Howlin' Wolf

Chester Arthur Burnett (June 10, 1910 – January 10, 1976), better known by his stage name Howlin' Wolf, was an American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player. He was at the forefront of transforming acoustic Delta blues into electric Chicago blues, and over a four-decade career, recorded blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and psychedelic rock. He is regarded as one of the most influential blues musicians of all time.
Born into poverty in Mississippi, Burnett became a protégé of Delta blues musician Charley Patton in the 1930s. In the Deep South, he began a solo career by performing with other notable blues musicians of the day. By the end of the decade, he had established himself in the Mississippi Delta. Following a number of legal issues, a stint in prison, and Army service, he was recruited by A&R man Ike Turner to record for producer Sam Phillips in Memphis. His first record "Moanin' at Midnight" (1951) led to a record deal with Chess Records in Chicago. Between 1951 and 1969, six of his songs reached the Billboard R&B charts. His studio albums include Howlin' Wolf a..k.a The Rocking Chair Album, a collection of singles from 1957 to 1961, The Howlin' Wolf Album (1969), Message to the Young (1971), The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions (1971), and The Back Door Wolf (1973). His reputation grew throughout the blues revival of the 1960s, and he continued to perform until November 1975, when he performed for the last time alongside fellow blues musician B.B. King. He died on January 10, 1976, after years of deteriorating health. In 1980, Howlin' Wolf was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, and in 1991, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
With a booming voice and an imposing physical presence, he is one of the best-known Chicago blues artists. AllMusic has described him as "a primal, ferocious blues belter with a roster of classics rivaling anyone else, and a sandpaper growl of a voice that has been widely imitated". Several of his songs have become blues and blues rock standards. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed "Little Red Rooster", "Smokestack Lightning" and "Spoonful" in its "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll" and “Smokestack Lightning" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 54 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time".
Chester Arthur Burnett was born on June 10, 1910, in White Station, near West Point, Mississippi, to Gertrude Jones and Leon "Dock" Burnett. He later said that his father was "Ethiopian", while Jones had Choctaw ancestry on her father's side. He was named for Chester A. Arthur, the 21st President of the United States. The name "Howlin' Wolf" originated from Burnett's maternal grandfather, John Jones; Burnett had been squeezing his grandmother's chicks so hard he was likely to kill them, and his grandfather told him wolves would come and get him. The blues historian Paul Oliver wrote that Burnett once claimed to have been given his nickname by his idol Jimmie Rodgers.
Burnett's parents separated when he was a year old. Dock, who had worked seasonally as a farm laborer in the Mississippi Delta, moved there permanently while Jones and Burnett moved to Monroe County. Jones and Burnett would sing together in the choir of the Life Boat Baptist Church near Gibson, Mississippi, and Burnett would later claim that he got his musical talent from her. Jones kicked Burnett out of the house, for unknown reasons, during the winter when he was a child. At the peak of his success, he returned from Chicago to see his mother in Mississippi and was driven to tears when she refused to take money offered by him, saying it was from his playing the "devil's music".
He moved in with his granduncle Will Young, who had a large household and treated him badly. While in the Young household he worked almost all day and did not receive an education at the school house. When he was thirteen, he killed one of Young's hogs in a rage after the hog had caused him to ruin his dress clothes; this enraged Young who then whipped him while chasing him on a mule. He then ran away and claimed to have walked 85 miles (137 km) barefoot to join his father, where he finally found a happy home with his father's large family. During this era he went by the name "John D." to dissociate himself from his past, a name by which several of his relatives would know him for the rest of his life.
His physique garnered him the nicknames "Big Foot Chester" and "Bull Cow" as a young man: he was 6 feet 3 inches (191 cm) tall and weighed 275 pounds (125 kg).
On January 15, 1928, at the age of 17, Burnett gathered enough money to buy his first guitar. It was a date that Burnett reportedly never forgot until "the day he died".
In 1930, Burnett met Charley Patton, the most popular bluesman in the Mississippi Delta at the time. He would listen to Patton play nightly from outside a nearby juke joint. There he remembered Patton playing "Pony Blues", "High Water Everywhere", "A Spoonful Blues", and "Banty Rooster Blues". The two became acquainted, and soon Patton was teaching him guitar. Burnett recalled that "the first piece I ever played in my life was ... a tune about hook up my pony and saddle up my black mare"—Patton's "Pony Blues". He also learned about showmanship from Patton: "When he played his guitar, he would turn it over backwards and forwards, and throw it around over his shoulders, between his legs, throw it up in the sky". He played with Patton often in small Delta communities and would perform the guitar tricks he learned from him for the rest of his life.
