Howlin’ Wolf was a musical giant in every way. He stood six foot three, weighed almost three hundred pounds, wore size sixteen shoes, and poured out his darkest sorrows onstage in a voice like a raging chainsaw. Half a century after his first hits, his sound still terrifies and inspires.Born Chester Burnett in 1910, the Wolf survived a grim childhood and hardscrabble youth as a sharecropper in … sharecropper in Mississippi. He began his career playing and singing with the first Delta blues stars for two decades in perilous juke joints. He was present at the birth of rock ’n’ roll in Memphis, where Sam Phillips–who also discovered Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis–called Wolf his “greatest discovery.” He helped develop the sound of electric blues and vied with rival Muddy Waters for the title of king of Chicago blues. He ended his career performing and recording with the world’s most famous rock stars. His passion for music kept him performing–despite devastating physical problems–right up to his death in 1976.
There’s never been a comprehensive biography of the Wolf until now. Moanin’ at Midnight is full of startling information about his mysterious early years, surprising and entertaining stories about his decades at the top, and never-before-seen photographs. It strips away all the myths to reveal–at long last–the real-life triumphs and tragedies of this blues titan.
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The most famous life story in the blues is more legend than fact—the tale of how Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to play guitar, then laid down some massively influential recordings before being poisoned by a jealous man and dying before fame could catch up with him. I heard it at an early age; while I didn’t condone the whole selling-your-soul thing, the general ethos (life fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse) did kind of fit with my whole worldview.
When I got older I started longing for more uplifting stories—stories of perseverance, stories of faith and hope. Not necessarily in the religious sense, but in the belief that maybe a great artist could be a great human being as well. I heard glimmers of Howlin’ Wolf’s life here and there—a story of a man who paid his band members well and treated people kindly and still made amazing music. I wanted a story where nobody had to sell their soul for success. I wanted Wolf’s story to be that story.
I bought this magnificent book—a thoroughly researched and compelling biography—and soon found out the truth was far more complicated.
Wolf’s story, like that of so many African Americans, is a story of the Great Migration—leaving the South, and overt racism, for new opportunities and wealth up north—and subtler forms of prejudice. He lived the blues long before he sang it; he’d been born dirt-poor in hilly eastern Mississippi, cast out by his mother and raised by an abusive great-uncle, and had finally escaped by hitching a ride on a train at age thirteen.
The suffering of Wolf’s early life might have crushed a less resilient soul, and it certainly left its mark on him, but it also shaped his identity—the lone wolf, unable to depend on anyone. He did find some support and stability in the Delta—working as a sharecropper, reconnecting with his father, and meeting the legendary bluesman Charlie Patton. Patton taught the young Wolf to play guitar, and more importantly, became the role model he needed: a captivating showman whose live performances entranced the poor laborers, and lifted them to a better place.
Wolf’s route out of the Delta was slow and circuitous; for years he farmed by day and sang by night. He met and played with other bluesman, including Robert Johnson; he played small towns throughout Mississippi, honing his craft not just as a guitar or harmonica player—his technical skills were not great compared to others—but as an irresistible and spellbinding performer, willing to sweat and shake and pour every bit of his soul into a performance, crawling across the bare wood floors of country juke joints to put on a show his audiences would never forget. By his late thirties, he made his way to the clubs of West Memphis, Arkansas, and got a radio show; eventually his reputation caused Sam Phillips—later to found Sun Records—to tune in. “When I heard Howlin’ Wolf,” Phillips later related, “I said, ‘This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies.”
Wolf was forty-one when he started cutting the records that would shape modern music. “God, what it would be worth to see the fervor in that man’s face when he sang,” Phillips said. “He cut everything out of his mind and sang with his damn soul.” He took that energy and passion with him to Chicago; unlike so many making the Great Migration, he did it not out of poverty and desperation, but in his own car, with folding money in his pocket, as a sharp career move. Perhaps because he’d worked so long to make it, he didn’t take success for granted; backed by an amazing band, he would never rest on their efforts but instead worked hard for every performance, making sure his audiences got their money’s worth.
What did it cost? He left a failing marriage behind in the South, and a son named Floyd whom he wouldn’t see for twenty years. He was a big, physically intimidating man, and while he paid his musicians fairly and even set aside Social Security and unemployment for them, he wasn’t above getting in fistfights with them, and with rival bluesmen. (Nor was the violence an aberration—he’d allegedly murdered a man in his Mississippi Delta days.) He had reason to hate the religious people in his life—“his mother, the religious fanatic who cast him out, and his great-uncle, the church deacon who beat him with a whip”—and while later in life he said grace in public and said prayers next to his bed every night, the authors also note that, “at some level, Wolf really did feel that he’d sold his soul to the devil.” After his death, Floyd—miles away in Connecticut, with no knowledge of his father’s passing—thought he heard Wolf calling him from the kitchen, asking for water; Wolf’s son, steeped in religious tradition, sensed his father was gone, and believed the request for water meant that he was hell-bound.
Wolf’s soul continues to haunt us—in recordings his voice is still an emotive locomotive, as powerful as anything in music, sure to be listened to for all time. Is that enough of an afterlife? One has to wonder—for as much acclaim as he got, he still seemed dissatisfied near the end of his life, caught up in legal battles with the record company that made him famous, and with at least one of the massive rock bands that grew famous, in part, by stealing from him. And yet he was also a nice and decent and gracious man, happily married at last, a man who’d kept working to improve himself, and whose legacy of slow success through perseverance is an inspiration to all whose souls are weary. But still, his legacy is that voice, “his gift from God,” in the words of one fellow bluesman; it was a lonely voice, but it still gives comfort to millions of souls, and it’s hard to imagine a more divinely ordained outcome.
