Willie Dixon - Back Door Man

Little did the world know that in 1915, the person who would come to be known as "The Godfather of the blues" would be welcomed into the world!........ "The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits...As long as American Music survives, so will the blues..." - Willie Dixon

"Back Door Man" is a blues song written by Willie Dixon for Howlin' Wolf, released by Chess Records as a B-side to Wolf's "Wang Dang Doodle" in 1961. The song's author Willie Dixon recorded it on his 1970 album I Am The Blues. In southern culture, the phrase "back-door man" refers to a man having an affair with a married woman, using the back door as an exit before the husband comes home. The phrase "back-door man" dates from the 1920s, but the term became a double entendre in the 1960s, also meaning "one who practices anal intercourse." The song became an early standard cover song of The Doors and they recorded it for their 1967 debut album. Album: 'Willie Dixon I Am The Blues' Chess Records 1970, reissue Abner - Spector ('360 Sound') Columbia Legacy ' Roots and Blues' CK 53627 Willie Dixon - vocal w/Chicago All-stars: Johnny Shines - guitar, Walter 'Shakey' Horton - harmonica Sunnyland Slim, Lafayette Leake - piano and Clifton James - drums

Willie Dixon - Crazy For My Baby

Little did the world know that in 1915, the person who would come to be known as "The Godfather of the blues" would be welcomed into the world!........ "The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits...As long as American Music survives, so will the blues..." - Willie Dixon

Spam in August 2012

• August in figures
• Spam in the spotlight
  • Late summer is the most dangerous period
• Statistical summary
  • Sources of spam by country
  • Malware in mail traffic
• Phishing
• Spam by category
• Conclusion

Howlin' Wolf - Highway 49

Chester Arthur Burnett, "Howlin' Wolf", born June 10, 1910, in West Point, Mississippi, Chester Arthur was one of Dock and Gertrude Burnett's six children. Burnett refined his singing at Life Board Baptist Church in Aberdeen as a lad. At the age of thirteen, he moved with his family to sharecrop on the Young and Myers Plantation near Ruleville. Burnett learned to play the guitar as a teen, influenced by guitarists Charley Patton and Willie Brown, who played on the square in nearby Drew. Burnett moved to the Dockery Plantation in 1929, both to work and to be around Patton.

Between 1928 and 1933, Burnett augmented his sharecropping income playing fish fries, dances, and the streets of Drew, Cleveland, and Ruleville, Mississippi. He adopted the stage name "Howlin' Wolf" during the 1930s, possibly from a record by Texas bluesman J. T. "Funny Paper" Smith. In 1933, Wolf moved to Twist, Arkansas, to farm, occasionally playing on the road with Robert Johnson, Texas Alexander, and brother-in-law Sonny Boy Williamson. Williamson also taught him the rudiments of harmonica, though not to Sonny Boy's own level of expertise. During the late 1930s Wolf often ventured to Memphis, playing local juke joints off Beale Street or in W. C. Handy Park for tips.

Wolf entered the U.S. Army in 1941, often entertaining troops during his hitch. After being mustered out in 1945, he returned to farming in the Delta. During the 1940s Wolf received his first radio work at KFFA, broadcasting King Biscuit Time from the Floyd Truck Lines Building in Helena, Arkansas. Joe Willie Wilkins contacted Wolf while the latter was in Moorehead and offered him work on King Biscuit Time playing harmonica when Williamson was away. In 1948, Wolf moved to West Memphis, Arkansas, where he landed a job as a DJ for radio station KWEM. Adapting to new technologies in electrical amplification, he assembled a crackerjack band featuring Willie Johnson on guitar, Bill "Destruction" Johnson on piano, and Willie Steel on drums. Sam Phillips, a white recording engineer in Memphis, heard Wolf's show and immediately arranged a recording session for the band at his 706 Union Avenue studio.

The session yielded the songs "Moanin' at Midnight" and "How Many More Years," which were leased to Chess Records and released as a single. On record, Wolf's huge, ferocious voice sounded as if it were torn from the back of his throat. His high-pressure moaning punctuated by a wolfish howl sounded like an amped-up Tommy Johnson. Wolf's harmonica playing held the melody while Willie Johnson played slashing guitar riffs and Willie Steel pounded the drums ferociously. The single soon entered Billboard's R&B Top 10, rising to number eight.

