Artist Bios: W - Z
Artist Bios: W - Z
T-Bone Walker
(born Aaron Thibeaux Walker)
May 28, 1910 - March 16, 1975
Birthplace: Linden, Texas
"Call It Stormy Monday" (117 k, 10 sec.),
"You've got to feel the blues to make them right. That kind of music really affects people, too. It's played from the heart and if the person listening, understands and is in the right mood, why, man, I've seen them bust out and cry like a baby".----T-Bone Walker
Aaron T-Bone Walker was a creator of modern blues and a pioneer in the development of the electric guitar sound that shaped virtually all of popular music in the post-World War II period. Equally important, Walker was the quintessential blues guitarist. He influenced virtually every major post-World War II guitarist, including B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Freddie King, Albert King, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
He was the first electric guitar player I heard on record, he made me so that I just had to go out and get an electric guitar...That was the best sound I ever heard."----B.B. King
No one has been able to match Walker's incredible command of tone and dynamics, his intricate jazz- flavored chording, or his ability to sustain excitement, both in what he played and how he played it. Walker was the master of the shuffle rhythm, and an incredibly effective soloist. Few guitarists, blues, rock, or otherwise, have played with more self-assurance and more presence, or have exhibited a more intimate understanding of how to elicit precisely phrased sounds from the instrument, than Walker.
From Walker, in fact, came the electric blues guitar style. He was the first blues artist to play the instrument, and the one who accomplished the most in exploring its wide range of possibilities. Walker was an expert in amplification. He also sounded as comfortable in the thick of a full orchestra as he did leading a small combo.
As if his exquisite guitar playing wasn't enough, Walker was also a first-class singer and entertainer. His full-bodied voice complemented his guitar playing. And like Delta bluesman Charlie Patton before him, Walker often played guitar behind his back and neck and between his legs; he also did splits and twists. Undoubtedly he influenced Chuck Berry and Hendrix in the way they incorporated showmanship into their performance to heighten intensity and audience excitement.
With the possible exceptions of Blind Lemon Jefferson, from whom Walker learned the basics of blues guitar, and Lightnin' Hopkins, Walker might well be the greatest blues artist to ever come out of Texas. Though he moved early on to the West Coast, the roots of his guitar style were in the Texas blues tradition, and two generations of Lone Star State guitarists have come of age paying tribute to him in some respect.
Walker was born in Linden, Texas, but his family moved to Dallas when he was two. Although he often sang with his stepfather, Marco Washington, Walker got a far better education in the blues from Jefferson, the creator of Texas blues. From about 1920 to 1923, Walker led Jefferson, a friend of the family, around the streets of Dallas, often holding Jefferson's tin can and collecting his tips. It was just after this time that Walker began to play guitar. Inspired by Jefferson and the music he heard around his house (both parents were musicians). Walker learned to play well enough to travel with the Dr. Breeding Medicine Show and various carnivals through Texas in the mid-1920s. Walker's reputation grew large enough so that in 1929 Columbia Records recorded him under the name Oak Cliff T-Bone. (Oak Cliff was the section of Dallas in which Walker lived.) He cut two songs: "Wichita Falls Blues" and "Trinity River Blues."
The following year Walker won a Dallas talent contest; the prize was a performance with Cab Calloway's big band. Walker played with other Texas bands after that, including the Lawson Brooks Band and the Count Biloski Band, before going to California in 1934. (Walker's departure from the Brooks band enabled his friend, Charlie Christian, to take his place. Christian became the first great electric guitar player in jazz.)
Walker spent most of the 1930s playing with small bands in and around Los Angeles. In 1935 or 1936 (accounts vary), Walker began experimenting with a prototype electric guitar and was one of the first guitarists anywhere to play the instrument in public. In 1935 jazz guitarist Eddie Durham played a non-electric resonator guitar on the Jimmy Lunceford rendition of "Hittin' the Bottle"; three years later he recorded with the Kansas City Five and Six using an electric guitar. Christian and another jazz guitarist, Floyd Smith, would also record with an electric guitar before Walker got his chance in 1939.