I wanted another legend, to compete with Robert Johnson’s—instead, with this book, I got something better. A complicated life reconstructed, a big man who sweated on stage and is resurrected on the page, functionally illiterate for much of his life but incredibly smart: one whose heart burned with emotion, and whose voice continues to cast that feeling into our souls any time we care to listen.
The most famous life story in the blues is more legend than fact—the tale of how Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to play guitar, then laid down some massively influential recordings before being poisoned by a jealous man and dying before fame could catch up with him. I heard it at an early age; while I didn’t condone the whole selling-your-soul thing, the general ethos (life fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse) did kind of fit with my whole worldview.
When I got older I started longing for more uplifting stories—stories of perseverance, stories of faith and hope. Not necessarily in the religious sense, but in the belief that maybe a great artist could be a great human being as well. I heard glimmers of Howlin’ Wolf’s life here and there—a story of a man who paid his band members well and treated people kindly and still made amazing music. I wanted a story where nobody had to sell their soul for success. I wanted Wolf’s story to be that story.
I bought this magnificent book—a thoroughly researched and compelling biography—and soon found out the truth was far more complicated.
Wolf’s story, like that of so many African Americans, is a story of the Great Migration—leaving the South, and overt racism, for new opportunities and wealth up north—and subtler forms of prejudice. He lived the blues long before he sang it; he’d been born dirt-poor in hilly eastern Mississippi, cast out by his mother and raised by an abusive great-uncle, and had finally escaped by hitching a ride on a train at age thirteen.
The suffering of Wolf’s early life might have crushed a less resilient soul, and it certainly left its mark on him, but it also shaped his identity—the lone wolf, unable to depend on anyone. He did find some support and stability in the Delta—working as a sharecropper, reconnecting with his father, and meeting the legendary bluesman Charlie Patton. Patton taught the young Wolf to play guitar, and more importantly, became the role model he needed: a captivating showman whose live performances entranced the poor laborers, and lifted them to a better place.
Wolf’s route out of the Delta was slow and circuitous; for years he farmed by day and sang by night. He met and played with other bluesman, including Robert Johnson; he played small towns throughout Mississippi, honing his craft not just as a guitar or harmonica player—his technical skills were not great compared to others—but as an irresistible and spellbinding performer, willing to sweat and shake and pour every bit of his soul into a performance, crawling across the bare wood floors of country juke joints to put on a show his audiences would never forget. By his late thirties, he made his way to the clubs of West Memphis, Arkansas, and got a radio show; eventually his reputation caused Sam Phillips—later to found Sun Records—to tune in. “When I heard Howlin’ Wolf,” Phillips later related, “I said, ‘This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies.”
Wolf was forty-one when he started cutting the records that would shape modern music. “God, what it would be worth to see the fervor in that man’s face when he sang,” Phillips said. “He cut everything out of his mind and sang with his damn soul.” He took that energy and passion with him to Chicago; unlike so many making the Great Migration, he did it not out of poverty and desperation, but in his own car, with folding money in his pocket, as a sharp career move. Perhaps because he’d worked so long to make it, he didn’t take success for granted; backed by an amazing band, he would never rest on their efforts but instead worked hard for every performance, making sure his audiences got their money’s worth.
What did it cost? He left a failing marriage behind in the South, and a son named Floyd whom he wouldn’t see for twenty years. He was a big, physically intimidating man, and while he paid his musicians fairly and even set aside Social Security and unemployment for them, he wasn’t above getting in fistfights with them, and with rival bluesmen. (Nor was the violence an aberration—he’d allegedly murdered a man in his Mississippi Delta days.) He had reason to hate the religious people in his life—“his mother, the religious fanatic who cast him out, and his great-uncle, the church deacon who beat him with a whip”—and while later in life he said grace in public and said prayers next to his bed every night, the authors also note that, “at some level, Wolf really did feel that he’d sold his soul to the devil.” After his death, Floyd—miles away in Connecticut, with no knowledge of his father’s passing—thought he heard Wolf calling him from the kitchen, asking for water; Wolf’s son, steeped in religious tradition, sensed his father was gone, and believed the request for water meant that he was hell-bound.
Wolf’s soul continues to haunt us—in recordings his voice is still an emotive locomotive, as powerful as anything in music, sure to be listened to for all time. Is that enough of an afterlife? One has to wonder—for as much acclaim as he got, he still seemed dissatisfied near the end of his life, caught up in legal battles with the record company that made him famous, and with at least one of the massive rock bands that grew famous, in part, by stealing from him. And yet he was also a nice and decent and gracious man, happily married at last, a man who’d kept working to improve himself, and whose legacy of slow success through perseverance is an inspiration to all whose souls are weary. But still, his legacy is that voice, “his gift from God,” in the words of one fellow bluesman; it was a lonely voice, but it still gives comfort to millions of souls, and it’s hard to imagine a more divinely ordained outcome.
I wanted another legend, to compete with Robert Johnson’s—instead, with this book, I got something better. A complicated life reconstructed, a big man who sweated on stage and is resurrected on the page, functionally illiterate for much of his life but incredibly smart: one whose heart burned with emotion, and whose voice continues to cast that feeling into our souls any time we care to listen.