Shipping sixtysomething blues icon Howlin' Wolf to England in May 1970, accompanied by his guitarist Hubert Sumlin, was a crapshoot. Wolf’s health was poor and he hadn’t recorded outside of Chicago since 1954. Not surprisingly, Wolf’s London excursion remains a mixed bag. Certainly, the participants’ hearts were in their music--with the notable exception perhaps of Wolf's--but the result never quite gelled. When the Brit rockers such as Eric Clapton the Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts dug into his songs, they collided with the ornery bluesman. Producer Norman Dayron later overdubbed Steve Winwood and Lafayette Leake’s keyboards (along with horns on a few tracks) to salvage the sessions. Of all the classic Chess albums, this is an odd choice to expand with a second disc of outtakes, none of which are particularly revelatory. Still, Clapton is fiery throughout, and Wolf, although not in prime form, is never less than convincing. Though often criticized, most notably by Clapton himself, Howlin' Wolf's London Sessions offers a worthy--though not essential--snapshot of the legend in his waning years. -Hal Horowitz