James' recording with Harvey Fuqua as "Etta & Harvey" reached number 12 on Billboard magazine's Hot R&B Sides chart and number 78 on its Hot 100 singles chart. In a statement by the foundation, it was noted that " Otis Rush has stated that Dixon presented 'Spoonful' to him, but the song didn't suit Rush's tastes and so it ended up with Wolf, and soon thereafter with Etta James". In 2010, the song was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame "Classics of Blues Recordings" category. It is ranked number 154 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2021 list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time", up from number 221 on its 2004 list. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed Howlin' Wolf's "Spoonful" as one of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll". Although the album notes indicate "Live at the Fillmore", "Spoonful" was actually recorded at the Winterland Ballroom. One such rendering, lasting nearly seventeen minutes, is included on their 1968 album Wheels of Fire. The unedited studio version made its US album debut on the Best of Cream compilation in 1969.Ĭream frequently played "Spoonful" in concert, and the song evolved beyond the blues-rock form of the 1966 recording into a vehicle for extended improvised soloing influenced by the San Francisco music scene of the late 1960s.
To fit the 6:30 album track on a 45 rpm record, side one fades out at the beginning of the instrumental break (at 2:25) and side two begins just before the third verse (lasting 2:28). Atco Records released the song in the US later in 1967 as a two-sided single (with some pressings misspelled as "Spoonfull"), but it failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100 record chart. In an album review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine described Cream's rendition as "where the swirling instrumental interplay, echo, fuzz tones, and overwhelming volume constitute true psychedelic music, and also points strongly toward the guitar worship of heavy metal." įor the American release of Fresh Cream, " I Feel Free" was substituted for "Spoonful". They were part of a trend in the mid-1960s by rock artists to record a Willie Dixon song for their debut albums. The British rock group Cream recorded "Spoonful" for their 1966 UK debut album, Fresh Cream. Wolf offered his assessment in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine: "Man . The resulting album, The Howlin' Wolf Album, with its "comically bombastic" arrangements and instrumentation, was a musical and commercial failure. Unlike his 1971 The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions (Chess LP-60008), on which he was backed by several rock stars, including Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts, here he was backed by relatively unknown studio session players. In 1968, Wolf reluctantly re-recorded "Spoonful", along with several of his blues classics in Marshall Chess's attempt at updating Wolf's sound for the burgeoning rock market.
In 1962, the song was included on Wolf's second compilation album for Chess, Howlin' Wolf. It has been suggested that Freddie King contributed the second guitar on "Spoonful", but both Sumlin and Robinson insist it was Robinson. There are few recordings that equal the powerful force of 'Spoonful,' or, for that matter, any other Wolf/Dixon Chess side." īacking Wolf on vocals are longtime accompanist Hubert Sumlin on guitar, relative newcomer Freddie Robinson on second guitar, and Chess recording veterans Otis Spann on piano, Fred Below on drums, and Dixon on double-bass. Music critic Bill Janovitz describes it as "brutal, powerful Wolf bellowing in his raspy style. It uses eight-bar vocal sections with twelve-bar choruses and is performed at a medium blues tempo in the key of E. "Spoonful" has a one-chord, modal blues structure found in other songs Willie Dixon wrote for Howlin' Wolf, such as " Wang Dang Doodle" and " Back Door Man", and in Wolf's own " Smokestack Lightning". But one little spoon of your precious love
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