Howlin' WOLF

Howlin' WOLF
Nom Chester Arthur Burnett
Naissance le 10 juin 1910 à West Point dans le Mississippi

Pays d’origine États-Unis
Décès 10 janvier 1976
à Hines dans l'Illinois
Genre(s) Blues
Instrument(s) Voix, Guitare, Harmonica
Années actives 1951-1976
Label(s) Chess Records
Howlin’ Wolf, né le 10 juin 1910 à White Station, près de West Point dans le Mississippi et mort le 10 janvier 1976 à Hines dans l'Illinois, de son vrai nom Chester Arthur Burnett, est un musicien de blues américain.

Son prénom lui vient de Chester Alan Arthur, 21e président des États-Unis, mais il a connu différents sobriquets dans sa jeunesse, dus à sa taille et son corps massif, comme Big Foot ou encore Bull Cow. Il explique ceci sur les origines de son nom de scène, qui veut dire 'Loup Hurlant' : Ce nom est inspiré par mon grand-père, qui me racontait souvent des histoires de loups dans cette partie du pays. Il le prévenait que les loups l'attrapperaient s'il n'était pas sage

Initié à la guitare par Charley Patton à la fin des années 1920 et à l'harmonica par Sonny Boy Williamson II au cours des années 1930, ce n'est qu'en 1945, après une jeunesse passée dans les champs de coton et quatre années de guerre sous les drapeaux, que Chester Arthur Burnett décide de se consacrer à la musique.

L'un des premiers guitaristes à utiliser une guitare électrique, il forme un groupe à Memphis en 1948 et prend le nom de Howlin' Wolf. Il enregistre ses premiers titres en 1950-1951, parmi lesquels How many more years, Dog me around et Crying at daybreak. En 1952, ayant décidé de se consacrer uniquement au chant, il part pour Chicago où il est l’un des fondateurs du Chicago blues.

À partir de cette date, il enregistre de nombreux titres pour la maison de disques Chess Records, dont Evil, I'm the wolf, Smokestack lightnin et Sittin' on top of the world. Willie Dixon, le compositeur et arrangeur attitré de Chess, lui écrit également plusieurs titres qui seront des succès et restent des classiques du blues : Wang dang doodle, You’ll be mine.

Sa carrière décline progressivement dans la fin des années 1950 en raison du changement des goûts musicaux du public noir. Il est sorti de la semi obscurité grâce au support des groupes anglais de rhythm and blues du début des années 1960, notamment les Rolling Stones qui reprirent entre autres son titre Little Red Rooster.

Il continue sa carrière jusqu'à sa mort, apprécié du public blanc et reconnu comme l’une des grandes figures du Blues contemporain.

Back Door Man

Enregistré à Chicago en juin 1960 avec Hubert Sumlin, Freddy King (guitare), Otis Spann (piano), Willie Dixon (basse) et Fred Below (batterie).


Howlin’ Wolf, grâce à sa voix puissante et rocailleuse ponctuée de phrases d'harmonica, s’est créé un style particulier facilement reconnaissable. Il eut une influence majeure sur le renouveau du rock and roll dans le milieu des années 1960.


Discographie
De nombreux albums et compilations existent, de qualité de performance et d’enregistrement diverses. Les albums suivant sont cependant recommandés :

The Chess box, coffret de 3 CD qui couvre sa carriere chez Chess Records de 1951 à 1973
The Real Folk Blues, (1966) chez Chess Records
Howlin’ Wolf, (1962) chez Chess Records
The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions, (1970) chez Chess Records, avec Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Bill Wyman et Charlie Watts.
The Super Super Blues Band, (1967) avec Muddy Waters et Bo Diddley, n’est pas excellent mais réunit ces 3 géants du blues de l’époque.

Le cri du loup : Howlin' Wolf

Chester Arthur Burnett, best known as Howlin' Wolf, learned to play guitar from Charley Patton. He picked up harmonica from Sonny Boy Williamson II (Rice Miller). Jimi Hendrix sat in with him. Guitarists such as Pat Hare, Jimmy Rogers, Buddy Guy, Freddy King, Matt "Guitar" Murphy, Eric Clapton and Hubert Sumlin have all played with Wolf.

He was born in West Point, Mississippi on June 10, 1910.Wolf's parents, Leon "Dock" Burnett and Gertrude Young separated and his mother left him with his uncle, Will Young.*Chester was always fond of music. He sang in the choir at the White Station Baptist church, where Will Young preached. Young was very strict and treated young Wolf badly. When he was thirteen, Chester ran away to live with his father on the delta, near Ruleville, Mississippi (birthplace of Jimmy Rogers), on the Young and Morrow Plantation.



