one in April 1952 and another in October 1952. So I can imagine this album being released at the end of the year for the holiday market, or held till early 1953. Both "Saddle My Pony" and "Oh Red" were released as A-sides of singles so I used them to lead off each side of the album. And I used the song "Come Back Home" as the album's title track.

 

ALL NIGHT BOOGIE (Sep 1953 – Oct 1953)

SIDE A

1. I Love My Baby

2. I’ve Got a Woman

3. Just My Kind

4. I’m Not Joking

5. Highway My Friend

6. Work for Your Money

7. Hold Your Woman

SIDE B

1. All Night Boogie

2. Crazy About My Baby

3. My Mama Died and Left Me

4. California Blues #2

5. Streamline Woman

6. Stay Here Till My Baby Comes Back

Howlin' Wolf's final recording sessions at Memphis Recording Service were held in 1953. I'm not sure exactly when during that year, but records show they were mastered in the fall, so this album would likely be released in late 1953. "All Night Boogie" was the only track here released as an A-side of a single, so I used it to lead off the second side and as the title track as well. 

I'm not sure what Wolf's obsession with California was -- he recorded "California Blues #1," "California Blues #2" and "California Boogie." I couldn't find any other song he recorded with a different state named.

The 1953 sessions were kind of the end of an era for Howlin' Wolf. In March 1954, he recorded his first studio session at Chess Studios in Chicago and every subsequent session there (except for one session in London in 1970).

All of these tracks are available on Smokestack Lightning: The Complete Chess Masters 1951-1960.

NOTE: I don't make any claims about the album cover artwork. I just took existing artwork and altered them a bit.

Johnny Cash -- Sun albums

As I showed in previous posts about Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, discographies from the 1950s were in complete disarray, especially when it came to albums. Back then, singles were king, and albums were seen as simply a way to earn extra money from the most devoted fans. Johnny Cash’s album discography was no different.

Making it a bit more difficult to reorganize is that overdubs were sometimes done on some of Cash’s songs at much later dates than the initial recordings. So do you place the song in the timeline of when it was originally recorded or when it received overdubs?

In the end, I used the Time-Life Johnny Cash box set, The Complete Sun Recordings, 1955-58, as a guide, which is somewhat surprisingly thorough. It doesn’t have a bunch of alternate takes or demos, just the masters, and they’re in fairly good chronological order. Going by this, Johnny should have had five albums of 12 tracks or more while at Sun Records. But the label mixed and matched various tracks and often repeatedly rereleased the biggest hits.

So here we try to remedy the situation with what could have been.

Johnny Cash

SIDE A

1. Folsom Prison Blues

2. Wide Open Road

3. Hey Porter

4. Cry! Cry! Cry!

5. My Two Timin’ Woman

6. Port of Lonely Hearts

SIDE B

1. So Doggone Lonesome

2. I Couldn’t Keep from Crying

3. Trail to Mexico

4. Mean Eyed Cat

5. Luther Played the Boogie

6. Get Rhythm

Johnny didn't release his first album at Sun until October 1957. In fact, it was Sun's first-ever album. But the label could have if it had the resources and wherewithal, released Johnny's debut album in mid-1956. And the album could have looked like this. Johnny Cash leads off with his big hit "Folsom Prison Blues" and also contains several other of his classics, such as "Hey Porter," "Cry! Cry! Cry!," "Mean Eyed Cat" and "Get Rhythm" (which concludes the album). For a cover, I used the one Sun used for the album Johnny Cash Sings the Songs That Made Him Famous and altered it a bit.

Johnny Cash with the Tennessee Two

SIDE A

1. You’re My Baby (Little Woolly Booger)

2. There You Go

3. I Walk the Line

4. Don’t Make Me Go

5. I Love You Because

6. Train of Love

SIDE B

1. Goodbye Little Darlin’

2. Next in Line

3. My Treasure

4. Straight A’s in Love

5. Home of the Blues

6. Give My Love to Rose

The title of this album gives some overdue credit to Johnny's backups, Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant (the Tennessee Two). The giant hit "I Walk the Line" would have propelled this album. The last batch of these tracks was recorded in the summer of 1957, which means this could have been a late 1957 release, possibly in time for the holiday shopping season. :) I found this cover of yet another compilation and altered it a bit

Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar

SIDE A

1. Rock Island Line

2. I Heard That Lonesome Whistle Blow

3. Country Boy

4. If the Good Lord’s Willing

5. Goodnight Irene

6. Remember Me (I’m the One Who Loves You)

SIDE B

1. Belshazzar

2. I Was There When It Happened

3. Big River

4. Wreck of the Old ‘97

5. Ballad of a Teenage Queen

6. Doin’ My Time

Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar was the actual first of Johnny's Sun albums. This version shares eight songs with the original, including the first four tracks. "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" was completed in late 1957, which would allow this album to probably come out in early 1958. 

Now Here’s Johnny Cash

SIDE A

1. Sugartime

2. Come in Stranger

3. Life Goes On

4. Born to Lose

5. Leave that Junk Alone

6. You Win Again

SIDE B

1. Oh, Lonesome Me

2. Always Alone

3. You’re the Nearest Thing to Heaven

4. The Story of a Broken Heart

5. You Tell Me

6. Guess Things Happen that Way

"You Win Again" was the last of these tracks recorded during a session in May 1958 when Johnny also recorded several Hank Williams songs (that we use for the next album). Therefore, we can see Now Here's Johnny Cash coming out that summer, and would have been the last Sun album released before Johnny left the label. For the cover, one of many Sun compilations that I took and changed around.

Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams

SIDE A

1. I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You)

2. Hey, Good Lookin’

3. I Could Never Be Ashamed of You

4. Cold, Cold Heart

5. I Forgot to Remember to Forget

6. I Just Thought You’d Like to Know

SIDE B

1. The Ways of a Woman in Love

2. Blue Train

3. Katy Too

4. Fools Hall of Fame

5. It’s Just About Time

6. Down the Street to 301

7. Thanks a Lot

Perhaps knowing that he was leaving Sun and preferring to save his own songs for his Columbia debut, Johnny recorded several Hank Williams songs. Sun released Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams in 1960, but theoretically could have issued it the year before. Perhaps the strangest thing about the released album is that it didn't originally include "Cold, Cold Heart." My version does. In fact, my version only includes three songs that were on the actual album as Sun decided to paste in old hits. I used the original cover. It's kind of an odd one. Since Johnny had left the label, I guess they just had some guy hold a guitar and face away from the camera to mimic him.

Greatest!

SIDE A

1. Cry! Cry! Cry!

2. Folsom Prison Blues

3. So Doggone Lonesome

4. Mean Eyed Cat

5. Luther Played the Boogie

6. Get Rhythm

7. I Walk the Line

SIDE B

1. There You Go

2. Train of Love

3. I Love You Because

4. Goodbye Little Darlin’

5. Straight A’s in Love

6. Next in Line

I debated whether to include this or not, but ultimately decided to do so because Sun got it so wrong. The title implies that it's a greatest hits collection, but that's not what was on the actual album. So, I fixed that, as these are all hits. I took the original cover, changed the list of songs, and added the Sun logo, which was suspiciously missing.

Greatest Hits, Volume 2

SIDE A

1. Guess Things Happen That Way

2. Give My Love to Rose

3. Home of the Blues

4. Rock Island Line

5. Big River

6. Come in Stranger

7. Ballad of a Teenage Queen 

SIDE B

1. The Ways of a Woman in Love

2. Oh, Lonesome Me

3. You’re the Nearest Thing to Heaven

4. Katy Too

5. Thanks a Lot 

6. It’s Just About Time

And if we're going to include one batch of hits, we might as well have a second volume with the remainder of the hits. Again, I used an existing compilation cover and altered the graphics.

So here are five full albums that Sun could have issued without repeated tracks, plus two best-of compilations. You have to wonder what record companies were thinking back then, but perhaps not much thought was put into albums at all.


Note: Thanks not only to the Time-Life box set but also to the Johnny Cash: The Sun Sessionography, 1954-1964 website: http://www.meaneyedcat.net/johnny_cash_at_sun.html

Elvis Presley's debut album on Sun Records

Besides four self-financed demos, Elvis Presley is known to have recorded 20 songs at Sun Records studio in Memphis, Tenn. Sun issued half of those as A and B sides of five singles. Soon after the issue of the last single, Sun Records owner Sam Phillips sold Elvis' contract to RCA in late 1955. As part of the deal, RCA obtained all of the tapes of Elvis' recordings. Of the other 10 tunes, two are apparently lost forever, and the rest have been released on various albums over the years.

This is an attempt to look at what a full album might have been had it been issued on Sun.

Sun didn't actually issue an album until Johnny Cash's With His Hot and Blue Guitar in 1956 or 1957 (there's contrasting information). Sun issued a Carl Perkins LP, Dance Album in 1957, and a Jerry Lee Lewis self-titled album in 1958. In creating a Sun album for Elvis, I wanted it to similarly match those three.

Both Cash's and Lewis' albums have a dozen tracks, and both are about 27 and a half minutes long. Perkins' album has only 11 tracks but is about six minutes longer than either of his label mates.

With Elvis' singles, we have 10 tracks, but it comes out to be less than 25 minutes long. So I decided to add two more tracks -- but which of the eight available songs to use? "When It Rains, It Really Pours" was the last song Elvis recorded at Sun, but it's apparent that no one seemed really happy with the result. In fact, Elvis re-recorded the song in 1957. I feel that the best choices of the leftovers are "Trying to Get to You" and "Just Because." The 12 songs come to a little more than 28 minutes, a little longer than either Cash's or Lewis' albums, but still shorter than Perkins'. So my track list is as follows:

SIDE A
1. Mystery Train
2. Blue Moon of Kentucky
3. I Forgot to Remember to Forget
4. You're a Heartbreaker
5. Just Because
6. That's All Right

SIDE B
1. Baby, Let's Play House
2. Milkcow Blues Boogie
3. I Don't Care If the Sun Don't Shine
4. I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone
5. Trying to Get to You
6. Good Rockin' Tonight

I started off the album with "Mystery Train," the A side of Elvis' last single for Sun. Plus it goes with the cover (which I discuss below). The first side ends with the song that started it all. The second side is bookended with "Baby, Let's Play House" and "Good Rockin' Tonight." Overall, this is a rockin' LP -- short by today's standards, but average for the time.

For the cover, I took artwork from the box set A Boy from Tupelo. I think it's great, and it looks a lot like the album covers Sun used for Cash, Lewis and Perkins. I Photoshopped some extra stars for additional song titles and made some other modifications.

Thank you very much.