Howlin Wolf: "I Sing For the People!"

Century of the Wolf



(Edit Note: I'd like to apologize for some of the annoying line breaks in the body of some of Wolf's testimony. After doing the copy/paste routine a couple times, then manually re-entering the photos, the problem's persisting. The only alternative is for me to delete and re-type the 10+ pages of text, re-upload the pics, etc... Sorry for the inconvenience, folks, but that ain't gonna happen... I got a moonlit lake outside and a lady who's wondering why she's the only one stoking the bonfire. Peace, M.)

To be honest, I'll be somewhat disappointed should the centennial of Howlin' Wolf's birth go largely unnoticed tomorrow...but that's just the way the blues are. Here at the Backwoods Listener's Guide, the Wolf's still howlin'.

Rather than launch into the standard eulogy or testimonial, I thought it would be better to let the man speak for himself. The Wolf was plain-spoken and tended to call 'em as he saw 'em. He also tended to be reliable in his testimony, which made him a wonderful source for researchers...when the Wolf felt like talking to them.

What follows is Howlin' Wolf's story, in the Wolf's own words, based on an interview done with Pete Welding on December 14, 1967.


"Howlin' Wolf: I Sing For the People."

"...The few interviews with him that have
been published have revealed him as guarded, even mistrustful. It was
with this in mind that I approached him in his Chicago home. I was to
find pleasantly that his guard was down. Perhaps Wolf has mellowed in
recent years; in any event, I found him friendly, cooperative and
helpful. His candid recollections—unencumbered by exaggerations, fancies
and outright distortions that so many older blues men give out—follow.
To make for a smooth narrative, I have excised my questions and arranged
Wolf’s comments in rough chronological order..." (Pete Welding)

I was born in West Point, near Tupelo, in Monroe County, Miss., on June
10 in 1910, and I left there in 1923 when I came to the Mississippi
delta, around Ruleville, Miss.


I didn’t start to fooling with guitar until about 1928, however, and I
started on account of on the plantation—Young and Mara’s plantation,
where our family was living—there was a guy at that time playing the
guitar. He was called Charlie Patton. It was he who got me interested.

He was a nice guy, but he just loved the bottle—like all the rest of the musicians. He was a great drinker. I never did know him to do no
gambling or anything like that…but “drink!” I did know him to play good,
and everybody liked him. He was a mixed-breed fellow, a light-skinned
guy. He looked kinda like a Puerto Rican. He was from Will Dockery’s
place—that’s a plantation out from Ruleville. He had been up north
somewhere and cut some records for some company at that time [note:
Patton’s first recording session took place in June 1929] and then had
come back down there in the fall of the year, in the harvest time—you
know, when people’re picking the cotton—to play for us folks. He’d go
from place to place around there. He was playing by himself when I heard
him. I don’t know if he played with any other fellows because he was a
grown man then, and I was just a kid, and my mama didn’t allow me out at
night. I couldn’t go; I’d have to slip off.

That was the first I heard him, and I liked it, so from then on I went
to thinking about music. I remember he was playing the tune "Hook Up My
Pony And Saddle Up My Old Black Mare" and also "High Water Everywhere,"
"Spoonful," and "Banty Rooster"—oh, lots of tunes. I done forgot most of
them, but at one time I could play his music. After all, he done taught
me. I don’t play it much now, but I “can” play it.

It was he who started me off to playing. He showed me things on the
guitar, because after we got through picking cotton at night, we’d go
and hang around him, listen to him play. He took a liking to me, and I
asked him would he teach me, and at night, after I’d get off work, I’d
go and hang around.

He used to play out on the plantations, at different one’s homes out
there. They’d give a supper—call is a Saturday night hop or something
like that. There weren’t no clubs like nowadays. Mostly on weekends
they’d have them. He’d play different spots—he’d be playing here tonight
and somewhere else the next night, and so on.

He mostly worked by himself because his way of playing was kind of
obvious— different—from other people’s. It took a good musician to play
behind him, because it was kind of off-beat and off-time; but it had a
good sound the way he played. I never did work with him because he was a
travelling man. In the spring of the year he’d be gone; he never came in
until the fall. He followed the money. When spring came, why, he’d
generally go up north someplace, maybe New York of Chicago. He mentioned
he traveled a lot. He couldn’t make too much money in Mississippi in the
spring of the year because people didn’t have any money until harvest
time. He’d always come back in the fall.

He was a real showman. 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. He was more a clown than he was a
musician, it seems. But I never did hear nobody else playing like
him—playing that bass, patting on the guitar—nobody mocking and using
his patterns much.