Howlin' Wolf at Ann Arbor Blues Fest (photos by Doug Fulton -used with permission of his estate -represented by Geary Chansley)

The legendary Charley Patton was a local blues musician and inspired young Chester. Burnett took guitar lessons from Patton. Wolf's brother-in-law, Rice Miller (a.k.a. Sonny Boy Williamson), later tought him harmonica. Howlin' Wolf developed his singing from listening to records of his favorite artists, such as Tommy Johnson , Jimmy "the Yodeling Brakeman" Rodgers, the Mississippi Sheiks and Tampa Red. Johnson's "Cool Drink of Water Blues" on Complete Recorded Works 1928-1929, is where Wolf got "I asked for water, she gave me gasoline" and his falsetto singing obviously influenced Wolf's vocal style

When not working on his Dock Burnett's farm, he traveled with other musicians, like Patton and Williamson to the Delta to play. Howlin' Wolf's performance was legendary. With his powerful voice and 6'3" 240 pound presence, he could literally rock the stage.

In 1941, Chester Burnett was drafted into the Army Signal Corps* . After the Army, he returned to his father's farm. Chester would work the farm during the week and play the blues on weekends.

In 1948, Wolf set out to play the blues full-time and moved to West Memphis, Arkansas and started a band that played on the local radio station, KWEM, and was popular locally. His group at times included harmonica players, James Cotton and Junior Parker, and guitarists, Willie Johnson, Pat Hare and Matt "Guitar" Murphy.

In 1951, Sam Phillips recorded Howlin' Wolf 's first two records, "Moanin' at Midnight" and "How Many More Years" at Memphis Recording Services(later to be known as the studio of Sun Records). The lineup was small- Wolf on vocals and harmonica, Willie Johnson(not to be confused with Blind Willie Johnson) on guitar, Willie Steele on drums and either Albert Williams or Ike Turner on piano. The sound was HUGE and would impact music around the world. While Hubert Sumlin is often(deservedly) thought of as the anchor of Wolf's sound; in the early days it was Willie Johnson, whose "Charley Patton meets T Bone Walker" fusion created the Howlin' Wolf guitar sound.Willie had grown up in the delta like Wolf, seen and played with Charley Patton and Willie Brown, yet was influenced equally by the swinging sounds of electric players like T Bone Walker. In the same way that McKinley Morganfield (a.k.a. Muddy Waters) was doing in Chicago; Chester Burnett was mixing delta blues and the swinging sound of popular music with heavily amplified electric guitar riffs.


To find the music of Howlin' Wolf ...
Search Now:
Both tunes can be found on " Howlin' Wolf/Moanin' in the Moonlight ". "Moanin at Midnight" is classic Wolf. It opens with Wolf moaning followed by the lick guitar playing a hypnotic lick and Wolf's harp. It’s a modal kind of groove and doesn't really have chord changes. The verses are punctuated by moans, falsettos and harp and occasional guitar licks. This is pretty raw as far as recording quality, but the distortion works with Wolf's literally eerie voice. It’s the delta blues, heavily amplified. "Moanin' at Midnight" is an up tempo boogie that starts with the piano playing eight note triplets to establish the groove followed by the guitar. This is modern Wolf, much more modern. There is a traditional progression with some swinging guitar (heavily distorted). Willie Johnson's guitar work on Wolf's records from this period is pretty amazing. The harp shows Rice Miller's influence. The lyrics are a little more pop. Still, the intensity is there and their band drives on this tune. It must have been amazing to see Wolf live in the early '50s.
Leonard Chess, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Rice Miller (Sonny Boy Wiiliamson II)
After recording, Phillips leased the songs to Chess Records(The Story of Chess Records tells the history of the legendary Chicago label) and both songs hit the top ten of the Billboard R&B charts. They also leased masters to Chess competitor, the Bihari brothers, who released them on their Los Angeles based RPM label until late 1952 when Wolf signed exclusively with Chess Records. He then moved to Chicago, where his career took off.
His tunes from this period alternate between his modern sound (on tunes like "Howlin' Wolf Boogie" and "Mr Highway Man") and his delta roots. "Saddle My Pony (Gonna Find My Baby Out In The World Somewhere)" which sounds very similar to the way Charley Patton, Son House and Willie Brown played it.



Wolf's first Chicago sesion was in March 1954 and featured Otis Spann on piano, Willie Dixon on bass, Earl Phillips on Drums, and Lee Cooper on guitar (Willie Johnson and Wolf's Memphis band didn't move North right away). This session included one of Wolf's best, "No Place To Go" (which was later covered by Fleetwood Mac and can be found on The Complete Blue Horizon Recordings) and "Rockin' Daddy". Its interesting to compare this version(found on The Chess Box)with the version on Wolf's London Sessions to see the effect of Hubert Sumlin on Wolf's later sound. Stevie Ray Vaughn's cover of this was one of his signature tunes.

