AMG Review of Moanin' the Blues

Steve Leggett
All Music Guide

Chester Burnett was a bear of a man, but his voice, rough and harsh as broken Delta glass, was what really gave him dimension. A powerful blues shouter out of the Charley Patton mold, Burnett (or Howlin' Wolf, as he came to be known) brought a feral fire to his vocals that made him sound like a gale-force hurricane in front of the microphone. But he was far from a loose cannon. He had remarkable control over that voice, and it shows in this selection, although it is a wee bit on the random side. The various collections of his 1950sChess material (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the slightly earlier Sun material) are still the way to go for listeners who truly want to hear this force of nature at his best.