Howlin' Wolf

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Chester Arthur Burnett (June 10, 1910 – January 10, 1976), better known as Howlin' Wolf, was a Chicago blues singer, guitarist, and harmonica performer, originally from Mississippi.

He is one of Chicago's most well-known Chicago blues artists, with a booming voice and a striking physical presence.

"No one could compare Howlin' Wolf for the singular ability to bring the house down to the foundation while still scaring the people out of their minds," the musician and critic Cub Koda said. "I heard Howlin' Wolf, I said, 'This is for me,'" producer Sam Phillips recalled.

"The soul of a man never dies" says the author.' Several of his songs, including "Smokestack Lightning," "Killing Floor," and "Spoonful," have risen to blues and blues rock standards.

Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 54 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2011.

Early life

Chester Arthur Burnett was born in White Station, Mississippi, on June 10, 1910, to Gertrude Jones and Leon "Dock" Burnett. He'd later claim that his father was "Ethiopian," but Jones had Choctaw ancestry on her father's side. Chester A. Arthur, the 21st President of the United States, was named for him. As a young man, his physique earned him the nicknames "Big Foot Chester" and "Bull Cow": he was 6 foot (3 inches (191 cm) tall and weighed close to 300 pounds (136 kg). The word "Howlin Wolf" derives from Burnett's maternal grandfather, John Jones, who would chastised him for killing his grandmother's chicks by advising him that wolves in the area will arrive and capture him; the family will keep this tradition alive by naming Burnett "the Wolf." Burnett may have been given his nickname by his idol Jimmie Rodgers, according to scholar Paul Oliver.

When Burnett was a year old, their parents divorced. Dock, a seasonally employed farm laborer in the Mississippi Delta, relocated to Monroe County after Jones and Burnett moved to Monroe County. Jones and Burnett would perform in the Life Boat Baptist Church near Gibson, Mississippi, where Burnett would later claim he learned his musical talent from her. Burnett was kicked out of the house during the winter because he was a boy for unknown reasons. Will Young, his great-uncle, who had a large household and treated him badly, was then taken in by him. He worked almost all day in the Young household and did not receive an education at the school site. In a rage after the hog had caused him to ruin his dress clothes, he killed one of Young's hogs; this enraged Young who whipped him while pursuing him on a mule. He then ran away and walked 85 miles (137 kilometers) barefoot to visit his father, where he eventually found a happy home with his father's large family. He used the term "John D" to dissociate himself from his childhood, a term by which many of his relatives would recognize him for the remainder of his life. He went from Chicago to see his mother in Mississippi and was brought to tears when she refused to take money from him: "It's music," she said.

Burnett finally acquired enough money on January 15, 1928, at the age of 17, to buy his first guitar. It was the day Burnett reportedly never forgot until "the day he died."

Personal life

Burnett was praised for his disciplined dedication to his personal finances. Having already achieved a measure of success in Memphis, he referred to himself as "the onliest one to drive himself up from the Delta" to Chicago, which he did in his own vehicle on the Blues Highway and with $4,000 in his wallet, a rare occurrence for a black bluesman of the time. Burnett went back to school, first to earn a General Educational Development (GED) diploma and later to study accounting and other business courses to help with his career, despite being illiterate into his forties.

Lillie Handley (1925-2001), Burnett's future wife, attended one of his performances at a Chicago club, met him. She and her family were both urban and educated, and they were not interested in what was deemed 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 gained her love. According to those who knew them, the couple remained deeply in love until his death. Betty and Barbara, Lillie's daughters' children from a previous marriage, were raised together. Skeme, a West Coast rapper, was his great uncle, who was born 14 years after his death.

Burnett married Lillie, who was able to handle his personal finances, so he was able to provide band members not only a decent salary but also health care; this enabled him to recruit his own talent and keep his band one of the best around. He was never overspending, according to his stepdaughters (for example, he drove a Pontiac station wagon rather than a more expensive, flashy vehicle).

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Musical career

Burnett met Charley Patton, the Mississippi Delta's most popular bluesman at the time. He would watch Patton play nightly from outside a nearby juke joint. Patton was remembered "Pony Blues," "High Water Everywhere," "A Spoonful Blues," and "Banty Rooster Blues." Patton started to play guitar, and soon after, he began to know him. "The first piece I ever played in my life was... a tune about hook up my pony and saddle up my black mare," Burnett recalled, "Pony Blues." Patton also learned about showmanship: "He'll turn it over backwards and forwards, then run it across his legs, and then throw it up in the air." Burnett will continue to play the guitar skills he learned from Patton for the remainder of his life. He grew up in small Delta towns.