Burnett was influenced by other popular blues performers of the time, including the Mississippi Sheiks, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red, Blind Blake, and Tommy Johnson. Two of the earliest songs he mastered were Jefferson's "Match Box Blues" and Leroy Carr's "How Long, How Long Blues". The country singer Jimmie Rodgers was also an influence. Burnett tried to emulate Rodgers's "blue yodel" but found that his efforts sounded more like a growl or a howl: "I couldn't do no yodelin', so I turned to howlin'. And it's done me just fine". His harmonica playing was modeled after that of Sonny Boy Williamson II, who taught him how to play when Burnett moved to Parkin, Arkansas, in 1933.
During the 1930s, Burnett performed in the South as a solo performer and with numerous blues musicians, including Floyd Jones, Johnny Shines, Honeyboy Edwards, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Robert Johnson, Robert Lockwood Jr., Willie Brown, Son House and Willie Johnson. By the end of the decade, he was a fixture in clubs, with a harmonica and an early electric guitar. It was around this time that Burnett got into some legal trouble in Hughes, Arkansas: While he was in town, he tried to protect a female acquaintance from an angry boyfriend, and the two men fought, with Burnett killing the man with a hoe. What happened after this is a matter of dispute; Burnett either fled the area, or did some jail time.
On April 9, 1941, he was inducted into the U.S. Army and was stationed at several bases around the country. Years later, he stated that the plantation workers in the Delta had alerted military authorities because he refused to work in the fields. He was assigned to the 9th Cavalry Regiment, which was famous for being one of the units dubbed "Buffalo Soldiers". Burnett was first sent to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, for basic training, and was given long hours performing menial work. Then he was transferred to Camp Blanding, in Starke, Florida, where he was assigned to the kitchen patrol. During the day he would cook food for the enlisted soldiers, and at night he would play the guitar in the assembly room. Burnett was later sent to Fort Gordon in Georgia, and he would play his guitar on the steps of the mess hall, which is where a young James Brown, who came to the Fort nearly every day to earn money shining shoes and performing buck dances for the troops, first heard him play.
Burnett was then sent to a tutoring camp in Tacoma, Washington, where he was in charge of decoding communications. Because Burnett was functionally illiterate, having never received formal education, he was repeatedly beaten by the drill instructor for reading and spelling errors. Soon, he began having uncontrollable shaking fits, dizzy spells, fainting, and also began experiencing mental confusion.
Burnett participated in the Louisiana Maneuvers in 1941, where one of the earliest photographs of him was taken cleaning the frog of a horse's hoof. In 1943, he was evaluated at an Army mental hospital. In November 1943, Burnett was found unfit for duty and given an honorable discharge on November 3. Recalling his experiences in the Army years later, Burnett stated, "The Army ain't no place for a black man. Jus' couldn't take all that bossin' around, I guess. The Wolf's his own boss."
He returned to his family, which had recently moved near West Memphis, Arkansas, and helped with the farming while also performing, as he had done in the 1930s, with Floyd Jones and others. In 1948 he formed a band, which included the guitarists Willie Johnson and Matt "Guitar" Murphy, the harmonica player Junior Parker, a pianist remembered only as "Destruction" and the drummer Willie Steele. Radio station KWEM in West Memphis began broadcasting his live performances, and he occasionally sat in with Williamson on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas.
In 1951,19-year-old Ike Turner, who was a freelance talent scout, heard Howlin' Wolf in West Memphis. Turner brought him to record several songs for Sam Phillips at Memphis Recording Service (later renamed Sun Studio) and the Bihari brothers at Modern Records. Phillips praised his singing, saying, "God, what it would be worth on film to see the fervour in that man's face when he sang. His eyes would light up, you'd see the veins come out on his neck and, buddy, there was nothing on his mind but that song. He sang with his damn soul." Howlin' Wolf quickly became a local celebrity and began working with a band that included the guitarists Willie Johnson and Pat Hare. Sun Records had not yet been formed, so Phillips licensed his recording to Chess Records. Howlin' Wolf's first singles were issued by two different record companies in 1951: "Moanin' at Midnight"/"How Many More Years" released on Chess, "Riding in the Moonlight"/"Morning at Midnight," and "Passing By Blues"/"Crying at Daybreak" released on Modern's subsidiary RPM Records. In December 1951, Leonard Chess was able to secure Howlin' Wolf's contract, and at the urging of Chess, he relocated to Chicago in late 1952.