That was the year Walker joined Les Hite's Cotton Club Orchestra and recorded the seminal "T-Bone Blues," one of the great modern blues classics. Walker sang on the record and Frank Palsey played guitar. The success of "T-Bone Blues" prompted Walker to leave Hite in 1941 and start his own band. He worked L.A. clubs with his combo and began recording for Capitol Records in 1942. He also did extended stays at the Rhumboogie Club in Chicago and recorded for the club's record label. In 1946 Walker returned to L.A. where he recorded a number of gems for the Black & White label, including the rollicking instrumental "T-Bone Jumps Again" and his signature song, "Call It Stormy Monday" (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad) (117 k, 10 sec.), which is generally considered to be one of the greatest blues songs of all time. At a session shortly after the one that produced "Stormy Monday," Walker cut "T-Bone Shuffle," which, like "Stormy Monday," has become an essential piece in every blues guitarist' s repertoire.
Walker left Black & White Records in 1950 and signed with Imperial. In the five years he was with the label, Walker recorded slightly over fifty sides. None had the success of his late-'40s records with Black & White, though the guitarmanship heard on such songs as "I Walked Away" and "Cold Cold Feeling" revealed that Walker was certainly still capable of creating astonishing guitar passages.
Walker next moved to Atlantic Records, with whom he recorded until 1959. From this period came the flawless album T-Bone Blues, which ranks among the greatest modern blues albums. During this time Walker embarked on a touring strategy that had him playing in front of pickup bands rather than traveling with a band of his own. The quality of the bands was unpredictable, but his guitar work was just about always topnotch, despite growing health problems with ulcers and alcoholism.
Walker's sensitivity as a guitarist and his ability to entertain kept him a major touring attraction, though as a recording artist his best days were clearly behind him, both in creative output and sales. In 1962 Walker went to Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival package show, which enabled him to build a loyal following there. Walker would return to Europe a number of times in the next few years. At home, Walker played the Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1969, the Berkeley Blues Festival in 1970, and venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Fillmore East in New York. He also continued to record; in 1970 he won a Grammy for his album Good Feelin'. But Walker's health problems entered a critical stage; his stomach problems and inability to quit drinking took their toll in the early '70s. In 1974 he quit performing and recording after he suffered a stroke. In 1975 he died of bronchial pneumonia. Walker was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
"Call It Stormy Monday" is from T-Bone Walker---T-Bone Blues Copyright © Atlantic Recording Corporation, 1972.
Muddy Waters
(born McKinley Morganfield)
April 14, 1915 - April 30, 1983
Birthplace: Rolling Fork, Mississippi
"Mannish Boy" (108 k, 10 sec.)
Muddy Waters was the patriarch of post-World War II Chicago blues. A master artist who played slashing slide guitar and sang with the tough, sinewy view of a man who had seen his share of good and evil in life, Waters was also a compelling songwriter and song interpreter, a powerful stage performer and recording artist, and a superb bandleader. A list of those musicians who passed through his bands reads like a Who's Who of Chicago blues greats. Guitarists Jimmy Rogers, Pat Hare, Luther Tucker, and Earl Hooker; harp players Little Walter, Junior Wells, Big Walter Horton, James Cotton, and Carey Bell; bass player Willie Dixon; pianists Memphis Slim, Otis Spann, and Pinetop Perkins; and drummers Elgin Evans, Fred Below, and Francis Clay are just some of the bluesmen who played in the Muddy Waters Band at one time or another. Many of these artists went on to lead prestigious blues bands of their own, or became highly respected sidemen, though none, save Little Walter, ever came close to attaining the success or building the legacy that Waters did.
The list of artists Waters influenced would go on almost indefinitely. Besides the entire generation of Chicago blues artists who came of age in the '50s and '60s, Waters also left his mark on dozens of British and American blues rockers. Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Cray, and the Rolling Stones (who named their group after one of Waters' songs) are just the tip of the iceberg.
The attraction of Waters' brand of blues is due to his brilliant blues artistry and his critical role in providing the link between deep Mississippi Delta blues and hard-edged, urban and electric Chicago blues; more than any other musician, Waters was responsible for the mesh between old and new blues in the early postwar period.
Waters also helped transform the blues guitar sound. Although other bluesmen had recorded with an electric guitar before Waters did, his importance as an innovative player is substantial. Waters' guitar work was raw and vital and executed with the same urgency as the blues of Robert Johnson and Son House, two of Waters' mentors.
Waters was a convincing blues dignitary; an impeccably sharp dresser and a man who, though uneducated, spoke about the blues with a simple eloquence, he helped cultivate for the blues a respect the music had never known before.