He mostly playing his songs the same way all the time. It was only when
he’d get to "Spoonful" that he might change the background he’d play,
and on "Banty Rooster" too. He played in regular [E-A-D-G-B-E] and in
Spanish—that’s open-G [D-G-D-G-B-D], we called it cross-guitar—tunings,
but he mostly played in standard tuning. He taught me in all of
them—straight and cross, open-G. I never did hear him play anything in
open-E.

Now, people around there didn’t consider him the best musician. No.
There was a group come up from around there called the Mississippi
Sheiks. They had a beat to their music. I think they were about No. 1
around that part of the country. They played all around, but I never did
get with them because I was farming at that time, and I really wasn’t
sure of myself about getting out and taking music up.

In those days I preferred the Sheiks to Charlie’s music because the
Sheiks had an up-tempo beat. They were a little more modern. Charlie’s
music was what you would call nowadays old-fashioned folk singing, stuff
like that. But there weren’t any people could play that old stuff like
Charlie.

Up around Drew I remember there were two fellows—Dick Bankston and Jim
Holloway—they stayed on the plantations around there, north and west of
Ruleville. Bankston was a brown-skinned fellow; he worked at the
compress, while Jim farmed. They were older than me, but they were right
along there behind Patton in age, a little younger than him. But they
couldn’t play that sound like Charlie could, because Charlie would strum
his guitar and would kinda drum on it with the back of his hand.

Dick Bankston and them played nice, but they couldn’t put the strum in
it. Now I don’t know where Bankston or Holloway were from; I just met
them in Drew, Miss. They lived there and just played music on the
weekends. I think he used to play a tune called "Bye And Bye, Baby, Bye
And Bye"—something like that. I don’t know for sure, ‘cause I didn’t
fool around with them like I did Charlie and the Sheiks. I run into them
often.

The last time I saw Charlie was at Cleveland, Miss., and it wasn’t long
before somebody cut him, and after that, it wasn’t long before he was
taken by the consumption and died. I think he’s buried at Holly Ridge,
near Lula.

I felt like I got the most from Charlie Patton and Lemon Jefferson—from
his records, that is. He came through Mississippi in different areas,
but I never did see him. What I liked about Lemon’s music was that he
made a clear chord. He didn’t stumble in his music like a lot of people
do—”plink”. No, he made clear chords on his guitar; his strings sounded
clearly. The positions he was playing in—that made his strings sound
clear. There wasn’t a smothered sound to his chords.

As a kid I also heard records by Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red and Blind
Blake—they played nice guitar. I heard tell of Tommy Johnson, too, but
never did see him and also ran into Tommy McClennan later.

After Charlie started showing me guitar, I came along slow. I didn’t
really pick up my time—didn’t get that right—until somewhere in the
‘40s. I got my first guitar in 1928. My father bought it for me before
we left Ruleville. We were living out there on the Quiver River, on
Boosey’s plantation—well, Boosey was the rider [overseer], but young man
Morrow was the boss. He stayed in Winona, Miss. At that time I was
working on the farm with my father, baling hay and driving tractors,
fixing fences, picking cotton and pulling corn.

There was a lot of music around there. Work songs. Some of the fellows
was making songs like "I worked old Maude, and I worked old
Belle"—things like that. They’d just get out there and sing as they
worked. Plowing songs, songs to call mules by. They’d get out there
mornings and get to plowing and get to hollering and singing. They’d
make these songs up as they go along.

See, people make their music just like you think about what you want to
do. They make their sound and their music just like they feel, and they
sing like they feel. They made up the work songs as they felt. If they
felt they was…somebody had taken something from them, that’s what they
sang about—however they felt. But you take myself: I never did have no
ups and downs. I came from a good family, and I come up on a good
plantation, and I was treated like a man.

It was in the late 1920s when I decided to go out on my own, to go for
myself. I just went running ‘round through the country playing, like
Charlie and them did. The places I’d hit—I’d go to Greenwood, Winona,
and back to my home, West Point, Miss., and go to Columbus, and then I’d
go to Indianola and Greenville, Miss. Then I’d come over to the Arkansas
side of the river around West Memphis and Parkin and Pine Bluff and
Brinkley, Ark. Just all through the cotton-belt country, and mostly by
myself. I didn’t start using other musicians with me until 1948.

I run across lots of good musicians. I was just playing blues and stuff
like that. Some of the first things I learned how to play was "How Many
More Years?" and "Smokestack Lightnin’," just common songs you heard
down there. But "How Many More Years?"—now, that’s an original of mine.
When I started to playing guitar and blowing my harp, anything come to
mind I’d just sing it and rhyme it up and make me a song out of it.
Mostly I’d just take things I heard from people around there. I don’t
think I got any of my music from church because, well, I never did go to
church much. I just picked up music, just playing guitar. Or course, it
might be from the church, but that’s just the way I was brought up to play.

