![]() ![]() He didn’t really have any choice: Chicago was where his audience was, and he needed a piece of that big-city pie. But Wolf was also part of a great migration north by African-Americans in search of a better (albeit faster and more industrial) life. The B-side, “Moanin’ At Midnight,” was, according to Sam Phillips, “the most different record I ever heard.” Quite a statement from the man who discovered a one-man musical revolution called Elvis Presley.Ī year later, Wolf moved to Chicago, ostensibly to cement his relationship with Chess, which had signed him after tussling for his contract with another label, RPM. It was an auspicious start: the song has since become a blues standard, covered by Little Feat and Joe Bonamassa, among others. One of the best Howlin’ Wolf songs committed to tape was “How Many More Years,” issued on Chicago’s Chess label. Pretty soon Wolf was on the radio and began his recording career at Sam Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service in 1951. Parties and juke joints soon rocked to Wolf’s guitar and raucous vocals.Īfter a spell in the Army during the war, he moved to West Memphis in 1948 and formed a group that became popular in the clubs, with Wolf’s rudimentary electric guitar joined by two other axe-slingers and a pianist known only as Destruction, a name which should tell you all you need to know about the band. ![]() Wolf learned guitar – and showmanship – from Charlie Patton, the area’s top bluesman, whose songs bands still play. He grew up idolizing Jimmie Rodgers, the country singer known as The Blue Yodeler Wolf tried to copy him but his yodel turned out to be more of a howl. His mama knew him as Chester Burnett, and the other kids would call him Big Foot Chester, but, growing up shoeless in White Station, Mississippi, his grandfather told him tales of the howlin’ wolves that would get him if he was bad the man-sized child decided that was a name he could work with.
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