During the years 1951 to 1960, there wasn't a more compelling blues band anywhere than the Muddy Waters Blues Band. They juiced the music with a rocking backbeat and an unfiltered down-home intensity. Waters' blues possessed an honesty and emotional clarity. He saw the blues as a vehicle by which he could speak about human suffering, jubilation, and truth. For these reasons, he stands out as one of the greatest artists the blues has ever produced.
Waters was born into a Mississippi Delta sharecropping family in 1915. His mother died when he was three, and he was raised by his grandmother, who lived on Stovall's Plantation, just outside Clarksdale. Waters got his nickname as a child because he loved to play near a muddy creek. He learned how to sing out in the cotton fields, where, as a youth, he worked for fifty cents a day. When he was a young boy, perhaps seven or eight, Waters learned how to play the harmonica. He didn't learn how to play guitar until he was seventeen. Not long afterwards, he began to perform at house parties and fish fries with friends Scott Bohannon (or Bowhandle) and Henry "Son" Simms. Impressed by the deep blues sounds that Delta bluesman Son House drew from his guitar, Waters built his style from what he saw and heard House play. Later, Waters would also borrow guitar ideas from Robert Johnson.
Waters first recorded in 1941. He cut a number of songs for folklorist Alan Lomax, who was collecting songs for the Library of Congress. Two of them- "I Be's Troubled" and "Country Blues"-were released on a Library of Congress folk anthology album. A year later, when Lomax returned to the plantation, Waters recorded for him a second time.
Waters left the Mississippi Delta for Chicago in 1943. Big Bill Broonzy helped him break into the city's thriving blues scene. For a while, Waters played acoustic guitar behind John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson. But his reputation as a performer didn't take shape until 1944 when he began to play an electric guitar, teaming up with Jimmy Rogers on harp and Claude Smith on guitar, and then with Eddie Boyd on piano (later joined by Sunnyland Slim). Waters was still playing in a traditional Delta bottleneck style, but his sound was fatter and louder and far more moving than before.
Waters' first Chicago recordings, which were made in 1946 for producer Lester Melrose and Columbia Records, featured Waters with a five-piece band. These tracks weren't released until 1971. (Waters also allegedly recorded at least one song, "Mean Red Spider," using the pseudonym James "Sweet Lucy" Carter in 1946 or '47.) In 1947 Waters played guitar behind Sunnyland Slim on two Aristocrat sides, "Johnson Machine Gun" and "Fly Right Little Girl." Two other songs, "Gypsy Woman" and "Little Anna Mae," were recorded by Waters and bass player Big Crawford. Not impressed with the results, producer Leonard Chess nonetheless brought Waters and Crawford back into the recording studio in 1948, at which time the duo cut "I Can't Be Satisfied" and "Feel Like Going Home." The two songs were performed in a traditional Delta blues style, but Waters' shivering electric guitar gave them an exciting new edge. Chess released the songs as an Aristocrat single (number 1305). In less than a day, the record's entire stock had been sold.
The record's startling success prompted Chess to bring Waters back into the studio. Eager to stay with what worked, Chess insisted that the lineup-Waters on guitar and vocals and Crawford on bass remain the same, even though at the time Waters was working regularly in Chicago clubs with a full band (featuring Jimmy Rogers on second guitar and harmonica and "Baby Face" Leroy Foster on drums and guitar. A little later Little Walter Jacobs joined the band on harmonica. Waters didn't get the opportunity to record with a band until 1950. By this time, his sound harsh, heavy, and beat driven was well in place, and blues history was made.
What followed in the years 1951 to 1960 was the greatest collection of electric blues recordings ever made. Waters originals like "Long Distance Call," "Mannish Boy" (108 k, 10 sec.),"Got My Mojo Working," "She Moves Me," and "She's Nineteen Years Old" were supplemented by the songs Willie Dixon had given to him: "Hoochie Coochie Man," "I Just Want to Make Love to You," and "I'm Ready," among others. These records defined the Chicago blues sound during its classic period. Though Waters had all but quit playing guitar at this point-his voice, thick and rough, gave the recordings and his live performances their incredible power.
Chess Records released Waters' debut album in 1958. Called The Best of Muddy Waters, it was a collection of his hit singles. That same year, Waters and his pianist, Otis Spann, toured England. The tour opened up a new audience for Waters abroad-and at home. White folk fans fascinated with the blues heard about Waters' triumph in England and sought out his records. For his next album Waters interpreted a collection of Big Bill Broonzy songs to take advantage of this new audience that seemed to prefer rural-flavored acoustic blues to the riveting electric style Waters had perfected in the '50s.