I mostly stayed in the country. I never did get to Memphis until about
1933, when my father moved from the Mississippi to the Arkansas side of
the river. Then I began to meet different musicians, but I didn’t know
too much about them. I’d just see them, speak to them, keep on going. I
remember seeing different little bands—jug bands—play in Memphis at the
square on Beale St., but I never played in one. Stayed in the country
farming.

It was Sonny Boy Williamson—the second one, Rice Miller—who taught me
harmonica. He married my sister Mary in the ‘30s. That’s when I met him;
he was just loafing around, blowing his harp. He could “blow”, though.
But he lived too fast—he was drinking a lot of whisky, and that whisky
killed him.

Sonny Boy showed me how to play. I used to strum guitar for him. See, he
used to come there and sit up half the night and blow the harp to Mary.
I liked the harp, so I’d fool around, and while he’s kissing Mary, I’d
try to get him to show me something, you know. He’d grab the harp and
then he’d show me a couple of chords. I’d go ‘round the house then, and
I’d work on it.

It was somewhere around this time that I met Robert Johnson. Me and him
played together, and me and him and Sonny Boy—Rice Miller—played
together awhile. I met Robert in Robinsonville, Miss.; his mother and
father stayed out there in Robinsonville. I don’t what happened to them,
but I know what happened to “him”. He got poisoned by a woman down
there. I think he was getting too many girls and didn’t pay her too much
attention. This took place somewhere around Greenwood, Miss., out there
somewhere. I don’t exactly when—it’s been so long I’ve forgotten what
year it was. It was in the ‘30s, though.

At that time Robert wasn’t more than about 21 or 22. He never did talk
about his past life no more than the time he said that he and Sonny Boy
Miller was supposed to cut some records for the Diamond people, I think,
down there in Jackson, Miss. I did hear him say he was going down there
to cut some record [note: the details of such a recording session, if
ever held, are unknown to discographers].

Robert was a little brown-skin, slender fellow, weighed about 160 or 170
pounds. He was about six feet tall, maybe 6’3". The first record he put
out was called the “Terraplane Blues”; he also did the “Cross Road
Blues” and other different numbers. He was another fellow who played his
songs near about the same way all the time. He has his own patterns and
stuck with them.

I worked a little while with him around through the country; we was
playing around Greenwood, Itta Bena, and Moorhead. We didn’t stay
together too long because I would go back and forth to my father and
help him in the farming. ‘Cause I really wasn’t ready for it—the music,
you know.

At that time I couldn’t play near as well as he could; I’d just be
hanging around trying to catch onto something. Rice, though, he could
play with him. We took turns performing our own tunes. If I played lead
and sang, they’d back me up, see, ‘cause at that time I wasn’t good
enough to back them up. But such as I did know, they’d back me up in them.

I hung around with Robert about two years, off and on. He traveled a
lot. Last time him and me was together we was coming out of Memphis. I
was going my way to Robinsonville, and he was on his way to Greenwood.
But his mother and father lived out there from Robinsonville on Lake
Cormorant, on the Mississippi River.

Robert had a nice personality. He was a nice-looking guy, and the women
went for him. So that’s why he got messed up by that woman who poisoned
him. He was a nice person, but he was just wild amongst women, you know?

I don’t know how long Robert had been playing when I met him, but at
that time he was playing pretty nice. I never did ask where he learned,
‘cause we was just young and would just run in and meet one another at
those parties and suppers, play and jam awhile, and take off. I never
did ask him too much about his life.

I believe Son House mostly taught him because Son and Willie Brown…I
used to play a little with them. Willie was the better musician ‘cause
Son House always played his guitar with that thing [bottleneck] on his
hand. But Willie Brown, he fingered his, and could play all the way out.
He knew more about the instrument; he didn’t have to play it in open
chords all the time. Now, Willie, he was a good singer too. He didn’t
cut nearly as many records as Son did because—I don’t know—he just left
Son House and come back to the farming. Son House, he just kept agoing.
See, Willie had a wife back down there—I can’t recall her name—he came
back and stayed around Robinsonville and Lake Cormorant. That’s where I
got acquainted with him.

