Howlin’ Wolf
The biggest, baddest voice of the Chicago blues scene, and a far-reaching inspiration.
The biggest, baddest voice of the Chicago blues scene, and a far-reaching inspiration.
The booming voice, the towering stature, the commanding presence that’s fired up generations of blues and rock frontmen. Although Howlin’ Wolf passed away in 1976 (aged 65), it’s impossible to overstate his importance as one of the most influential figures in the evolution of the blues and also in 20th-century popular music as a whole.
“To me, these are the guys that invented it,” Clutch singer and Howlin’ Wolf fan Neil Fallon said when we asked about their cover of Wolf’s Who’s Been Talking? (on their 2005 album Robot Hive/Exodus). “And it carries a lot more soul and spirit than trying to emulate it. That’s what I try to do; let’s not make any bones about this, I do try to emulate it. Some of the most terrifying music I’ve heard has just been one person with one guitar, or maybe a trio. It can be a lot more intimidating than all the amplifiers and guitar effects in the world.”
“I like a lot of Delta and Chicago blues, and Howlin’ Wolf strikes a chord with me the most out of all of those guys,” The Answer’s frontman Cormac Neeson says, having spent much of his earlier years as a blues singer in New York. “I think it’s the aggression that he uses, and that’s a large part of what the blues is about.”
In Howlin’ Wolf’s case it’s not hard to see where that aggression came from. He was born Chester Arthur Burnett in 1910 in White Station, Mississippi. It was his grandfather who kicked off the ‘Wolf’ nickname.
He would tell his grandson that the big, bad wolf would get him if he misbehaved. The name stuck.
Wolf’s mother threw him out of the house when he was still a child, forcing him to hike barefoot over frozen ground to his great uncle’s house – an uncle who was once described as ‘the meanest man between here and hell’. He ran away to his father’s home, where life was much happier.
In his early twenties, he was taught how to play the harmonica by Sonny Boy Williamson II. Throughout the 1930s, alongside farming work, he befriended an enviable cast of Delta blues heroes, playing juke joints with Son House, Johnny Shines, Honeyboy Edwards and Willie Brown. Many bluesmen claimed to have known and played with Robert Johnson; Howlin’ Wolf actually did.
But it wasn’t until his father’s death in 1949 that he focused solely on music, and by 1951 he’d been spotted by Ike Turner and introduced to Sam Philips at Sun Records. In 1952 he relocated to Chicago. There, his fromthe-depths howls and vein-popping expressions saw him find favour with the white youths discovering blues in the 50s and 60s, and become one of the scene’s biggest stars.
He might not have the enormous songwriting track record of, say, Willie Dixon, but as an artist and performer – primal, sensual, horrifying and utterly magnetic – there were none like him.