In May of '54 Hubert made his recording debut with Wolf as 2nd guitarist with Spann, Phillips, Dixon and Jody Wiliams on lead. They recorded two tunes- "Baby How Long" and "Evil (is goin' on)". "Evil" is also the first tune by legendary Chess songwriter/bassist/A & R man Willie Dixon that Wolf recorded. Dixon's lyrics fit Howlin' Wolf's singing and the groove is great. The same lineup came back in October of that year to cut two of Wolf's tunes, "I'll be Around" and "Forty Four" (covered by Little Feat and used as the basis for a song on the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton by John Mayall ). The Chester Burnett/Willie Dixon/Hubert Sumlin team and variations would be a big money maker for Chess and the core of Wolf's sound from the mid '50s through the '60s and would continue for the rest of Wolf's career. In June of 1960 Wolf, Spann,Sumlin, Freddy King and Fred Below cut 3 Dixon tunes -"Backdoor Man", "Spoonful" and "Wang Dang Doodle". "Backdoor Man" was covered by The Blues Project and The Doors. "Spoonful" was covered by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band,Cream, John Hammond and every garage band of the era. "Wang Dang Doodle" (a song Wolf detested) wound up getting covered by the Pointer Sisters. These songs helped make Chester Burnett's music an inspiration for a generation of young English and American blues fans (like me) who had never been in a delta Juke Joint but identified anyway.



Hubert Sumlin & Howling Wof (photo courtesy of Brian Smith)
In Chicago, Howlin' Wolf's main competition was singer Muddy Waters. They both claimed to be the top dog of Chicago blues. Many top Chicago side played in both bands. At one point Hubert Sumlin played in Muddy's band (that's Hubert on "40 Days and 40 Nights") and Jimmy Rogers played w/ Wolf. They both play on Wolf's 1961 sessions which include some of his best stuff including "Shake for Me", "The Red Rooster", "Down in the Bottom", "Goin' Down Slow" and "Ain't Superstitious" (all of these tunes are in the excellent The Chess Box which is a good survey of Wolf's music throughout his career) . Their competition included covers of each other's tunes,. made each of them work harder and made the Chicago sound (and the Chess brothers) a big force in the R& B world of the '50s and '60s. Many of these tunes were crafted to fit Chester Burnett's persona as Howlin' Wolf by Willie Dixon, who also played on the 1961 dates

In 1964, he married his sweetheart Lillie Hanley. As Soul Music and rock started to gain popularity, Wolf's gutbucket style was less popular with black audiences. The folk music boom and the 'English Invasion' (which he inspiried partly) boosted Wolf's career and attracted a new young white audience for albums (Wolf, like most blues artists reached their audience via singles) and concert dates( as opposed to the club and dance dates that Wolf had done for years). Groups such as The Animals, The Jeff Beck Group, The Yardbirds, Led Zepplin and The Rolling Stones all emulated his music. In '64 he played dates Europe with Willie Dixon, Fred Below, Sunnyland Slim and Hubert Sumlin. The Rolling Stones insisted that Wolf perform on the TV show Shindig if they were to appear, so on May 26, 1965 Wolf was on TV with the kids. He began playing with newer artists of the time, such as Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. In the late 1960's, Wolf's health started to fail and he suffered several heart attacks. A car crash in Toronto in 1970 severely damaged his kidneys and disabled Chester Burnett. Wolf kept singing and performing until his death, but for the rest of his life he had a dialysis done every three days. While most of his recordings from this period are so-so, The London Sessions LP has some good tracks and an interesting bit where he teaches a frightened Eric Clapton how to play 'Red Rooster'.

Howlin' Wolf's last performance was at the Chicago Ampitheater in November of 1975. He entered the Veterans Administration Hospital at Hines, Illinois in mid December. Chester Burnett died on January 10, 1976 of heart failure during surgery and his body was buried at the Oak Ridge Cemetery in Hillside Ilinois. In 1991, Wolf was inducted posthumously into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

* Some of this information on this site was researched by by James Segrest and Mark Hoffman, co-authors of the great Howlin' Wolf biography "Moanin' at Midnight: The Life of Howlin' Wolf.". Visit their site,howlinwolf.com for more info and some great pictures too! Mark also was a consultant on "The Howlin' Wolf Story - The Secret History of Rock & Roll ". The DVD has amazing live footage of Wolf (including Shindig), interviews with Mark, Hubert Sumlin, and more! Both "Moanin' at Midnight: The Life of Howlin' Wolf." and "The Howlin' Wolf Story - The Secret History of Rock & Roll

Howlin' WOLF Photos









le Mémorial de Howlin' WOLF qui fût l'un des plus Grands
Artistes de BLUES et de la SUN Records Compagnie

Merci FRANCK

Je ne connaissais pas du tout je viens de le découvrir et j'aime bien.