Yet it was Waters' electric band that transformed the Newport Folk Festival into a romping blues bash in 1960. Waters and his band were at their best as they worked their way through a feverish set on the Newport stage. Later that year Chess released the live album Muddy Waters at Newport, and those new blues fans not at the fest found ample cause to seek out electric blues.
Yet Chess continued to push Waters as a folk-blues artist to capitalize on the continuing interest of white fans in down-home blues. The album Folk Singer was released in 1964. The Real Folk Blues and More Real Folk Blues, both of which contained old recordings, followed. To balance out Waters' catalog, Chess released the soulish Muddy, Brass, and the Blues in 1966, a deserved failure. A number of late-'60s and early-'70s albums, especially Fathers and Sons, They Call Me Muddy Waters (which won a Grammy for best ethnic/traditional recording in 1971), and The London Muddy Waters Sessions (which featured Waters jamming with English blues-rockers like Rory Gallagher) sold almost exclusively to white record buyers.
In the 1970s Waters toured almost constantly, playing all over the world. By 1977 he had ended his long-standing relationship with Chess and signed with CBS/Blue Sky. Collaborating with producer-guitarist Johnny Winter, Waters enjoyed a resurgence of his recording career with the album Hard Again in 1977, which won Waters his second Grammy and featured some of his most inspired studio work since the early '60s. The 1978 follow-up album, I'm Ready, was also a critical and commercial success; like its predecessor, I'm Ready featured re-workings of some of Waters' classic songs fueled with new energy and drive. A tour of the U.S. included a special performance at the White House for President Jimmy Carter and his staff, and a memorable rendition of "Mannish Boy" captured in the Band's farewell concert film, The Last Waltz.
Waters' final two albums, Muddy "Mississippi" Waters Live and King Bee, were also produced by Winter, whose devotion to Waters was unwavering. Waters and Winter often performed together in the early '80s, playing mostly to white blues and rock fans who often came to his shows to pay respect.
Waters died of a heart attack in his sleep in 1983 at age sixty-eight. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
"Mannish Boy" is from Muddy "Mississippi" Waters Live Copyright © CBS Records Inc.,1979.
John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson
(aka Sonny Boy Williamson #1)
March 30, 1914 - June 1, 1948
Birthplace: Jackson, Tennessee
Perhaps more than any other blues harmonica player, John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson was responsible for the transition of the harp from a simple down- home instrument used mainly for novelty twists and light jug band riffs, to one that became an essential part of the early Chicago blues sound. The 1920s and 1930s had its share of innovative harp players; Will Shade, Noah Lewis, and Hammie Nixon-all early influences on Williamson broke new ground by expanding the role of the instrument in country blues. Deford Bailey popularized the harmonica during his many performances on the Grand Ol' Opry radio program. But only Williamson was able to lift the blues harp onto a broader plane with his inventive phrasing and impeccably crisp, clean tones.
Williamson was also a talented vocalist, despite the handicap of a "slow tongue" that made some of his words slur. Williamson, however, cleverly worked his speech impediment into his singing style, so that its presence gave his voice an alluring drag. For the eleven years he was part of the Chicago blues scene, Williamson was one of its most popular and well-liked recording artists. Songs of his such as "Good Morning Little School Girl," "Sugar Mama Blues," "Early in the Morning," "Check Up on My Baby," and "Bluebird Blues" were all big hits for the Bluebird label in the 1930s and 1940s and had a major influence on the succeeding generation of blues harp players. Williamson's stature was such that Rice Miller, a great blues harmonica player who followed in his path, assumed Williamson's name as his own, presumably both to capitalize on Sonny Boy #1's fame and to carry on his legacy. Miller is often referred to as Sonny Boy Williamson #2.
John Lee Williamson was born in Jackson, Tennessee, where at an early age he taught himself how to play the harmonica. By the time he was in his mid-teens he was already a competent harp player. Williamson traveled with bluesmen like Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachell, Big Joe Williams, and Robert Nighthawk during the Depression, earning the nickname "Sonny Boy" in the process. In 1937, at age twenty-three, Williamson settled in Chicago, where he quickly became in demand as a session player. That same year he was signed to the Bluebird label by famed producer Lester Melrose.
