HOWLIN' WOLF

HOWLIN' WOLF

“Howlin’ Wolf, man... he’s the guts of America spilling out on the floor, that’s all ”

Greil Marcus/CREEM

Chester Arthur Burnett was born in West Point, Mississippi, on June 10, 1910. His early years were spent on the Young and Mara cotton plantation, where both his parents were employed, and he quite naturally fell into a farmwork vocation. It was a vocation which maintained supremacy until the man was 38, at which time a decidedly different vocation took the wheel.

His alter-ego was the blues, and it came as naturally to Chester Burnett as had farming. The Delta farmlands were rich with the music. Church socials, community fish-fries, or just plain back porches; any time people gathered together, blues was a primary by-product. His father presented him with his first guitar in 1928, and the battle was on.

Wolf didn’t go begging for influences. His first (and perhaps foremost) influence was legendary bluesman Charlie Patton, who lived on a nearby plantation. He was impressed by Patton’s singing and guitar playing, but moved primarily by his showmanship. (This concern for show and dynamics has played a large part in the Wolfs success, serving to conclusively distinguish him among the thousands of his peers.) He was taught the rudiments of harmonica by Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), who married his stepsister in the early Thirties.

Although farming occupied a large part of Burnett’s time, the travel stories of Charlie Patton inspired more than a few part-time expeditions. He began hitting the road more and more often as the Twenties waned, like a young Bob Dylan following the paths of Woody Guthrie. On such excursions he’d meet (and learn from) such as Robert Johnson, but he paid for those fringe benefits: the memories of playing from 7 P.M. to 7 A.M. for 50c do not fade easily. It wasn’t until 1948 — and after a tour of duty in the Army — that his music won out and he hit the road for good.

Burnett adopted the name Howlin’ Wolf (which was borrowed from an older, and now almost completely forgotten, bluesman) very early in the game and it took Chester Burnett to breathe life into that affectation. With his massive frame and ominous overtones, he was the Howlin’ Wolf. Nobody who has ever seen Howlin’ Wolf — even at the earliest stages of his career — can deny that the power which the man wields is equal to every inch of the name which he claimed for himself.

He was touring the South with an all-electric band and doing an occasional radio broadcast (which, at that time, was the most powerful medium a bluesman could command to further his name and influence) when he grabbed the attention of Ike Turner, then a young A&R man for the West Coast-based RPM Records. Turner produced the first Howlin’ Wolf sides for that label, which were then used to secure a contract with Sam Phillips’ Sun Records. The masters he cut for Sun, however, were sold to Chess, and he’s been in Chicago ever since.

His explosive stage presence made his name immediately familar to those touched by the R&B circuit. Where most of his contemporaries performed stiff as stone, the Wolf was the picture of animation. He’s never been content to merely sing his words; he must bring them fully to life. He roams the stage like a lion on a newly-won territory, strutting and miming and, if necessary, rolling on the floor to pound his songs home. All of his stage antics are designed to draw attention to a voice — imposing, always menacing but always true — that would be no less intense were it issued from a wheelchair.

Wolf has succeeded where scores of others have failed unnoticed because his presence stands right up and demands recognition. He is one of the few bluesmen whose power has transcended the limitations of the genre, and has made its force unavoidable on the face of all popular American musics. Even when thp Rolling Stones record one of his tunes, you’ll always be awire that they’re doing a Howlin ’ Wolf number. Did you know that “It’s All Over Now” was a Bobby Womack song before he came along to tell you so?

The Sixties brought an increasingly wider recognition of his work. His material seemed perfectly suited for the marriage of black blues and white rock and roll, and bands as diverse as the Blues Project and the Doors (“Back Door Man”), the Stones (Little Red Rooster”), Cream (“Sittin’ On Top of the World”), the Yardbirds (“Smokestack Lightning”) and Jeff Beck (“Ain’t Superstitious”) helped place his name in the everyday vocabulary of a whole new generation of enthusiasts. A “psychedelic” album cut in 1968 (as a companion disaster to Muddy Waters’ Electric Mud) did nothing to further the cause, but a series of recent sessions in London fared considerably better: amidst a star-studded aggregation which included Eric Clapton, Stevie Winwood, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, the Wolf conclusively demonstrated his supremacy, He takes a back seat Xo nobody.

A series of physical setbacks have slowed him down slightly in the last couple of years, and the purchase of some land in his native Delta country might suggest that he’ll soon abandon Chicago for the comforts of his organic home. These developments, however, have not reduced his compulsion to perform. Whenever possible, you’ll find him up there on stage, doing what he’s been doing better than anybody for the last 45 years. And we are all the better for it.

This past June, Chester Burnett was awarded an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Chicago’s Columbia College. The citation read: “Premiere man of American Music, you have sung and made songs of hard-time blues and mighty joys that cry to make the world fair.”

Somehow even the word “premiere” seems awfully small when you’re talking about Howlin’ Wolf.

Ben Edmonds