In Chicago, Howlin' Wolf assembled a new band and recruited the Chicagoan Jody Williams from Memphis Slim's band as his first guitarist. Within a year he had persuaded the guitarist Hubert Sumlin to leave Memphis and join him in Chicago; Sumlin's understated solos and surprisingly subtle phrasing perfectly complemented Burnett's huge voice. The lineup of the band changed often over the years. Wolf employed many different guitarists, both on recordings and in live performance, including Willie Johnson, Jody Williams, Lee Cooper, L.D. McGhee, Otis "Big Smokey" Smothers, his brother Little Smokey Smothers, Jimmy Rogers, Freddie Robinson, Buddy Guy and others. He was able to attract some of the best musicians available because of his policy, unusual among bandleaders, of paying his musicians well and on time, even including their unemployment insurance and Social Security contributions. With the exception of a couple of brief absences in the late 1950s, Sumlin remained a member of the band for the rest of Wolf's career and is the guitarist most often associated with the Howlin' Wolf sound.
Howlin' Wolf had a series of hits with songs written by Willie Dixon, who had been hired by the Chess brothers in 1950 as a songwriter. During that period, the competition between Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf was intense. Dixon reported "Every once in a while Wolf would mention the fact that, 'Hey man, you wrote that song for Muddy. How come you won't write me one like that?' But when you'd write for him he wouldn't like it." So, Dixon decided to use reverse psychology on him, by introducing the songs to Wolf as written for Muddy, thus getting Wolf to accept them.
In the 1950s, Howlin' Wolf had five songs on the Billboard national R&B charts: "Moanin' at Midnight", "How Many More Years", "Who Will Be Next", "Smokestack Lightning", and "I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)". His first LP, Moanin' in the Moonlight, was released in 1959. As was standard practice during that time, it was a collection of previously released singles.
In the early 1960s, Howlin' Wolf recorded several songs that became his most famous, despite receiving no radio play: "Wang Dang Doodle", "Back Door Man", "Spoonful", "The Red Rooster", "I Ain't Superstitious", "Goin' Down Slow", and "Killing Floor", many of which were written by Willie Dixon. Several became part of the repertoires of British and American rock groups, who further popularized them. Howlin' Wolf's second compilation album, Howlin' Wolf—often called "the rocking chair album" from its cover illustration—was released in 1962.
During the blues revival in the 1950s and 1960s, black blues musicians found a new audience among white youths, and Howlin' Wolf was among the first to capitalize on it. He toured Europe in 1964 as part of the American Folk Blues Festival, produced by the German promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau. Also, in that year, the Rolling Stones recording of "Little Red Rooster" reached number one in the UK. In 1965, at the height of the British Invasion, the Stones came to America for an appearance on ABC-TV's rock music show, Shindig! They insisted, as part of their appearing on the program, that Howlin' Wolf would be their special guest. With the Stones sitting at his feet, Wolf performed an empassioned version of "How Many More Years" with a few million people watching his network TV debut.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Howlin' Wolf recorded albums with other established musicians starting with The Super Super Blues Band (1968), which featured Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters. The Howlin' Wolf Album (1969) had psychedelic rock and free-jazz musicians like Gene Barge, Pete Cosey, Roland Faulkner, Morris Jennings, Louis Satterfield, Charles Stepney and Phil Upchurch.The Howlin' Wolf Album, like rival bluesman Muddy Waters's album Electric Mud, was designed to appeal to the hippie audience. The album had an attention-getting cover: large black letters on a white background proclaiming "This is Howlin' Wolf's new album. He doesn't like it. He didn't like his electric guitar at first either." The album cover may have contributed to its poor sales. Chess co-founder Leonard Chess admitted that the cover was a bad idea, saying, "I guess negativity isn't a good way to sell records. Who wants to hear that a musician doesn't like his own music?"
British rock musicians Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ian Stewart, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts backed him for The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, which proved more successful with British audiences than American. His last albumThe Back Door Wolf (1973) was entirely composed of new material. It was recorded with musicians who regularly backed him on stage, including Hubert Sumlin, Detroit Junior, Andrew "Blueblood" McMahon, Chico Chism, Lafayette "Shorty" Gilbert and the bandleader, Eddie Shaw. The album is shorter than any other he recorded, a little more than 35 minutes, because of his declining health.
Wolf's last public performance was in November 1975 at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago. He shared the bill with B.B. King, Albert King, Luther Allison, and O. V. Wright. Wolf reportedly gave an "unforgettable" performance, even crawling across the stage during the song, "Crawling King Snake". The crowd gave him a five-minute standing ovation. When he got off the stage after the concert was over, a team of paramedics had to revive him.
Wolf is among the most influential blues musicians of the postwar years. He was at the forefront of transforming the rural acoustic blues of the South, to the electric, more urban blues of Chicago. When Wolf first formed his band in West Memphis, Arkansas, his sound was much more aggressive, with guitarist Willie Johnson's raucous, distorted guitar playing being the signature sound of his early recordings. When Wolf switched guitarists and added Hubert Sumlin to his lineup, his sound became less aggressive with Sumlin adding "angular riffing" and "wild soloing". He also adopted the backbeat that Chicago blues was mainly known for.