I worked with the two of them at some of those Saturday night hops. I’d
happen up on them at different places, and I’d jump in and play a tune
or two with them. They was playing music for dancing mostly, fast
numbers to dance to. According to what position you want to sing in, you
can sing and play in up-tempo or in slow tempo. Well, most of the older
people, they preferred the slower tempo, but when you were playing for
the teenagers, why, you had to jump it. They had the dances every
weekend. That’s the only time those people would have a chance to enjoy
themselves—on a Saturday night or a Sunday—‘cause those landlords would
want them to work any other time.

Son and Willie worked well together; they teamed up pretty good. See,
Willie Brown would play and follow Son House with his guitar. Mostly Son
House would lead out, no matter which of them was singing, ‘cause Willie
kept in the background with the bass.

When I’d go out on them plantations to play, the people played me “so”
hard; they look for you to play from 7 o’clock in the evening until 7
o’clock of the next morning. That’s too rough! I was getting about a
dollar-and-a-half, and that was too much playing by myself. People would
yell, "Come on, play a little, baby!" A bunch would come in, and they
was ready to play and dance. So I decided I would get a band, get two or
three more fellows to help me out—but I didn’t do that until 1948. Some
of the jobs I had taken was 50 cents a night, back in Hoover’s days. 7
in the evening ‘til 7 the next morning—and I was too glad to get it in
those days!

I was calling myself Howling Wolf then. They also called me Foot. I
don’t know for sure how that name started—just because they say I had
big feet. And some of them called me the Bull Cow. They just give me
different names. But I just stuck to the Wolf. I got that from my
grandfather. He used to tell me stories about the wolves in that part of
the country, how they used to do way back in the days before they
cleaned up this country.

He was one of them away-back guys, an old guy, whiskers way down to
there. When those old folks came to that country, there was a lot of
game—wolves and cats—in the forest. So he used to sit down and tell me
about it, and I would get frightened. Also, I was bad about getting my
grandmother’s little chicks. Every time I’d get one I didn’t have enough
sense to just hold him—I’d squeeze him and kill him. So I got so bad
about it they told me they was going to have to put the wolf on me.
Scared me up like that. So everybody else went to calling me the Wolf. I
was real young.

[Note: Wolf continued this life of farming and occasionally performing
until he was inducted into the Army in 1941. He remained in the service
for the duration of the war, spending much of his tour stationed in
Seattle, Wash. He returned to Mississippi in 1945.]

After the war, I had gone back to farming, back to my father in
Arkansas, out on the plantation—that’s about 16 miles north of Parkin,
Ark., on the St. Francis River. I stayed out there until after I figured
I was grown enough to go for myself, and then I left there and went to
Penton, Miss., and did some farming of my own for two years. I made two
crops there, and then I moved to West Memphis, Ark.

I was there, in 1948, when I formed my first band and began to follow
music as a career. On guitars I had Willie Johnson and M.T. Murphy;
Junior Parker on harp; a piano player who was called Destruction—he was
from Memphis—and I had a drummer called Willie Steele. We played all
through the states of Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Missouri. The
band was using all electric, amplified instruments at that time. After I
had come to West Memphis, I had gotten me an electric guitar. I had one
before I went into the Army, and when I came out I bought another one.

I was broadcasting, too, on a radio station in West Memphis, KWM. I went
to a Helena station a time or two in Sonny Boy’s place when he had to be
away, he’d get me to blow harp with his little outfit. But I had a
steady job on KWM. It came on at 3 o’clock in the evening. It was in ’49
that I started to broadcast. I had been lucky enough to get a spot on
KWM. I produced the show myself, went around and spoke to store owners
to sponsor it, and I advertised shopping goods. Soon I commenced
advertising grain, different seeds such as corn, oats, wheat, then
tractors, tools, and plows. Sold the advertising myself, got my own
sponsors. Had that show for five years.


It was during this time that I started recording. The first record I
cut, “Saddle My Pony” and “Worried All The Time”, I made it for the Sun
label through Ike Turner. I believe that at that time Leonard Chess was
backing this fellow in Memphis who ran the Sun label, a guy named
Phillips. So when I made the record, they sent it to Chess. It was done
through two or three fellows, because I was a farmer, and I didn’t know
what was happening. I was glad to get a sound out, you know. This was in
1948.


Ike Turner had me do some recording soon after, for a label in
California. He was a talent scout for them, RPM records. We cut them in
Memphis, though he had come from California to cut them. See, something
had gone wrong between Sun and Ike, so he switched around and put me
with RPM. I cut a batch of numbers for RPM, all at the same time. Now,
both of the records came out at about the same time—on Chess and RPM.
Well, Chess, he jumped up and sent a man down there to catch me before I
messed up again. I was fixing to get ready to cut for somebody else, but
Chess signed me, put me under contract. I stayed down there and made my
second recordings for Chess, but the next ones were made in Chicago. I
came here in the winter of ’52, before Christmas. I came here to cut the
records, and I’ve been going ever since in the business.