HOWLIN' WOLF DISCOGRAPHY

* means that there are Audio files online which can be accessed at the link

REGULAR RELEASES (chronological)
SUN RELEASES: although these were done before the Chess sessions, they would not be released until years later- information provided by the inimitable Mr. KLAUS D. MUELLER

RIDIN' IN THE MOONLIGHT(Ace CH52)
(Originally released on RPM singles, and on Crown, Custom, United, and Kent LPs. "Chocolate Drops" and the second "Riding' in the Moonlight" were formerly unreleased. "Driving this Highway" only released before on a Polydor sampler LP)
Ridin' in the Moonlight/Crying at Daybreak/Passing By Blues/Driving this Highway/The Sun is Rising/Stealing my Clothes (My Friend)/I'm the Wolf/Worried about you Baby/House Rockin' Boogie Chocolate Drop (Brown Skinned Woman)/Keep what you got/Dog Me Around/Morning at Midnight (mistitled 'Moanin' At Midnight')/I Want Your Picture/My Baby Stole Off/Ridin' in the Moonlight

THE LEGENDARY SUN PERFORMERS (Charly CR 30134)
My Baby Walked Off / Smile At Me / Bluebird / Everybody's In the Mood / Chocolate Drop / Come Back Home / Dorthy Mae / Highway Man / Oh Red / My Last Affair / Howlin' For My Baby / Sweet Woman / C.V. Wine Blues / Look-A-Here Baby / Decoration Day / Well That's All Right

Charly Records CR 30102 (British 12" from ?)

SUN - THE ROOTS OF ROCK - Volume 2 - Sam's Blues - Howlin' Wolf - Little
Milton - Houston Boines
Side 1
1. Howlin' For My Baby (also on Chess and on THE LEGENDARY SUN PERFORMERS
LP)
2. California Blues
3. California Boogie
4. C.V. Vine Blues (also on THE LEGENDARY SUN PERFORMERS LP)
5. My Troubles and Me
6. Look-A-Here (as "Look-A-Here Baby" also on THE LEGENDARY SUN PERFORMERS LP)
7. Decoration Day (also on THE LEGENDARY SUN PERFORMERS LP)
8. That's All Right (as "Well That's All Right" also on THE LEGENDARY SUN PERFORMERS LP)

Side 2 only by the other artists.

GOING BACK HOME (Syndicate Chapter S.G. 003)
(The tracks are chronological on the LP are 'from 1948 to 1958' but this is probably not
correct. I would say it must be: "From 1951 to 1958")

Side 1
1. Saddly My Pony (first disc with Ike Turner)
2. Worried All the Time (first disc with Ike Turner)
3. Howlin' Wolf Boogie (also on "The Legendary Sun Performers" LP)
4. The Wolf is at Your Door (as "Howlin' For My Baby" also on "The
Legendary Sun Performers" LP & on Chess)
5. My Last Affair (also on "The Legendary Sun Performers" LP)
6. Oh Red! (also on "The Legendary Sun Performers" LP)
7. Mr. Highway Man (Chess, as below)
8. Gettin' Old and Grey (Chess, as below)

Side 2
(all tracks are genuine Chicago Chess recordings, but just on 78rpm releases,
or just on rare LPs or samplers)
1. Come to me Baby
2. Don't Mess with me Baby
3. So Glad
4. My Life
5. Going Back Home
6. I Didn't Know
7. Howlin' Blues
8. I Better Go Now

WE THREE KINGS - Muddy Waters - Little Walter - Howlin' Wolf Syndicate Chapter S.C. 005 (British 12" LP from the seventies)
(Includes formerly unreleased material, at least then):
On Side 2 are three Wolf tracks from 1959 (that were released just on a
deleted sampler before)
5. Change Your Way
6. I've been Abused
7. Mister Airplane Man
(These tracks too are probably all included in the multi-CD Chess/Wolf set by
Charly Records)

---

The old Sun tracks are also released on the CDs:

HOWLIN' FOR MY BABY Charly Records (CD Charly 66)
Tracks (the running order is from the catalogue only)
1. My Baby Walked Off
2. Smile at Me
3. Bluebird Blues
4. Everybody's in the Mood
5. Chocolate Drops
6. Come Back Home
7. Dorothy Mae
8. Highway Man
9. Oh Red
10. My Last Affair
11. Howlin' for my Baby
12. Sweet Woman
13. C.V. Vine Blues
14. Look-A-Here Baby
15. Decoration Day Blues
16. Well that's Allright
17. Califormia Blues
18. My Troubles and Me
19. California Boogie



