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Big Good Wolf


Howlin' Wolf, aka Chester Burnett, was born on 10 June 1910

By Nigel Williamson
Author, The Rough Guide to the Blues


Among all those who escaped a life of poverty on the plantations of Mississipi by picking up a guitar or harmonica and singing the blues, few had more impact on the shape of modern music than Howlin' Wolf.


The Rolling Stones had a number one hit with his Little Red Rooster. Eric Clapton and Cream jammed for hours on his Spoonful.

The Doors covered his Back Door Man. Captain Beefheart modelled his vocal style on him. And countless British r&b bands in the 1960s ground out rudimentary versions of Smokestack Lightning, perhaps his signature song, with its repeated ''ah whoo-hoo-ooh'' howl.

Yet none of them came close to matching the belligerent, strident intensity of the original.

Standing more than six feet tall and weighing 300 pounds, Howlin' Wolf was an electrifying live performer who used his physical stature to enhance the emotional intensity of his singing. But his presence was every bit as commanding on record as it was on stage.

Howlin' Wolf inspired many artists, including the Rolling Stones
Born Chester Arthur Burnett in West Point, Mississippi a century ago on 10 June 1910, he acquired the name Howlin' Wolf as a child.

"I got that from my grandfather, he used to tell me stories about the wolves in that part of the country," he later explained.

He began singing in church and worked on plantations in Mississippi and Arkansas, learning the blues from itinerant musicians such as Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson.

By his teens he was spending his weekends singing at plantation picnics and juke joints and testing out the parameters of his already mighty voice.

His threatening physical presence also earned him such nicknames as 'Big Foot Chester' and 'Bull Cow' and by the early 1930s, he was playing alongside the likes of Robert Johnson and Sonny Boy Williamson.

From each of his fellow bluesmen he seemed to learn something, moulding a set of diverse influences into his own unique style.

From Willie Brown and others he picked up the rudiments of guitar playing. Patton instilled an understanding of the importance of showmanship. From Tommy Johnson came the moans which he added to his gruff voice and he learned to play harmonica from Williamson, who married Wolf 's half-sister.

"When I heard Howlin' Wolf, I knew, 'this is where the soul of man never dies.'
-Sam Phillips

After three years in the US Army, he returned to Mississippi in 1944, and continued to make his living from farming until 1948 when he moved to West Memphis. There he put together his first band, which brought him to the attention of Sam Phillips and his talent scout, Ike Turner.

Howlin' Wolf made his first recordings in 1951 with Moanin' at Midnight and How Many More Years for Phillips, who then leased them to the Chicago-based Chess Records, the most legendary blues label of them all. Two years later he moved to Chicago and called the city home for the rest of his life.

Signed to Chess, he worked closely with the songwriter Willie Dixon who provided a ready supply of great songs, Wolf's impact was immediate on a classic series of electric blues sides such as Spoonful, Evil, Little Red Rooster, Back Door Man and I Ain't Superstitious (all written by Dixon) and his own Smokestack Lightning and Killing Floor.

Listening to those recordings today, Howlin' Wolf's voice still has the power to shock - a gripping, primal sound full of unfathomable mystery and an overwhelming intensity - and yet with a surprising subtlety in its phrasing.


Howlin' Wolf Blues

That he didn't start recording until he was in his 40s made him appear as if he had sprung fully-formed, like an elemental force from the Delta ground, which his raw, earth-shaking voice somehow seemed to embody.

Between Wolf and Chess's other main attraction, Muddy Waters, there developed a healthy rivalry, as both competed to record Dixon's best songs and drove each other to fresh heights as between them they defined the sound of post-war electric blues.

In 1965, he travelled to Europe with the American Blues Festival and footage of a TV appearance at the time shows a youthful Mick Jagger sitting almost worshipfully at his feet.

Five years later, he was back in Britain to record The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, backed by Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts and many of the other British rockers he had inspired.

By then he was in poor health following a heart attack. Yet despite his illness, he continued working and gave his final live performance in Chicago with BB King in November 1975. He died two months later from kidney failure, at the age of 65.