Williamson's early recordings harked back to the country blues harp style and blues sound he learned hoboing through the South in the early '30s. He often recorded with Big Joe Williams, who played a rough-edged nine-string acoustic guitar. Eventually Williamson transformed his singing and harp style to fit the small combo blues that Bluebird was regularly recording in Chicago during this time. In addition to Williams, Williamson also recorded and performed with guitarists such as Tampa Red and Big Bill Broozy, as well as pianists like Blind John Davis, Big Maceo, and Eddie Boyd. By the outbreak of World War II, Williamson was a mainstay on the Chicago blues scene and unquestionably its most important and most popular harmonica player.
Tragically, at the height of his harp prowess and popularity, Williamson was murdered in 1948 as he walked home from a club date on Chicago's South Side. His death at age thirty-four was a major blow to the city's blues community. Williamson was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980.
Sonny Boy Williamson
(born Aleck Miller, aka Rice Miller, Sonny Boy Williamson #2 and Willie Williamson)
1910 - May 25, 1965
Birthplace: Glendora, Mississippi
Sonny Boy Williamson was one of the most influential harmonica players in blues history, ranking with Little Walter Jacobs as the music's major post- World War II harp stylist. Aleck "Rice" Miller, believed to be his real name, or Sonny Boy Williamson #2, as he was often called, is not to be confused with John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, who, in the l930s and l940s, was an important blues harmonica player in his own right and the first to use the "Sonny Boy" nickname.
Aside from being a harp player who helped set the course of modern blues, Sonny Boy Williamson #2 was also a legendary blues character whose colorful personality, unpredictable actions, and frequent stretching of the truth only served to enliven his blues with a rare, but warmly embraced, eccentricity.
Williamson's harp style included intricately woven phrasing, bold sonic textures, trills and vibrato, a wide range of dynamic passion, and a superb sense of timing. He was also an effective showman-he could, for instance, put the entire harp in his mouth and still draw notes. More important, his playing made the harp the center attraction, no matter how many other great blues musicians shared the stage with him. Yet Williamson was more than just a blues harp genius and potent performer; he was also a superb tunesmith. Many of his songs-"One Way Out," "Don't Start Me Talking," "Cross My Heart," "Eyesight to the Blind," "Mighty Long Time," "Help Me," and "Nine Below Zero" are acknowledged classics and staples in any serious blues harmonica player's repertoire.
Williamson was also a convincing singer and the blues' first radio star. His daily performances on the Helena, Arkansas, radio station KFFA in the 1940s, which were heard throughout eastern Arkansas, western Tennessee, and the Mississippi Delta, not only made him a celebrity but also influenced an entire generation of blues musicians living in the region. Elements of Williamson's harmonica style can be heard in the styles of everyone from Howlin' Wolf, whom Williamson personally tutored, to Muddy Waters and Junior Wells and virtually all of the postwar Memphis blues school.
Despite his status, Williamson was an odd, elusive character. Worked into his wiry frame he stood over six feet tall was a complex web of personality traits that even his best friends found difficult to understand. He was a hothead who rarely turned from a fight. He was also a shrewd talker, a drinker, a liar, a loner, a gambler, a con man, and a ladies' man. To the end of his life he swore he was "the real Sonny Boy Williamson," though, in fact, John Lee Williamson had used the "Sonny Boy" tag years before Miller had adopted it as his own.
Because of his reluctance to talk about his early years when interviewed and his liberal interpretation of the truth when he did, Williamson's early biography remains muddy. Blues historians are reasonably certain he was born in 1910, although the years 1894, 1897, 1899, 1908, and 1909 have also been cited. Born and raised in Mississippi to sharecropping parents, Williamson taught himself how to play the harmonica and started performing in local jukes in the mid-1920s. By 1930 or so, Williamson began his wanderings through the South, playing in parks, on street corners, in lumber and levee camps, and at house parties and juke joints, occasionally in the company of other bluesmen such as Robert Lockwood, Jr., Robert Johnson, Elmore James, and Howlin' Wolf.
Although he was known in Delta blues circles thanks to his near-constant ramblings, it wasn't until Williamson and guitarist Lockwood began performing each day at noon on KFFA in 1941 that Williamson's reputation began to broaden. Called "King Biscuit Flour Time," the fifteen-minute radio program was sponsored by the Interstate Grocery Company and in its early days featured Williamson on harmonica and vocals and Lockwood on twelve-string guitar. In addition to playing a few blues numbers, Williamson chatted on the air and pushed King Biscuit flour. Although he was paid little for his services, Williamson was permitted to announce where he would be playing that evening. The advance advertising resulted in better pay from club owners and better tips than Williamson had received before becoming a radio personality.
