A Day to Remember Howlin’Wolf & David Bowie

 

January 10. 

Another day of grief for lovers of blues and rock music. It's the day Howlin' 'Wolf (June 10, 1910 – January 10, 1976) and David Bowie (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016) took the stairway to heaven.

They left behind a lot of songs to remind us of them. Here are The Back Door Wolf, the final LP of Howlin' Wolf and Scary Monsters, one of my favourite Bowie's records and - as the music experts say -  his last great album.

Howlin 'Wolf - The Back Door Wolf [1973]

This, Wolf's last hurrah, is his final studio album. Cut with his regular working band, the Wolf Gang, everything here works well, despite Detroit Junior's annoying use of harpsichord on several tracks. Highlights include Eddie Shaw's "Coon on the Moon," Wolf's own "Moving" and "Stop Using Me," and both takes of "Speak Now Woman." Not the place to start a Wolf collection by any means, but a great place to end up. [allmusic.com - review by Cub Koda]

 

Every day seem like 'nother year

Lord I can't make a dollar, ooh and I can't stay here

David Bowie - Scary Monsters [1980] 

David Bowie returned to relatively conventional rock & roll with Scary Monsters, an album that effectively acts as an encapsulation of all his '70s experiments. Reworking glam rock themes with avant-garde synth flourishes, and reversing the process as well, Bowie creates dense but accessible music throughout Scary Monsters. Though it doesn't have the vision of his other classic records, it wasn't designed to break new ground. It was created as the culmination of Bowie's experimental genre-shifting of the '70s. As a result, Scary Monsters is Bowie's last great album. While the music isn't far removed from the post-punk of the early '80s, it does sound fresh, hip, and contemporary, which is something Bowie lost over the course of the '80s. [allmusic.com review by St. T. Erlewine]

I believe that the next song [“Ashes To Ashes”], a dark masterpiece from 1980, is one of Bowie’s unforgettable songs.

 

 If you think that these two are "great" albums or if you want just to take a taste, check them out!