The following CD is (British) Ace Records CDCHC 333, and
the catalogue writes: "The complete Modern Howlin' Wolf masters are gathered
here, including both takes of 'Riding in the Moonlight' from his first ever
session...' ("Modern" /"RPM" material - from SUN recordings - was given
later to the cheap "Crown" label) (The 1992 Ace records cataloge has on the
inner sleeve three pics showing H.W. (!) )

HOWLIN' WOLF RIDES AGAIN
Tracks (runnig order as in catalogue):
1. House Rockin' Boogie
2. Crying at Daybreak
3. Keep What You Got
4. Dog Me Around
5. Moaning at Midnight
6. Riding in the Moonlight
7. Chocolate Drop
8. My Baby Stole Off
9. I Want Your Picture
10. Passing By Blues
11. Worried about my Baby
12. Chocolate Drop (probably the take that is called "Brown Skinned
Woman")
13. Driving this Highway
14. The Sun is Rising
15. Riding in the Moonlight
16. My Friends
17. I'm the Wolf
18. Riding in the Moonlight

(The third "Riding in the Moonlight" is not a third take, but stems from
another Sun session with different musicians. In 1979, someone found in a
Memphis basement 1260 boxes with tapes of "Sun" outtakes. And what existed
before, was not exactly known for accuracy)

J'adore ceux qu'il fait,du bon rockin'blues.
Génial Franck les documents

A PLUS

merci franck trés belle bio,quand je dit que t'est doué,s'est pas des conneries....:lol!:

il ne faut pas oubliée le blues aussi,ils y avait de trés bon artiste est de super morceaux.merci gigi aussi et patsy.

j'ai adorée

Chester Arthur Burnett dit Howlin' Wolf (vocal/hca/ g) Aberdeen, Mississippi, 10 juin 1910 Hines, Illinois,
10 janvier 1976.













Howlin' Wolf - Memphis Days - Volume 1 (1951-1952)
Bear Family Records BCD 15460

Howlin' Wolf : vocal, harmonica, guitar
Willie Johnson : guitar
Willie Steele : drums
Albert Williams, William Johnson, Ike Turner : piano
James Cotton : harmonica

01 - Oh Red (Take 1)
02 - My Last Affair (Take 1)
03 - Come Back Home (Take 1)
04 - California Boogie
05 - California Blues
06 - Look-A-Here Baby
07 - Smile At Me
08 - My Baby Walked Off
09 - Drinkin' Cv Wine (Cv Wine Blues)
10 - My Troubles And Me
11 - Chocolate Drop
12 - Mr. Highway Man (Cadillac Daddy)
13 - Bluebird Blues
14 - Color And Kind
15 - (Everybody's) In The Mood
16 - Dorothy Mae (Number 2)
17 - I Got A Woman - Sweet Woman
18 - Decoration Day Blues
19 - (Well) That's All Right
20 - How Many More Years
21 - Baby Ride With Me (Ridin' In The Moonlight)

Howlin' Wolf - Memphis Days - Volume 2 (1951-1952)
Bear Family Records BCD 15500

Howlin' Wolf : vocal, harmonica, guitar
Willie Johnson : guitar
Willie Steele : drums
Albert Williams, William Johnson, Ike Turner : piano
James Cotton : harmonica

01 - Baby Ride With Me (Ridin' in the Moonlight)
02 - How Many More Years
03 - Moanin' at Midnight
04 - Howlin' Wolf Boogie
05 - Wolf Is at Your Door
06 - Mr - Highway Man
07 - Getting Old and Grey
08 - Worried All the Time
09 - Saddle My Pony ( Gonna Find My Baby Out in the World Somewhere)
10 - Oh, Red!
11 - My Last Affair
12 - Come Back Home [Take 2]
13 - Dorothy Mae
14 - Oh, Red! [Take 2]
15 - Come Back Home [Take 3]
16 - How Many More Years
17 - How Many More Years
18 - Baby Ride With Me (Ridin' in the Moonlight)
19 - Baby Ride With Me (Ridin' in the Moonlight)

Both tunes can be found on " Howlin' Wolf/Moanin' in the Moonlight ". "Moanin at Midnight" is classic Wolf. It opens with Wolf moaning followed by the lick guitar playing a hypnotic lick and Wolf's harp. It’s a modal kind of groove and doesn't really have chord changes. The verses are punctuated by moans, falsettos and harp and occasional guitar licks. This is pretty raw as far as recording quality, but the distortion works with Wolf's literally eerie voice. It’s the delta blues, heavily amplified. "Moanin' at Midnight" is an up tempo boogie that starts with the piano playing eight note triplets to establish the groove followed by the guitar. This is modern Wolf, much more modern. There is a traditional progression with some swinging guitar (heavily distorted). Willie Johnson's guitar work on Wolf's records from this period is pretty amazing. The harp shows Rice Miller's influence. The lyrics are a little more pop. Still, the intensity is there and their band drives on this tune. It must have been amazing to see Wolf live in the early '50s.