A century after his birth, the extraordinary recordings he left behind sound as potent as ever. As Sam Phillips - the man who first recorded him and then went on to discover Elvis Presley - once said: "When I heard Howlin' Wolf, I knew, 'this is where the soul of man never dies.'"

Nigel Williamson is the author of the Rough Guide To The Blues
(Rough Guides/Penguin, £16.99).

happy 100th birthday, Wolf

Thanks for posting mate. I love the London sessions where The Wolf is showing Eric Clapton how to play Rooster.

NickB

You can't always get what you want.....

www.myspace.com/thesonkings

The men don't know
But the little girls they understand ....................


...................... London Sessions May 1970



ROCKMAN

Nice one Rockman! Thanks. Got any of him with the band?

NickB

You can't always get what you want.....

www.myspace.com/thesonkings

.....here ya go Nick....






ROCKMAN

ROCKMAN

Happy Birthday WOLF!!

Rocky Rockman

Thankyou for posting them they're great.

NickB

You can't always get what you want.....

www.myspace.com/thesonkings

Robert Palmer (my favourite music writer, right after Lester Bangs), in his absolutely essential and must-read book "Deep Blues", describes Wolf's early sound:

"Wolf was moaning and screaming ... blowing unreconstructed country blues harmonica, [and] his band featured heavily amplified single-string lead guitar by Willie Johnson and Destruction's rippling, jazz-influenced piano. ... Wolf and his group could sound exceptionally down-home .. and they could swing. ... But most of the time, Wolf strutted and howled, Willie Steel bashed relentlessly, and Willie Johnson, his amp turned up until his tone cracked, distorted, and fed back, hit violent power chords right on the beat. ... [T]his music was heavy metal, years before the term was coined."

Palmer recalled one particular Wolf performance:

"In later years, and especially after he began working mostly for white audiences, Wolf would take it easy. A little of the old ferocity was enough to ignite the most jaded college crowd. But I'll never forget a 1965 performance when Wolf played Memphis on a blues package show ...

"The MC announced Wolf, and the curtains opened up to reveal his band pumping out a decidedly down-home shuffle. The rest of the bands on the show were playing jump and soul-influenced blues, but this was the hard stuff. Where was Wolf? Suddenly he sprang out onto the stage from the wings. He was a huge hulk of a man, but he advanced across the stage in sudden bursts of speed, his head pivoting from side to side, eyes huge and white, eyeballs rotating wildly. He seemed to be having an epileptic seizure, but no, he suddenly lunged for the microphone, blew a chorus of raw, heavily rhythmic harmonica, and began moaning. He had the hugest voice I have ever heard -- it seemed to fill the hall and get right inside your ears, and when he hummed and moaned in falsetto, every hair on your neck crackled with electricity. The thirty-minute set went by like an express train, with Wolf switching from harp to guitar (which he played while rolling around on his back and, at one point, doing somersaults) and then leaping up to prowl the lip of the stage. He was The Mighty Wolf, no doubt about it. Finally, an impatient signal from the wings let him know his portion of the show was over. Defiantly, Wolf counted off a bone-crushing rocker, began singing rhythmically, feigned an exit, and suddenly made a flying leap for the curtain at the side of the stage. Holding the microphone under his beefy right arm and singing into it all the while, he began climbing up the curtain, going higher and higher until he was perched far above the stage, the thick curtain threatening to rip, the audience screaming with delight. Then he loosened his grip and, in a single easy motion, slid right back down the curtain, hit the stage, cut off the tune, and stalked away, to the most ecstatic cheers of the evening. He was then fifty-five years old."

Videos:

























I had never seen this next video until about a month or two ago. Turns out it's from "Howlin' Wolf In Concert 1970" (which I have to buy toot sweet), filmed at the Washington D.C. Blues Festival in November 1970. Wolf -- at age 60! -- crawls on stage on his hands and knees, flashing a devilish grin. When I first saw this, I just about lost my mind at 4:10. Later, Wolf is sitting stock still in a chair on stage, brooding and scowling, then looking incredibly self-satisfied, and you cannot stop staring, because what the hell is he going to do next?





If he was doing this shit when he was 60, what kind of otherworldly performances was he putting on 20-25 years earlier?!?!

spellbinding stuff - thanks for sharing.