Wolf moved to Chicago in 1952 to be closer to the Chess studio but he continued to record Delta blues including "I Asked for Water" (a version of Tommy Johnson's "Cool Drink of Water Blues") and the Mississippi Sheiks' "Sitting on Top of the World." He continued to tour the South, and eventually became a successful international draw.

Howlin' Wolf died January 10, 1976, in Hines, Illinois. He is buried in Chicago.

Astor Piazzolla - Primavera Porteña

Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla was an Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player. He revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music.

Piazzolla.org

Corinthians x Palmeiras - Brasileirão 2012

Neste maravilhoso ano de 2012, quando vimos o Timão ser Campeão Invicto da Taça Libertadores da América e em cima do temido Boca Juniors, ainda temos muito que celebrar com as duas vitórias obtidas sobre o Palmeiras no Brasileirão.

Destaque para o garoto Romarinho.

Curta os gols das 2 partidas.

Willie Dixon - 1963 - Sittin' and Cryin' the Blues

Little did the world know that in 1915, the person who would come to be known as "The Godfather of the blues" would be welcomed into the world!........ "The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits...As long as American Music survives, so will the blues..." - Willie Dixon

Performing here with Memphis Slim (piano), Matt Murphy (guitar) and Billy Stepney (drums)

Full Analysis of Flame's Command & Control servers - Securelist

Full Analysis of Flame's Command & Control servers - Securelist: Our previous analysis of the Flame malware, the advanced cyber-espionage tool that-s linked to the Stuxnet operation, was initially published at the end of May 2012 and revealed a large scale campaign targeting several countries in the Middle East

Charley Patton - Rattlesnake Blues

Born in April 1891, between Edwards and Bolton in southern Mississippi, Charley Patton was the scrawny child of sharecropper parents. In 1900, his family moved 100 miles north to the Delta and the Will Dockery Plantation. There Patton fell under the spell of guitarist Henry Sloan and would follow him to gigs. By 1910, he had become proficient as a performer and songwriter, having already composed "Down The Dirt Road Blues," a slow drag called "Banty Rooster Blues," and his theme song "Pony Blues."

After the turn of the decade Patton began playing with Willie Brown, a guitarist who would later become a regular on his recordings. Patton's music began to exert considerable influence; guitarist Tommy Johnson had moved to the Dockery vicinity circa 1913 and was soon playing Delta blues including Patton's "Pony Blues." Around 1914, Patton began playing his guitar with members of the Chatmon family, working picnics and frolics. Bo, Sam, and Lonnie Chatmon and guitarist Walter Vinson later would gain fame as the Mississippi Sheiks. Bo Chatmon also recorded many titles as soloist Bo Carter. Patton continued playing and rambling around the Delta, going north to Memphis and as far west as Arkansas and Louisiana. By 1926, a young Robert Johnson had begun following Patton and Brown to gigs trying to learn from the veteran guitarists.

Patton made his first recording in June 1929, cutting fourteen songs for the Paramount label, all issued on 78s. Such was the success of his initial session that he was invited four months later to Paramount's new studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, where he recorded twenty-eight additional tunes. Patton's polyrhythmic picking, accompanied by tapping the body of the guitar, created an intricate dance melody that its author could play for thirty minutes or more. Son House, who recorded in a 1930 session that also featured Patton and Brown, recalled that Charley "clowned" for an audience by playing the guitar behind his back or between his knees. Patton included regional landmarks in his tunes - places that a local record-buying audience would be familiar with, including a Moorehead, Mississippi railroad crossing, "Where The Southern Crosses The Dog," in "Green River Blues" and Parchman Farm in "A Spoonful Blues."

Howlin' Wolf, who moved to Dockery in 1926, recalled seeing Patton on the town square in Drew, not far from Dockery Plantation. Patton's hypnotic three-note songs also deeply influenced Clarksdale's John Lee Hooker, who recorded his own version of Patton's "Pea Vine Blues." Bukka White also cited a desire "to come to be a famous man, like Charley Patton," and demonstrated a similar knack for playing dance songs for extended periods. Patton's last recording session was in New York City in February 1934, two months before his death.

Charley Patton died April 28, 1934, at 350 Heathman Street in Indianola, Mississippi. Patton's grave is located in Holly Ridge, Mississippi, and the tombstone acknowledges his pivotal role in the development of the Delta Blues.

