Smokestack Lightning

Howlin Wolf recorded Smokestack Lightning in Chicago in January 1956 with Hubert Sumlin and Willie Johnson on guitars, Hosea Lee Kennard on piano, Willie Dixon on bass, and Earl Phillips on drums. Wolf sang and played harmonica, shaping a long-standing Delta song form into a spare electric performance. Released by Chess in 1956, the single became one of Howlin Wolfs defining records and reached the Billboard R&B chart. Its one-chord pulse and train-haunted vocal made it one of the central Chicago blues singles of the mid-1950s. The song became a blues standard and was later covered by the Yardbirds, Manfred Mann, the Animals, the Grateful Dead, and Soundgarden. It was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and the Grammy Hall of Fame, reinforcing its place as a key link between electric blues and rock performance.