Howlin' Wolf was the primal force of the blues, taken to its logical extreme. He was a towering presence, with a thunderous voice and enormous physical power. Like his friend and rival Muddy Waters, Wolf transformed the archaic country blues of Mississippi into the electric urban blues of Chicago, his adopted city. This is his remarkable debut album for Chess Records, Moanin' in the Moonlight (1959), one of the cornerstones of the genre.