"Spoonful" is a blues song written by Willie Dixon and [first recorded](https://hooktube.com/watch?v=_nXlXU5ACqI) 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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ03dBoFufY) had a pop and R&B record chart hit with "Spoonful" in 1961, and it was popularized in the late 1960s by Cream. Dixon's "Spoonful" is loosely based on ["Spoonful Blues"](https://hooktube.com/watch?v=EyIquE0izAg), a song recorded in 1929 by Charley Patton which is related to ["All I Want Is a Spoonful"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2zpQAP-7Uo) by Papa Charlie Jackson (1925) and ["Cocaine Blues"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZJPeorM_fA) 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 drugs: "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"