After his parents spilt up he was sent to live with an uncle who treated him harshly and at age 13 he ran away to live with his father, a sharecropper. Wolf was inspired to play by the many Bluesmen who traveled through the Mississippi Delta, especially Charley Patton. In , after receiving a guitar for a birthday present, Burnett convinced Patton to give him lessons. In Wolf was drafted and served three years in the army.
He was discharged after suffering a nervous breakdown and by had settled in West Memphis, Arkansas, and formed an electric band with a hard-edged style.
Finding it difficult to adjust to military life, Burnett was discharged on November 3, He returned to his family, who had recently moved near to West Memphis, Arkansas, and helped with the farming while also performing as he had done in the s with Floyd Jones and others. In he formed a band which included guitarists Willie Johnson and Matt "Guitar" Murphy , harmonica player Junior Parker , a pianist remembered only as "Destruction" and drummer Willie Steele.
Within a year he enticed guitarist Hubert Sumlin to leave Memphis and join him in Chicago; Sumlin's understated solos perfectly complemented Burnett's huge voice and surprisingly subtle phrasing. The line-up of the Howlin' Wolf band changed regularly over the years, employing many different guitarists both on recordings and in live performance including Willie Johnson, Jody Williams, Lee Cooper, L.
Burnett was able to attract some of the best musicians available due to his policy, somewhat unique among bandleaders, of paying his musicians well and on time, withholding unemployment insurance and even Social Security contributions.
In the early s, Howlin' Wolf recorded several songs that became his most famous despite receiving no radio play. Many of these songs were written by bassist and Chess arranger Willie Dixon ; later, several found their way into the repertoires of British and American rock groups, who further popularized them. In , his second compilation album, titled Howlin' Wolf often called "The Rocking Chair album" , was released. During the counterculture movement in the late s, black blues musicians suddenly found a new audience among white youths and Howlin' Wolf was among the first to capitalize on it.
In , he appeared on the popular music variety television program Shindig! The Howlin' Wolf Album had a somewhat controversial album cover which contained a solid white background with large black letters proclaiming "This is Howlin' Wolf's new album.
He doesn't like it. He didn't like his guitar at first either. Who wants to hear that a musician doesn't like his own music? The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions proved more successful than its predecessor and, like rival bluesman Muddy Waters 's album Electric Mud , proved more successful with British audiences than America's. Unlike many other blues musicians who had left an impoverished childhood to begin a musical career, Chester Burnett was always financially successful. In his early career, this was the result of his musical popularity and his ability to avoid the pitfalls of alcohol, gambling and the various dangers inherent in what are vaguely described as "loose women," to which so many of his peers succumbed.
Although functionally illiterate into his 40s, Burnett eventually returned to school, first to earn a General Educational Development GED diploma, and later to study accounting and other business courses aimed to help his business career. Burnett met his future wife, Lillie, when she attended one of his performances in a Chicago club.
She and her family were urban and educated, and not involved in what was generally seen as the unsavory world of blues musicians.
Nonetheless, immediately attracted when he saw her in the audience as Burnett says he was, he pursued her and won her over. According to those who knew them, the couple remained deeply in love until his death. Together they raised Bettye and Barbara, Lillie's two daughters from an earlier relationship. After he married Lillie, who was able to manage his professional finances, Burnett was so financially successful that he was able to offer band members not only a decent salary, but benefits such as health insurance; this in turn enabled him to hire his pick of the available musicians, and keep his band one of the best around.
According to his daughters, he was never financially extravagant, for instance driving a Pontiac station wagon rather than a more expensive and flashy car. Burnett's health began declining in the late s. He experienced several heart attacks and suffered bruised kidneys in a car accident. Concerned for his health, bandleader Eddie Shaw limited him to a mere six songs per concert.
He was in fact born Chester Arthur Burnett. It was Chester's grandfather, John Jones, that kicked off the whole 'Wolf' nickname. He would tell his grandson that the big bad wolf would get him if he misbehaved. When he did cross the line his family would chase after him making howling wolf sounds. The name stuck…. His childhood hero was Jimmie Rodgers. Wolf was a big lad. At his, er, height he stood six feet threeinches tall in his stockinged feet and weighed almost pounds. You would not want to spill his pint.
Wolf's mother was a real piece of work. She threw him out of the house when he was still a cub, forcing him to hike barefoot over frozen ground to his great uncle Will Young's house many miles away. At the height of his success Wolf tried to reconcile with his mother. Offering her money, she took the cash and stamped it into the ground. She didn't want anything to do with his 'Devil music. At the age of 13 Wolf runs away from his uncle Will Young's place and eventually finds his father.
He settles down to a life of hard graft in the fields. Howlin' Wolf was not Chester's only nom de plume. Thanks to a great crop the year before Wolf has the money to buy his first guitar It's a date that Wolf never forgot til the day he died. Howlin' Wolf was mentored by Delta bluesman Charley Patton. The pair met in Not only did Patton teach Wolf guitar he taught him about showmanship: "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," said Wolf of his tutor years later.
He learns his first song, Charley Patton's Pony Blues. Wolf: "The first piece I ever played in my life was a tune about hook up my pony and saddle up my black mare. Wolf was taught how to play the harmonica by Sonny Boy Williamson in Incidentally, there were two blues artists called Sonny Boy Williamson. Wolf makes his bones with legends in the s. Over the years many bluesmen claimed to have known and played with Robert Johnson. Howlin' Wolf actually did. Wolf is inducted into the US army in early , about eight months before the Japanese get medieval at Pearl Harbor….
It's autumn and Wolf is in a military hospital near Portland, Oregon. By November 3 that year he is given an honourable discharge from the US army. He returns to farm labouring.
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