Leonard Chess, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Rice Miller (Sonny Boy Wiiliamson II)

After recording, Phillips leased the songs to Chess Records(The Story of Chess Records tells the history of the legendary Chicago label) and both songs hit the top ten of the Billboard R&B charts. They also leased masters to Chess competitor, the Bihari brothers, who released them on their Los Angeles based RPM label until late 1952 when Wolf signed exclusively with Chess Records. He then moved to Chicago, where his career took off.
His tunes from this period alternate between his modern sound (on tunes like "Howlin' Wolf Boogie" and "Mr Highway Man") and his delta roots. "Saddle My Pony (Gonna Find My Baby Out In The World Somewhere)" which sounds very similar to the way Charley Patton, Son House and Willie Brown played it.


Wolf's first Chicago sesion was in March 1954 and featured Otis Spann on piano, Willie Dixon on bass, Earl Phillips on Drums, and Lee Cooper on guitar (Willie Johnson and Wolf's Memphis band didn't move North right away). This session included one of Wolf's best, "No Place To Go" (which was later covered by Fleetwood Mac and can be found on The Complete Blue Horizon Recordings) and "Rockin' Daddy". Its interesting to compare this version(found on The Chess Box)with the version on Wolf's London Sessions to see the effect of Hubert Sumlin on Wolf's later sound. Stevie Ray Vaughn's cover of this was one of his signature tunes.

In May of '54 Hubert made his recording debut with Wolf as 2nd guitarist with Spann, Phillips, Dixon and Jody Wiliams on lead. They recorded two tunes- "Baby How Long" and "Evil (is goin' on)". "Evil" is also the first tune by legendary Chess songwriter/bassist/A & R man Willie Dixon that Wolf recorded. Dixon's lyrics fit Howlin' Wolf's singing and the groove is great. The same lineup came back in October of that year to cut two of Wolf's tunes, "I'll be Around" and "Forty Four" (covered by Little Feat and used as the basis for a song on the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton by John Mayall ). The Chester Burnett/Willie Dixon/Hubert Sumlin team and variations would be a big money maker for Chess and the core of Wolf's sound from the mid '50s through the '60s and would continue for the rest of Wolf's career. In June of 1960 Wolf, Spann,Sumlin, Freddy King and Fred Below cut 3 Dixon tunes -"Backdoor Man", "Spoonful" and "Wang Dang Doodle". "Backdoor Man" was covered by The Blues Project and The Doors. "Spoonful" was covered by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band,Cream, John Hammond and every garage band of the era. "Wang Dang Doodle" (a song Wolf detested) wound up getting covered by the Pointer Sisters. These songs helped make Chester Burnett's music an inspiration for a generation of young English and American blues fans (like me) who had never been in a delta Juke Joint but identified anyway.

Hubert Sumlin & Howling Wof (photo courtesy of Brian Smith)

In Chicago, Howlin' Wolf's main competition was singer Muddy Waters. They both claimed to be the top dog of Chicago blues. Many top Chicago side played in both bands. At one point Hubert Sumlin played in Muddy's band (that's Hubert on "40 Days and 40 Nights") and Jimmy Rogers played w/ Wolf. They both play on Wolf's 1961 sessions which include some of his best stuff including "Shake for Me", "The Red Rooster", "Down in the Bottom", "Goin' Down Slow" and "Ain't Superstitious" (all of these tunes are in the excellent The Chess Box which is a good survey of Wolf's music throughout his career) . Their competition included covers of each other's tunes,. made each of them work harder and made the Chicago sound (and the Chess brothers) a big force in the R& B world of the '50s and '60s. Many of these tunes were crafted to fit Chester Burnett's persona as Howlin' Wolf by Willie Dixon, who also played on the 1961 dates

Happy 98th Birthday, Howlin’ Wolf: How the Musical
Pioneer Took Blues from the Delta to the World







The pioneers of blues are often referred to as “giants,” but for Howlin’ Wolf, the term applies literally. By the time he started recording for Sam Phillips in 1951, Wolf had grown to a little over six-feet-three-inches tall and weighed in at―as one of his songs put it―“300 Pounds of Joy.”

