![]() Wolf caught the ear of Sam Phillips, a Memphis recording studio owner who would go on to found the legendary Sun Records, and Philips recorded Wolf and leased some of the sides to Chicago’s Chess Records. He was discharged after suffering a nervous breakdown and by 1948 had settled in West Memphis, Arkansas, and formed an electric band with a hard-edged style. ![]() In 1941 Wolf was drafted and served three years in the army. Chester made a strong impression on audiences, playing one of the first electric guitars many audience members had ever seen, and accompanying himself with his percussive harmonica playing and emotive singing, growling, and howling – a raw style that earned him the nickname “Howlin’ Wolf.” Soon Burnett was performing in juke joints by night while working his father’s farm by day. Wolf was influenced by Patton’s powerful, gravelly singing, a style that naturally suited Wolf, who was over six feet tall and weighed close to 300 pounds. In 1928, after receiving a guitar for a birthday present, Burnett convinced Patton to give him lessons. Wolf was inspired to play by the many Bluesmen who traveled through the Mississippi Delta, especially Charley Patton. 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. Howlin’ Wolf was born Chester Arthur Burnett in the small town of White Station, Mississippi. ![]() A Mississippi native who relocated to Chicago and recorded for that city’s Chess Records, Wolf was at the forefront of transforming the acoustic Blues of the rural South to the electric, urban Blues of Chicago, and he was a particular favorite of many early Blues-influenced Rock musicians, including the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix. A towering, larger than life performer with a distinctive, raspy growl, Howlin’ Wolf was among the most influential Blues musicians of the postwar years. ![]()
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