The most veteran of the place, surely, have heard many versions of
Sittin' on Top of the World
: from the Grateful Dead to Jack White, going through Cream or Bob Dylan.
A hypnotic blues from 1930 where the protagonist, suffocated by his work, has also been abandoned.
However, in a mocking pirouette, he repeats that he feels he is "sitting on top of the world."
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Tribute to the howling wolf
The canonical interpretation is that of the ferocious Howlin' Wolf, in 1957. And the Howling Wolf sang it again on a 1971 album,
The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions
, which inaugurated a curious trend in musical productions: at the age of 60, he left to England to record with his musical sons.
Alumni like Eric Clapton, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Steve Winwood and, boy, Ringo Starr.
It worked out reasonably, and the following year the move was repeated with
The London Muddy Waters Sessions
;
the hosts were then Rory Gallagher, Georgie Fame, Mitch Mitchell and, again, Steve Winwood.
Both records have just been reissued on fat vinyl through Elemental Music.
The
London sessions
were not best-sellers —they would later be joined by the volumes signed by Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry—, but it was a strategic success for his label, Chess Records.
The heir to the founders, Marshall Chess, wanted to expand the market, remembering that half of the successful British groups, from the Rolling Stones on down, had been educated listening to Chess records.
This, which now seems obvious to us, was not so during the seventies, at least in Spain, where voluminous encyclopedias appeared that happily dispensed with black pioneers.
It wasn't about racism, at least consciously;
the problem had to do with the low culture of the gurus of the time (hardly blues records from Chess Records were released here).
We got lost like the
psychedelic
LPs of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.
Another Marshall Chess quip that was almost insulting.
Howlin' Wolf's cover had a scolding: “This is Howlin' Wolf's new album.
He does not like.
He, too, did not like the electric guitar at first.
Obviously, the fixed public of both
bluesmen
rejected that twist, as would happen here with
La leyenda del tiempo
, by Camarón.
Howlin' Wolf album cover, 'The London Sessions'.
However, those were well-cared and—let's use the suspicious adjective—interesting records.
They stood out for the Hendrixian guitar of Peter Cosey, a future accomplice of Miles Davis, and the arrangements of Charles Stepney, the creator of Rotary Connection.
In fact, the 1968
Electric Mud
was recreated with the addition of rappers by Martin Scorsese for his series on the blues.
Summary: The
London sessions
helped boost the careers of Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters in their later stages.
And Marshall Chess himself decided his professional course: he left the family record company to run the Rolling Stones' own label.
He lasted seven years.
I had the opportunity to interview him a long time later and he confessed that leaving saved his life: “Not all of us have the Keith Richards constitution.
Neither Muddy Waters nor Howlin' Wolf would have put up with the carnival of drugs, sex and
rock and roll
that was going on there.”
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