The story of how Chester Burnett, who was born in West Point, Mississippi, on June 10, 1910―98 years ago―came to be called Howlin’ Wolf is obscured by time and by Wolf himself. He claimed occasionally that the nickname came from his fondness for “Little Red Riding Hood,” a story Burnett’s grandfather began spinning for him when he was three. Wolf also told a yarn about how his mama named him Howlin’ Wolf after he killed some of her chickens, “just like a wolf.” He also may have borrowed the name from the earlier bluesman John “Funny Papa” Smith, a Texan who began recording in the 1920s and sometimes called himself “Howlin’ Wolf.” In the fields on the Dockery Plantation near Ruleville, Mississippi, where Burnett toiled as a young man, he was also known as Bull Cow and, thanks to his size 16 shoes, Big Foot Chester.

Certainly Howlin’ Wolf was the name that perfectly fit his voice, one of the most distinctive ever recorded. Raspy, spiky, gravelly, smoky, rattling, and purely elemental, it’s what makes his greatest songs utterly arresting―that and the licks of his longtime guitar sidekick, the shy but ridiculously inventive musician Hubert Sumlin. Their partnership is what made the greatest numbers Wolf recorded for Chess Records― “Smokestack Lightnin’,” “Killing Floor” (which also sports Buddy Guy), “The Red Rooster,” “I Ain’t Superstitious,” “Spoonful,” “Sittin’ on Top of the World,” and dozens more―resonate on a cosmic level that transcended time, place, and language to make Wolf among the most revered figures in blues.

Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck, the Doors, Cream, and the Blues Project are among the countless blues-based musicians who responded to Wolf’s allure by recording his songs. And Sam Phillips of Sun Records considered both Howlin’ Wolf and Ike Turner to be far more profound and inventive than his blue-ribbon discovery Elvis Presley. Phillips summed up the quality of Wolf’s singing with a beautiful and oft-repeated insight: “Howlin’ Wolf’s voice comes from a place where the soul of a man never dies.”

THE CHARLEY PATTON CONNECTION

Wolf had a humble start before his musical trek to immortality. He was born into a family of sharecroppers and field hands. Charley Patton’s frequent performances changed that. Wolf fell under Patton’s equally gravel-voiced spell and was mesmerized by the Delta blues pioneer’s skill as an entertainer, watching spellbound as Patton played guitar behind his back and flat on his lap, and tossed his instrument in the air to catch it exactly on the right chord.

Patton’s showmanship would influence Wolf’s own performances, which were marked by stunts like floor crawling, curtain climbing, and, of course, his trademark howl, immortalized on 1959’s “Howlin’ for My Darlin’ ” and used to ghostly, mournful effect on ’53’s “Mama Died and Left Me,” which Wolf recorded with Phillips at Sun just before leaving for Chicago.

Wolf cajoled the elder Patton into showing him guitar licks during breaks in Patton’s appearances at Dockery’s fish fries and house parties. And when Sonny Boy Williamson II, a.k.a. Rice Miller, married Wolf’s sister, Wolf became a shoo-in for harmonica lessons, too.

Although Wolf was not a virtuoso on either instrument, his playing was solid as granite and perfectly complimented his roof-raising voice. By the late 1920s Wolf was hoofing, thumbing, and riding the rails―sometimes beneath the box cars―as a touring musician with Williamson, Robert Lockwood, and even occasionally Robert Johnson.

Big Foot Chester learned to make the repertoire of others his own during his early traveling years. He rearranged and rewrote Tommy Johnson’s “Cool Drink of Water Blues” into “I Asked for Water” (“and she gave me gasoline”) and energized the Mississippi Sheiks’ “Sittin’ On Top of the World” in a way that would inspired Cream to cut the tune for 1968’s Wheels of Fire.

CHICAGO BOUND

When Wolf settled in West Memphis, Arkansas, in the upper Delta after returning from the Army in 1945, he found himself in a hotbed of musical activity. Memphis, Tennessee, was near, and the city’s wealth, in contrast to the Delta’s poverty, sustained numerous juke joints and provided many radio outlets for local performers. Wolf found himself a broadcast slot on West Memphis’ KWEM, where he performed, plugged his upcoming shows, and sold ads for farm implements. He was a regional smash thanks to his leadership of one of the area’s hottest electric bands, with the gnarly guitarist Willie Johnson as his main sparring partner along with fellow six-stringer Pat Hare and James Cotton on harmonica.

In 1951 Ike Turner had just made “Rocket 88”
at Sam Phillips’ studio and began bringing Phillips other unrecorded talent, including Wolf. Phillips’ first sessions with Wolf hit pay dirt. They cut “Moanin’ at Midnight” and “How Many More Years,” and Phillips leased both tunes to Chicago’s Chess Records, who sold boatloads. Wolf’s recording debut made him a national overnight sensation in the “race records” field, at age 41.