Williamson and Lockwood were called the King Biscuit Entertainers and often did station-sponsored events off the air. Eventually the duo expanded into a full, though loosely organized, band with the addition of Peck Curtis on drums and vocals, Dudlow Taylor on piano, and later pianists Pinetop Perkins and Willie Love and guitarist Houston Stackhouse depending on who was available at the time. By the time he left the station in 1944 to go back on the road, Sonny Boy Williamson, the moniker Miller had begun using around the time he first performed on the air, had become a familiar name in many Southern black house- holds. His face was even printed on the bags of King Biscuit corn meal to help sell the product.
After 1944 Williamson was no longer a daily personality on KFFA. Yet whenever he returned to Helena, which was often, he went back to the station and resumed his role as on-the-air performer and entertainer. Throughout the rest of the decade, Williamson performed in the Delta with guitarists Elmore James and Joe Willie Wilkins, pianist Willie Love, and drummer Willie Nix.
Despite his blues credentials and popularity, Williamson didn't begin his recording career until 1951 when he cut sides for Trumpet, the Jackson, Mississippi, label. Williamson's now-classic Trumpet tracks are raw and rough, especially when compared to his later recordings with Chess. Yet their coarse juke-joint swagger and brilliant harp work reveal much about Williamson's blues view and early performance style.
Williamson was based in the Memphis area until 1954 when he moved first to Detroit and then to Milwaukee and Cleveland. But he never severed his Southern roots, regularly returning to perform right to the very end of his career. After Trumpet had suspended operations in 1955, Williamson signed on with Checker, the Chess subsidiary label, with whom he recorded until the early '60s. Cutting sides with Chess session musicians like guitarists Lockwood and Luther Tucker, pianists Otis Spann and Lafayette Leake, bass player Willie Dixon, and drummer Fred Below, Williamson's sound became more tightly defined and assumed a greater sophistication than on the Trumpet sides.
Williamson continued to tour, working his way through St. Louis, Memphis, Helena, and the Delta, then back again to Chicago. In 1963 and 1964 he toured Europe as part of the American Folk Blues Festival package. He also performed and recorded with British blues-rock groups the Animals and the Yardbirds (with Eric Clapton on guitar), becoming as big a blues star in England as he was in the States. Unfortunately, by this time Williamson's health had begun to deteriorate rapidly. In 1965 he returned to Helena and resumed, yet again, his appearances on KFFA' s "King Biscuit Time." Shortly thereafter, he died. Williamson was inducted into the Blues Foundation' s Hall of Fame in 1980.
Howlin' Wolf
(born Chester Arthur Burnett)
June 10, 1910 - January 10, 1976
Birthplace: West Point, Mississippi
Howlin' Wolf was possibly the most electrifying performer in modern blues history and a recording artist whose only rivals among his contemporaries were Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), Little Walter, and Muddy Waters. Like these artists, Wolf was a dean of electric Chicago blues during the genre's heyday in the l950s and early l960s. A large, intimidating man who stood well over six feet tall and weighed close to three hundred pounds, Wolf's gripping histrionics and sheer physical intensity gave new meaning to the blues nearly every time he performed. He would jump about the stage like an angry man trying to work off dangerous steam, or wriggle on the floor as if he was in unbearable pain, or whoop and howl and hoot like someone who had succumbed to the worst of demons. Wolf acted out his most potent blues; he became the living embodiment of its most powerful forces.
Musically, Wolf was an amalgam of blues styles. His originality lay in the way he crafted all his influences into one invigorating form. He learned how to play guitar by watching and listening to Charley Patton, from whom he also picked up valuable performing pointers (Patton was known to accent his performances with all kinds of pre-rock & roll showmanship). Wolf was taught how to play harmonica by none other than Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) after the harp player had married Wolf 's half-sister. Finally, Wolf learned the art of expanding the range of his cracked, gruff voice with yodels and moans from the likes of Tommy Johnson and the blues-influenced country singer Jimmie Rogers. When Wolf merged all of these elements and projected them from his massive frame, the results could stir even the most passive or skeptical listener.