Burnett was inspired by other well-known blues artists of the day, including the Mississippi Sheiks, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red, Blind Blake, and Tommy Johnson. Jefferson's "Match Box Blues" and Leroy Carr's "How Long, How Long Blues" were two of his early songs he mastered. Jimmie Rodgers, a country musician, was also a celebrity. Burnett attempted to imitate Rodgers' "blue yodel" but found that his efforts sounded more like a growl or a howl: "I couldn't do no yodelin', so I went to howlin." And it's done me just fine." When Burnett moved to Parkin, Arkansas, in 1933, his harmonica playing was modeled after Sonny Boy Williamson II, who taught him how to play.

Burnett appeared in the South as a solo performer and with many blues artists, including Floyd Jones, Johnny Shines, Honeyboy Edwards, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Robert Johnson, Jr., Willie Brown, Son House, and Willie Johnson. He was a fixture in clubs by the end of the decade, with a harmonica and an early electric guitar. Burnett was in danger in Hughes, Arkansas, when he arrived: He shielded a female friend from an angry boyfriend, and the two men clashed, with Burnett killing the man with a hoe. Burnett has either left the area or served time in jail depending on what happened after this is a point of contention; what happened after that is a point of contention.

He was inducted into the United States Army on April 9, 1941, and was stationed at several bases around the country. Years later, he said that the Delta plantation workers had notified military authorities because he had refused to work in the fields. He was sent to the 9th Cavalry Regiment, which was known for being one of the unit's "Buffalo Soldiers." Burnett was first sent to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, for basic education, and was given long hours of menial service. He was then transferred to Camp Blanding, which was located in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was assigned to the kitchen patrol. He will cook food for the enlisted troops in the day time, and at night, he will play the guitar in the assembly room. Burnett was later sent to Fort Gordon, Georgia, where he would play his guitar on the steps of the mess hall, where a young James Brown, who came to the Fort nearly every day to earn money by wearing shining shoes and performing buck dances for the troops, first heard him perform.

Burnett was then sent to a tutoring camp in Tacoma, Washington, where he was in charge of decoding communications. Burnett was frequently beaten by the drill instructor for reading and spelling mistakes because he was a functionally illiterate who had never been exposed to formal instruction. Burnett began experiencing uncontrollable shaking fits, dizzy spells, fainting, and even mental instability shortly.

Burnett appeared in the Louisiana Maneuvers in 1941, where one of the oldest photos of him showing him cleaning the frog of a horse's hoof was taken. He was diagnosed in 1943 at an Army mental hospital. Burnett was found unfit for service in November 1943 and discharged on November 3 with an honorable dismissal. Burnett, recalling his service in the Army years later, said, "The Army hasn't no place for a black man." Jus' didn't have to worry about this bossin's. "The Wolf's own boss."

He returned to his family, which had recently relocated near West Memphis, Arkansas, and helped with the farming while still showing, as he had done in the 1930s, with Floyd Jones and others. Willie Johnson and Matt "Guitar" Murphy, the harmonica player Junior Parker, and drummer Willie Steele, formed a band in 1948, which included guitarist Willie Johnson and Matt "Guitar" Murphy, as the pianist recalls only as "Destruction" and drummer Willie Steele. His live performances were aired by radio station KWEM in West Memphis, and he appeared on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas, where he occasionally sat in with Williamson.

Howlin' Wolf, 1951, Ike Turner, a freelance talent hunter, heard it in West Memphis. Turner joined Sam Phillips at Memphis Recording Service (later renamed Sun Studio) and the Bihari brothers at Modern Records, bringing him to record many songs for him. Phillips lauded his performance, saying, "God, it will be worth it on film to see the fervour in that man's face when he sang." His eyes will light up, the veins would come out on his neck, and, buddy, there was nothing on his mind but this song. He sang with his damn soul." Howlin' Wolf grew to fame by playing with Willie Johnson and Pat Hare's band. Sun Records had not been established, so Phillips licensed his album to Chess Records. In 1951, Howlin Wolf's first singles were released by two different record labels: "Moanin" at Midnight"/"How Many Years" on Chess, "Riding in the Moonlight"/"Morning at Midnight," and "Passing by Blues"/"Crying at Daybreak" on Modern's subsidiary RPM Records. Leonard Chess was able to secure Howlin Wolf's work in December 1951, and Chess led him to Chicago in late 1952.

