Song 742: This week the playlist comes around to Smokestack Lightning by Howlin' Wolf, who also wrote the song (credited under his name Chester Burnett), and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. The first version of this song I heard came along in 1972 when Chicago radios introduced me to the Mike Harrison renditon, which I applauded on this list as Song 158. Soon after that recording roped me in, I found out about the Yardbirds one (Song 691) and also became aware of this original one. During the 1970s, some Chicago radio stations featured rocking classics from the 1950s, so I may very well have heard it from them, though I don't recall the details now. I definitely did get to know this recording in that era, and when I got to hear it, it felt like it was shinin' just like gold. Of course, even in the previous decade, growing up in a house near a railroad line, I knew that whether or not the engineer might stop the train, even to let a poor boy ride, I would never see a smokestack, since those fuming pipes did not appear on the diesel electric locomotives that had taken over the train tracks by then.
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