"Spoonful" is a blues song written by Willie Dixon and first recorded in 1960 by Howlin' Wolf. Called "a stark and haunting work", it is one of Dixon's best known and most interpreted songs.
Etta James had a pop and R&B record chart hit with "Spoonful" in 1961, and it was popularized in the late 1960s by the British rock group Cream.
Dixon's "Spoonful" is loosely based on "A Spoonful Blues", a song recorded in 1929 by Charley Patton , which is related to "All I Want Is a Spoonful" by Papa Charlie Jackson (1925) and "Cocaine Blues" by Luke Jordan (1927). The lyrics relate men's sometimes violent search to satisfy their cravings, with "a spoonful" used mostly as a metaphor for pleasures, which have been interpreted as sex, love, and drug:
"It could be a spoonful of coffee, it could be a spoonful of tea But one little spoon of your precious love, is good enough for me Men lies about that spoonful, some of them dies about that spoonful Some of them cries about that spoonful, but everybody fight about that spoonful"
The English group Cream recorded "Spoonful" for their 1966 UK debut album, Fresh Cream. For the American release of Fresh Cream, "I Feel Free" was substituted for "Spoonful". The song was released in the US later in 1967 as a two-sided single, (with some pressings misspelled as "Spoonfull") but edited so that Part 1 fades out at the beginning of the instrumental break and Part 2 begins just before the third verse.
The unedited studio version made its US album debut on the Best of Cream compilation in 1969.
Cream frequently played "Spoonful" in concert, and the song evolved beyond the blues-rock form of the 1966 recording into a vehicle for extended improvised soloing influenced by the San Francisco music scene of the late 1960s.
One such rendering, lasting nearly seventeen minutes, is included on their 1968 album Wheels of Fire. Although the album notes indicate "Live at the Fillmore", "Spoonful" was actually recorded at the Winterland Ballroom.