That Wolf didn't begin to record until the onset of middle age gave him plenty of time to absorb the meaning of the blues. He spent his first forty or so years balancing the life of a bluesman with that of a farmer. He knew better than many of the celebrated blues artists who came after him, of the unbreakable bond the blues had with the land and the labor that went into working it, especially in the Delta.
Though Wolf played both guitar and harp, he was a master of neither. He also was a traditionalist who refused to let his blues change with the times and grow into something it hadn't been when he began playing back in the late 1920s. But in the end, Wolf demonstrated again and again that his blues was a timeless form that could transcend styles and eras without growing moss or sounding stale.
Wolf was born Chester Arthur Burnett, named after the late-nineteenth century American president. He was nicknamed "Howlin' Wolf" as a child, supposedly a reflection of his mischievous behavior. Wolf learned of the blues early in his life; Charley Patton and Willie Brown, in particular, often played plantation picnics and area juke joints that Wolf frequented. After Wolf picked up the guitar,he began playing those same places. Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, Wolf tilled the land on his father's farm during the week and on weekends sang the blues. He often played guitar and harmonica simultaneously, using a harmonica rack to keep the instrument close to his mouth, and, on occasion, he shared performance time with Robert Johnson, Robert Lockwood, Jr., and Tommy Johnson, as well as Patton and Brown.
Wolf served in the army during World War II When he returned to Mississippi in 1945, he resumed farming and performing blues locally. But Wolf itched for an opportunity to record and take his blues beyond the Delta. In 1948 he moved to West Memphis, Arkansas, just across the river from Memphis, Tennessee, and put together a band that, at different times, included harmonica players James Cotton and Junior Parker and guitarists Pat Hare, Matt "Guitar" Murphy,and Willie Johnson, and secured a slot on local radio station KWEM playing blues and endorsing agriculture equipment.
Ike Turner, at the time a record scout for Memphis producer Sam Phillips,heard Howlin' Wolf and recommended that Phillips record Wolf. Wolf went into the studio with Phillips in 1951 and recorded two songs, "Moanin' at Midnight"and "How Many More Years." The tunes were leased to Chess Records, who released them in 1952.
Wolf cut other material for Phillips, which Phillips farmed out to Chess and RPM (a subsidiary of Modern Records). A grapple for the rights to Wolf's best sides was eventually won by Chess. In 1953 Howlin' Wolf moved to Chicago and called the city home for the rest of his life. Almost at once he began to compete with Chess's mainstay, Muddy Waters, for the songs of Willie Dixon, whose prolific output kept Waters and other bluesmen on the Chess roster well stocked with material. From Dixon, Wolf got and recorded classics like "Spoonful," "Little Red Rooster," "Evil," "Back Door Man," and "I Ain't Superstitious." Although Wolf wasn't considered a great blues composer, he wrote"Moanin' at Midnight," "Smokestack Lightning," and "Killing Floor," as well as a number of other tunes.
The competition between Wolf and Waters extended beyond Dixon's songs and remained with them into the '60s and '70s. Wolf was a suspicious man who seemed to measure people by how threatening they were to him. Like Waters,Wolf was also a proud man who found it hard to shake hands with his chief rival.Some blues historians have suggested that the competition that existed between them actually forced both Waters and Wolf to rise to great blues heights.
In the early '60s, Wolf played overseas with the American Blues Festival package and regularly performed in noted Chicago clubs. In 1965 he appeared on the American rock television show "Shindig" with the Rolling Stones.Throughout the rest of the decade, Wolf strengthened his ties with rock, culminating with a rock-sounding album released in 1969 called The Howlin' Wolf Album, followed by another, The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, recorded in England in 1970 with guitarist Eric Clapton, bass player Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, and other British rock stalwarts.
By the early 1970s Howlin' Wolf was beginning to slow down. He had already suffered a heart attack, and an auto accident in 1970 caused irreparable damage to his kidney and necessitated frequent dialysis treatments. Despite ill health,Howlin' Wolf continued to record and perform. In 1972 he recorded a live album,Live and Cookin' At Alice 's Revisited, at the Chicago club. He also cut a second"London" album, London Revisited, with Muddy Waters, and another studio album, Back Door Wolf which included the songs "Watergate Blues" and the autobiographical "Moving." Wolf 's last performance was in Chicago with B.B. King in November of 1975. Two months later he died of kidney failure. Howlin' Wolf was inducted into Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock& Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.
"Back Door Man" is from The Chess Box - Willie Dixon Copyright © MCA Records Inc., 1988.
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