[1][2] The original album included eight songs recorded for Modern Records between 1951 and 1952, including those tracks that were released as singles by the RPM, and an additional two instrumentals by Joe Hill Louis.

[2] The album was re-released in 1970 by United Records with the alternative title Big City Blues.

AllMusic reviewer Richie Unterberger called it: "groundbreaking early electric blues, though not quite up to the peaks he'd scale with his best Chess sessions of the mid-'50s to the mid-'60s.

The electric guitar had rarely been recorded with as much fuzzy power as it was here, for one thing, and Howlin' Wolf's vocals were already possessed of magnificent, sometimes scary intensity ...

This has almost everything Howlin' Wolf cut for Modern in the early '50s, and is thus an essential supplement to his more celebrated Chess catalog for the serious fan".