'Smokestack Lightnin' and 'Red Rooster' were originally recorded by which Chicago blues singer?
Little Red Rooster recorded adaptations of several Patton songs, including "Spoonful", "Smokestack Lightning", and "Saddle My Pony". Relatives and early friends recall Howlin' Wolf playing a song similar to "The Red Rooster" in the 1930s. Evelyn Sumlin, who was the wife of long-time Wolf guitarist Hubert Sumlin, felt that several of the songs that were later arranged by and credited to Willie Dixon had already been developed by Howlin' Wolf. Howlin' Wolf recorded "The Red Rooster" in Chicago in June 1961. The song is performed as a slow blues in the key of A. Although Dixon biographer Mitsutoshi Inaba notes it as a
Smokestack Lightning (1930, OKeh 8807), and Charley Patton's "Moon Going Down" (1930, Paramount 13014). Wolf said the song was inspired by watching trains in the night: "We used to sit out in the country and see the trains go by, watch the sparks come out of the smokestack. That was smokestack lightning." In 1951, he recorded the song as "Crying at Daybreak". It contains the line "O-oh smokestack lightnin', shinin', just like gold, oh don't you hear me cryin'", similar to the Mississippi Sheiks' lyric "A-ah, smokestack lightnin', that bell shine just like gold, now don't you hear me talkin'". In Chicago