Happy 100th Birthday Howlin’ Wolf!Join us today in celebrating the life and music of Howlin’ Wolf, one of the greatest voices of the blues.
Chester Arthur Burnett, best known as the Chicago blues singer Howlin’ Wolf, was quite literally one of the giants of the blues.
He was born on June 10, 1910 in West Point, Mississippi and by the time he started recording for Sam Phillips in 1951, Wolf had grown to a little over six-feet-three-inches tall, had size 16 feet (extra wide) and weighed in at 300 pounds (136 kilos in today’s money).
Named after the 21st President of the United States, Wolf’s father was a farmer in the Mississippi Delta and Wold himself was was brought up as a sharecropper, but an accidental meeting with Delta blues great Charley Patton set him along his path on the blues highway.
Wolf’s wildcat growl of a voice and dynamic performing style were taken directly from Patton’s influence, while relative-by-marriage Sonny Boy Williamson II taught the twenty-something-year-old musician the rudiments of the harmonica.
After a four-year stint in the US Army during World War II, Wolf launched his blues career in earnest after settling in West Memphis, Arkansas.
His earliest recordings were cut for Sam Phillips’ Sun Records label, but it wasn’t until 1953 that Wolf packed his bags and headed for Chicago, where he would cement his immense legacy during the 1950s and ’60s.
It was in Chicago that Wolf hooked up with guitarist Hubert Sumlin, who would be his musical “right-hand man” throughout most of rest of his career.
Wolf’s records for Chess during the 1950s sold moderately well, but songs like “Evil” and “Little Red Rooster” have become part of blues legend.
Howlin’ Wolf’s influence on rock and roll is profound.
His 1962 album Howlin’ Wolf (a.k.a. the “rocking chair” album, so named because there’s a rocking chair on the cover), includes blues classics such as “Wang Dang Doodle,” “Little Red Rooster” and “Spoonful,” which have been covered by literally hundreds of rockers, and is one of the greatest albums ever made.
Chester Burnett died on January 10, 1976, five months short of his 66th birthday, at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Hines, Illinois.
And though the Wolf is gone, his incredible musical legacy lives on as every generation of guitarists and blues fans discover the powerful, pummelling songs he cut more than 50 years ago.
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