Wolf liked to brag that of all the blues greats to depart the South for Chicago, as he did in 1953, he was “the onliest one to leave driving my own car and with money in my pocket.”


ENTER THE ROCKERS

As Wolf’s recording career at Chess continued and was supercharged by Sumlin’s slippery finger-picked style, colored by shivery vibrato, sliding chords and licks, and abruptly bent strings, his music began to reach an increasingly white audience―first in Europe, and then, as bands like the Stones and the Animals spread word about Wolf and their other blues heroes to their fans, back in the States.

The producer and musical eccentric Giorgio Gomelsky set the scene in an interview with journalist Don Snowden that’s quoted in the excellent Howlin’ Wolf Chess Box: “In the early ’60s there were about 40 blues fans in London that had collected some records and had been looking toward the blues for regenerating the entire music scene, which was dying on its feet at the time. We didn’t have access to [American blues] records. If somebody found a Howlin’ Wolf album, we would all sit around listening for hours.”

British bands in particular mined Howlin’ Wolf’s catalog for hits. The Yardbirds cut “Smokestack Lightning,” Cream also tapped “Spoonful,” the Rolling Stones recorded “The Red Rooster,” and the Jeff Beck Group let Rod Stewart wrap his own sandpaper pipes around “I Ain’t Superstitious.” Hendrix and the Electric Flag with Mike Bloomfield were among the American bands who performed “Killing Floor,” and the Doors made “Back Door Man” a familiar term among white teens.

In 1964, when the American Folk Blues Festival went to Europe, Wolf was one of the headliners, lacerating adoring, youthful crowds with tunes like “Smokestack Lightnin’.” Two years later he was the showstopper of a blues-devoted Newport Folk Festival.

Chess Records got swept up by Wolf’s new wave of popularity with rock fans and in 1968 paired the Delta-raised veteran with a team of young rock and jazz players for This is Howlin’ Wolf’s New Album… To say that the psychedelic session was less artistically and commercially successful than Muddy Waters’ similarly conceived Electric Mud, cut six months earlier, is an understatement. Wolf described it as “dog shit.”

Part of the appeal of Wolf’s recordings for rock era listeners was his guitar tones―rawer and more ragged than much of what came from Chess, always burnished with a hint of distortion thanks to an early generation of Silvertone, Fender, and Gibson amps. They were also more sophisticated thanks to Sumlin’s unfettered riff spinning.

In the ’50s and ’60s Wolf played a variety of guitars but is most associated with the Kay K-161 ThinTwin, a flimsy beauty that looked like a tennis racket in his oversized paws. He was also photographed with Harmony acoustics and an Epiphone Casino, while Sumlin was often seen with his beloved Les Paul Goldtop and photographed occasionally with no-name Italian and German models.

THE FINAL YEARS

Chess made amends for the abomination of ’68 with 1970’s The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions. Eric Clapton, playing with soulful restraint, the Stones’ rhythm section of Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman, Ringo Starr, and Steve Winwood all contributed.

But Wolf was already on the ebb, or, as he put it in song, “Going Down Slow.” In 1969 the big man had been temporarily felled by a heart attack. And he’d been in an auto accident that had sent him through the windshield of his car and left him with permanent kidney damage that required regular dialysis. Nonetheless, he kept performing, often booking dates around hospitals where he could receive his blood purifying treatments.

Then came cancer. Still he plugged on, often playing entire shows from a chair, with his famed antics reduced to mugging facial expressions and fist waving. Howlin’ Wolf played his last gigs in Chicago in 1975, headlining a November blues bill at the International Amphitheatre and holding down his usual night at the 1815 Club on the West Side, the neighborhood that yielded the razor-edged electric urban blues of some of Wolf’s key successors: Buddy Guy, Magic Sam, Otis Rush, Freddie King.

Chester Burnett died on January 10, 1976, five months short of his 66th birthday, at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Hines, Illinois. He was buried at Oakridge Cemetery in Hillside―now a Mecca for acolytes, much like Stevie Ray Vaughan’s grave in Dallas’ Laurel Land Memorial Park and Sonny Boy Williamson II’s marker aside a collapsed church in Tutwiler, Mississippi.

And though the Wolf is gone, his incredible musical legacy lives on as every generation of guitarists and blues fans discover the powerful, pummeling songs he cut more than 50 years ago.

PHOTOS & DOCUMENTS

Un 45 RPM a avoir de toute urgence: http://www.rocking-all-life-long.com/en/records/1167-howlin-wolf.html
Dj Eddie-Cesc

C´est bon j´ai les deux derniers d´la série: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27qhGJNyFPk

Dj EddieCesc