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Latest comment: 3 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Howlin' Wolf recorded "Smokestack Lightning" January 1956. Sixteen months before that, Sep. 1 1954, Muddy Waters recorded a song called "Smokestack Lightning" with very similar lyrics.
The book Blues Records 1943-1970 (1994 edition) lists these master numbers, song titles and release info for three songs recorded that day.
U7697 I’m Ready Chess 1579
U7698 Smokestack Lightning Chess LP 9180
U7699 I Don’t Know Why Chess 1579
Chess 1579 was the single released soon after. It made Billboard's R&B charts in the Oct. 23 1954 issue. "I'm Ready" got to #4
"Smokestack Lightning" was unreleased until after Muddy Waters' death. Chess LP 9180 is titled Rare And Unissued and was released in 1984. But the master numbers show it was mastered at the same time as the other two songs.
There is some interesting speculation about the origin of Waters' version on this webpage.[1]PatConolly (talk) 23:50, 29 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Many blues songs that are popularly associated with Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, et al., are actually variations/reworkings of earlier tunes performed by Charlie Patton, Tommy Johnson, and other Delta blues musicians. According to Segrest and Hoffman in their Howlin' Wolf bio, Smokestack was inspired by Patton, "had been part of his [Wolf's] repertoire as far back as the 1930s", and noted his RPM version that was recorded around 1951. Gordon doesn't mention Smokestack in his bio of Muddy Waters and it's not clear where or when he got the song.
The fact that Waters recorded it prior to Wolf's definitive 1956 version is not as significant the web post author seems to be making it out to be and his feeling that "More likely is that it was Dixon – not Wolf – who wrote 'Smokestack Lightning', and that he did so in response Chess’s growing awareness of the popularity of the Memphis sound" is just speculation. Dixon didn't mention it in his autobiography, so it appears that more reliable sources are needed confirming this before anything can be added to the article.
Worth pointing out that Muddy's version, while it includes the title verse, does not have the feature guitar lick - but that IS in Wolf's "Cryin' at Daybreak". It's not a far fetched theory that Wolf played it live long before he recorded the definitive version, and Muddy nicked some elements of it.Jules TH 16 (talk) 19:56, 15 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