I left the other guys back in West Memphis and came up to Chicago by
myself—they was afraid to take the chance. I went back down there a year
later and picked up some of them, brought them back with me. But at
first I was using guys that Chess furnished, the studio band that I
recorded with—bassist Willie Dixon, guitarist Robert Lockwood Jr., and
so on. A little later I got guitarist Hubert Sumlin; I sent back down
south and got him. He was just a young man then. And I also got Willie
Johnson, one of the first guitar players I had in the South. In West
Memphis I had been using Willie Steele on drums, but he didn’t come up
here; at the time I sent for him he had to go into the Army, and he
decided to make a career of it. He’s still in the Army.


After moving to Chicago, I found it easy to get into those clubs,
playing my music, ‘cause the people heard about me before I come: the
records were out before I came to Chicago. Right off, I started playing
at a place at 13th and Ashland. Muddy Waters had been playing there at
that time, and they put me in there. Then I went to stretching out all
across town. After people found I was there, they commenced giving me
jobs. I only played at one house-rent party here. They tore up all my
instruments, and I said to myself that I wasn’t ever gonna play for no
more of them.

When I first got here, a lot of these jazz musicians, they wouldn’t even
look around at me because I was playing blues: "Who’s that, a blues
singer? I don’t like no blues." But things have changed a whole lot:
more people go for blues nowadays than they do for jazz, it seems.

It’s just that people’s tastes change. I don’t know why this has
happened, but it does look like the blues are getting bigger from what
they used to be. The reason is hard to say. It’s just in the people’s
minds—what they want. People get these different ideas. Now, take you
and me, we might want to hear "How High The Moon," "Sunny Side Of The
Street," or "It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More." Here’s a bunch over here,
want to hear "Hey Baby, Where’d You Stay Last Night?" It’s just in
people’s minds, their taste, what they want to hear. Now, me, I just
like blues because to me it sounds good.

People ask me what the blues are. I think the blues is problems: when a
man doesn’t have no money and no job and has a family to look after and
connections don’t meet right for him. So that’s what I call blues—when
you don’t have good connections for yourself. But singing about them
doesn’t really make things easier, I think—it just takes your mind off
it. Your singing ain’t gonna help you none; the problem is still there.

Now, I don’t consider myself a professional musician. I couldn’t say I’m
a professional ‘cause I don’t know too much about music. I’m just an
entertainer; I can entertain pretty well in my way of doing. There’s
some good musicians out there, way better than I, got better sound than
I have perhaps. Or course, I have my own sound.

But if you are a musician and you’re going out to play music, you have
to make up a song. It wouldn’t sound right if you sat up all night and
played and didn’t sing nothing. People wouldn’t be interested in it; I
don’t care how pretty the music it is. It needs a song in it to make it
blend. You got to fit your words into your music without any spots and
spaces.

When I go out, I sing for the people. Before I became an entertainer,
though, I sang for myself. Anything I set up and figured was good, I
made up a song about it. I just watch people, their ways. I play by the
movement of the people, the way they live. Probably, over there at that
house there might be people—I don’t think they’re living right, they do
things not becoming. You see, everything that sing is a story. The songs
have to tell a story. See, if you don’t put a story in there, people
won’t want to listen to it, because people mostly have been through the
same emotions. Since I’m an entertainer that’s what I have to give the
people who come to hear me, but my records. But me, myself, I just like
music period, regardless of what kind it is. If it’s played right, got a
good sound, and pleases my ear, and isn’t too loud, I listen to it.

Now, I don’t think my music has changed much over the years. Not much
really; but, of course, I did have to step up with the tempo. I used to
play very slow, but I had to come up with the tempo of today. I went to
school for my chords and positions on guitar after I got here. See, I
didn’t know my positions when I was playing those slow blues, but over
the last few years I went to the Chicago Music School, and they taught
me my positions.

On those early records, even the ones for RPM, I was the one told the
guys what to play, how the music was to go. Now, the bass patterns on
those records, they are mine—that’s my bass. Some of those numbers are
just on one chord. There’s no changes to them; that’s something I got
from the old music. But the music, the songs, the sound—they are mine
all the way out, from coming up playing guitar.

I always tried to play a different sound from the other fellow. Well,
now, near about everybody got that rocking sound; well, I just tried to
make mine short and have a good sound, to play something different. My
music.




Peace, Mudcatz