The musician and critic Cub Koda noted, "no one could match Howlin' Wolf for the singular ability to rock the house down to the foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of its wits." Producer Sam Phillips recalled, "When I heard Howlin' Wolf, I said, 'This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies.'"
Although Sumlin was the main guitar player in Wolf's band, Wolf played a number of guitars himself throughout the years. He played a 1965 Epiphone Casino on his musical tour in Europe, a Fender Coronado, a Gibson Firebird V in the "Down in the Bottom" video recorded in 1966, a white Fender Stratocaster, a Teisco Tre-100, and he also played a Kay K-161 ThinTwin in his earlier years. The Kay K-161 ThinTwin is currently residing in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.
In 1980, Burnett was posthumously inducted into the Blues Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame. He was also inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence, and the Hall of Fame located in his hometown of West Point, Mississippi, in 1995.
On September 17, 1994, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 29 cent commemorative postage stamp depicting Howlin' Wolf.
On September 1, 2005, the Howlin' Wolf Blues Museum opened at 57 E. Westbrook Street in West Point, Mississippi. An annual festival is held there.
The Howlin' Wolf Foundation, a nonprofit corporation organized under the US tax code, section 501(c)(3), was established by Bettye Kelly to preserve and extend his legacy. The foundation's mission and goals include preserving blues music, providing scholarships for students to participate in music programs, and support for blues musicians and blues programs.
The experimental rock band Swans performs a song titled "Just A Little Boy (for Chester Burnett)" on their 2014 album To Be Kind. The song takes heavy blues inspiration and features lead singer Michael Gira vocalizing in a manner similar to Burnett's howling style.
In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Howlin' Wolf at number 59 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
Burnett was noted for his disciplined approach to his personal finances. Having already achieved a measure of success in Memphis, he described himself as "the onliest one to drive himself up from the Delta" to Chicago, which he did, in his own car on the Blues Highway and with $4,000 in his pocket, a rare distinction for a black bluesman of the time. Although functionally illiterate into his forties, Burnett eventually returned to school, first to earn a General Educational Development (GED) diploma and later to study accounting and other business courses to help manage his career.
Burnett met his future wife, Lillie Handley (1925–2001), when she attended one of his performances at a Chicago club. She and her family were urban and educated and were not involved in what was considered the unsavory world of blues musicians. Nevertheless, he was attracted to her as soon as he saw her in the audience. He immediately pursued her and won her over. According to those who knew them, the couple remained deeply in love until his death. Together, they raised two daughters Betty and Barbara, Lillie's daughters from an earlier relationship. West Coast rapper Skeme is his great nephew, who was born 14 years after his death.
After he married Lillie, who was able to manage his professional finances, he was so financially successful that he was able to offer band members not only a decent salary but benefits such as health insurance. This enabled him to hire his pick of available musicians and keep his band one of the best around. According to his stepdaughters, he was never financially extravagant (for instance, he drove a Pontiac station wagon rather than a more expensive, flashy car).
Burnett's health began declining in the late 1960s. He suffered his first heart attack in 1969 as he and Hubert Sumlin were traveling to a show at University of Chicago. He fell against the dashboard of the car he was riding in, and Sumlin, who was driving, pulled over and grabbed a two-by-four piece of wood that was lying in the road. Sumlin then rammed the wood into Burnett's back, which kick-started his heart. Three weeks later, while he was in Toronto for a gig, Burnett suffered additional heart and kidney problems, but refused an operation recommended by doctors, telling his wife that "he needed to keep working".
In 1970, Burnett was involved in a serious car accident that sent him flying through the windshield, which caused extensive damage to his kidneys. For the rest of his life, he received dialysis treatments every three days, which wife Lillie administered. In May that same year, while he was in the United Kingdom to record The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, his health problems worsened. A year later, Burnett suffered another heart attack, and his kidneys had failed. He also began suffering from high blood pressure. By May 1973, Burnett was back performing again. The bandleader, Eddie Shaw, was so concerned for Burnett's health that he limited him to performing six songs per concert.
In January 1976, Burnett checked into the Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Administration Hospital in Hines, Illinois, for kidney surgery. Three days before his death, a carcinoma was found in his brain. He died from a combination of the tumor, heart failure, and kidney disease on January 10, 1976, at the age of 65. He was buried in Oakridge Cemetery, outside Chicago, in a plot in Section 18, on the east side of the road. His gravestone has an image of a guitar and harmonica etched into it.
In 1972, Howlin' Wolf was awarded an honorary doctor of arts degree from Columbia College in Chicago.
In 1999, Wolf's recording of "Smokestack Lightning" was selected for a Grammy Hall of Fame Award, an award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old and have "qualitative or historical significance".
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed three songs by Howlin' Wolf in its "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll".
For a more in depth discography, see https://www.wirz.de/music/howlwolf.htm