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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.
At Chess' studio in Chicago in January 1956, Howlin' Wolf recorded "Smokestack Lightning". [1] The song takes the form of "a propulsive, one-chord vamp, nominally in E major but with the flatted blue notes that make it sound like E minor", and lyrically it is "a pastiche of ancient blues lines and train references, timeless and evocative". [1]
Howlin' Wolf recorded a session for Phillips at his Memphis Recording Service in July 1951. The band consisted of Howlin' Wolf singing and playing harmonica with Ike Turner on piano, Willie Johnson on guitar, and Willie Steele on drums. [4] [5] Phillips described "Moanin' at Midnight" as "the most different record I ever heard."
Howlin' Wolf's original "The Red Rooster" is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of the "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll". [74] As well as being a blues standard , [ 75 ] Janovitz calls "Little Red Rooster" a "classic song [that] has been recorded countless times, a warhorse for most late-'60s and 1970s classic rock acts". [ 23 ]
Howlin' Wolf recorded "Killing Floor" in Chicago in August 1964, which Chess Records released as a single. [2] According to blues guitarist and longtime Wolf associate Hubert Sumlin, the song uses the killing floor – the area of a slaughterhouse where animals are killed – as a metaphor or allegory for male-female relationships: "Down on the killing floor – that means a woman has you down ...
Howlin' Wolf reworked the song as a Chicago blues, which Chess Records issued as a single in 1957 and later included on the popular compilation series The Real Folk Blues (1966). [7] For the recording, he was backed by a typical blues ensemble consisting of electric guitar ( Hubert Sumlin ), piano (Hosea Lee Kennard), bass (Alfred Elkins), and ...
"I Ain't Superstitious" is a mid-tempo stop-time blues song that does not follow the typical chord progression. [2] Musician and writer Bill Janovitz described it as "not merely an electric version of the blues practiced in the Delta; it is something wholly new, a more aggressive and sophisticated Chicago cousin that acknowledges contemporary jazz, R&B, and pop forms".
In October 1954, Howlin' Wolf recorded his version, titled simply "Forty Four", as an electric Chicago blues ensemble piece. Unlike the early versions of the song, Wolf's recording featured prominent guitar lines and an insistent "martial shuffle on the snare drum plus a bass drum that slammed down like an industrial punch-press", according to biographers. [7]