Howlin' Wolf formed a new band and recruited Jody Williams from Memphis Slim's band as his first guitarist. Sumlin had persuaded Hubert Sumlin to leave Memphis and join him in Chicago within a year; Sumlin's understated solos and remarkably subtle phrasing perfectly complemented Burnett's broad voice. The Howlin' Wolf band's lineup has shifted often over the years. Willie Johnson, Jody Williams, Lee Cooper, L.D., among others on recording and live performance, he used many different guitarists, including Willie Johnson, Jody Williams, L.D. McGhee, Otis "Big Smokey" Smothers, Little Smokey Smothers, Jimmy Rogers, Freddie Robinson, and others were among others. Burnett was able to attract some of the top performers available thanks to his program, which was unheardent among bandleaders, of paying his musicians properly and on time, as well as unemployment insurance and Social Security contributions. Sumlin remained a member of the band for the remainder of Howlin' Wolf's career and is the guitarist most commonly associated with the Chicago Howlin' Wolf sound with the exception of a few brief absences in the late 1950s.

Willie Dixon, who had been hired by the Chess brothers in 1950 as a writer, had a string of hits, and Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf competed fiercely during that time. "You know, you wrote the song for Muddy every once in a lifetime." Dixon said, "Hey man, you wrote that song for Muddy." How come you won't write me one like that?' However, he wouldn't like it if you wrote for him." Dixon also used reverse psychology by introducing the songs to Wolf as was written for them, inducing Wolf to accept them.

Howlin Wolf had five songs on the Billboard national R&B charts in the 1950s: "Moanin' at Midnight," "How Many Years," "Who Will Be Next," "Smokestack Lightning," and "I Asked for Water" are among the five songs on the Billboard national R&B charts: "I Was Never Known for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)" and "Howlin' Wolf's five songs: "Howlin' In 1959, Moanin' in the Moonlight, his first LP, was released. It was a series of never-before-released singles as was common practice in that period.

Howlin Wolf recorded several songs that became his most popular in the early 1960s, including "Wang Dang Doodle," "Back Door Man," "Spoonful," "Goin' Down Slow," and "Killing Floor," many of which were written by Willie Dixon. Several members of British and American rock bands became integral in their repertoires, which later became increasingly popular. Howlin' Wolf, Wolf's second compilation album (often referred to as "the rocking chair album") was released in 1962.

Black blues musicians discovered a new audience among white teenagers during the blues revival in the 1950s and 1960s, and Howlin' Wolf was one of the first to capitalize on it. He toured Europe in 1964 as part of the American Folk Blues Festival, launched by German promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau. He appeared on the hit television show Shindig in 1965. The Rolling Stones' album of "Little Red Rooster" had reached number one in the United Kingdom in 1964, owing to the Rolling Stones' insistence. Howlin' Wolf recorded albums with others, including Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters; The Howlin' Wolf Album, featuring psychedelic rock and free-jazz musicians; and The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, with British rock and free-jazz singers such as Gene Barge, Pete Cosey, Roland Faulkner, Morris Jennings, Louis Satterfield, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, and others; and others.

The Howlin Wolf Album, like rival bluesman Muddy Waters' album Electric Mud, was created to appeal to the hippie audience. Large black letters on a white background read: "This is Howlin Wolf's new album" was the album's attention-grabbing headline. He doesn't like it. He didn't like his electric guitar at first." The album's cover may have contributed to the poor sales. Leonard Chess admitted that the cover was a bad idea, adding, "I guess negativity isn't a good way to sell records." Who wants to hear that a musician doesn't like his own music?

The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, like Muddy Waters' London album, were more popular with British audiences than American audiences.

Wolf's last album was 1973's The Back Door Wolf. It was mainly composed of new music, including Hubert Sumlin, Detroit Junior, Andrew "Blueblood" McMahon, Chico Chism, Lafayette "Shorty" Gilbert, and bandleader Eddie Shaw. As a result of his poor health, his album is shorter (by less than 35 minutes) than any other he has ever recorded.

Wolf's last public appearance at the International Amphitheatre in November 1975, which is located in Chicago. He shared the bill with B.B. Albert King, Luther Allison, and O.V. Wright. Wolf is said to have given a "unfortable" performance, even crawling across the stage during the song's "Crawling King Snake." He received a standing ovation from the crowd. A team of paramedics had to revive him after he was gone off stage after the concert was over.

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