Astor Piazzolla - Verano Porteño

Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla was an Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player. He revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music.

Piazzolla.org

Mississippi John Hurt - Coffee Blues

"Mississippi" John Hurt

Born July 3, 1893, in Teoc, Mississippi, Hurt and his family moved in 1895 to Avalon, a town on the edge of Mississippi's hill country. He dropped out of school at the age of nine to begin working as a farmer. In 1902, Hurt picked up the guitar, a $1.50 "Black Annie" his mother bought him. Self-taught, Hurt developed a distinctive three-finger style that bears no resemblance to other area musicians. He also developed proficiency with the harmonica but was always a self-accompanied musician. Unlike Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie, Hurt refused an offer to accompany a traveling medicine show, preferring to stay close to home.

Hurt played solo at local parties where his fluid yet highly syncopated guitar style made him a favorite among Carroll County dancers. His fame was localized, however; it was not until 1912 that he started playing parties around Jackson, Mississippi, 103 miles from his native Avalon. While Hurt worked mostly outside music as a farmer and laborer, his musical reputation among whites as well as blacks led to his first recording session in Memphis in 1928. Willie T. Narmour and Shell W. Smith, two white country musicians from Carroll County, recommended him to their record producer, Tommy Rockwell.

Hurt recorded eight sides for the Okeh label, two of which were released and sold well: "Frankie" and "Nobody's Dirty Business." In Memphis for the same recording session was St. Louis guitarist/pianist Lonnie Johnson, and Hurt later recalled that Blind Lemon Jefferson and Bessie Smith were also in town. He saw none of these famous musicians play but instead returned home to Avalon. Okeh called Hurt to New York City for another session in December 1928, where he cut twelve additional sides, including "Avalon Blues." Again, Hurt returned home to Avalon to farm and play music for local parties.

These two sessions were the extent of Hurt's recording before the Great Depression curtailed record sales. His graceful picking, gentle crooning, and homespun lyrics marked him as an exceptionally talented musician. The preponderance of songs about legendary figures in his repertoire ("Casey Jones," "Frankie," "Stack O'Lee Blues") and the lack of then-modern blues influences on his style, establish Hurt as a link between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Okeh originally designated two of his songs "Old Time Music," an appellation reserved for the label's hillbilly series. This, together with the fact that white musicians were familiar with and recommended his musicianship, suggests strongly that Hurt's music sprang from a common source that produced blues and country music.

Hurt lived a quiet life as a farmer and laborer, playing occasional parties and fish fries until 1963. He was rediscovered in Avalon, a consequence of having named it as his hometown in a record made thirty-five years before. Hurt enjoyed great popularity during the blues revival of the 1960s, making television appearances, playing folk festivals, and recording albums. Exceptionally well liked by all who came in contact with him, he became the most famous of all the rediscovered 1920s bluesmen, eclipsing in his fame the celebrated Son House and Skip James.

His newfound fame lasted three years before his death on November 2, 1966. Mississippi John Hurt's grave is located outside his hometown of Avalon, Mississippi.

Son House - Death Letter Blues

Born near Lyon, Mississippi, March 21, 1902, Son House (Eddie James House Jr) chopped cotton as a teenager while developing a passion for the Baptist church. He delivered his first sermon at the age of fifteen and within five years was the pastor of a small country church south of Lyon. His fall from the church was a result of an affair with a woman ten years his senior, whom he followed home to Louisiana. By 1926, House had returned to the Lyon area and began playing guitar under the tutelage of an obscure local musician named James McCoy. He developed quickly as a guitarist; within a year he had fallen in with Delta musician Rube Lacy and began emulating his slide guitar style. House shot and killed a man during a house party near Lyon in 1928. He was sentenced to work on Parchman Farm, but was released within two years after a judge in Clarksdale re-examined the case. Having been advised by the judge to leave the Clarksdale vicinity, House relocated to Lula and there met bluesman Charley Patton while playing at the Lula railroad depot for tips.

Patton befriended House, who began working as a musician around the Kirby Plantation. In 1930, Patton brought him, guitarist Willie Brown, and pianist Louise Johnson to Grafton, Wisconsin, for a recording session with Paramount Records. House's influence on the Delta School of musicians can be judged from a handful of recordings made in Grafton. His song "Preachin' The Blues Part I & II" was a six-minute biography of his life and served as inspiration for Robert Johnson's "Preaching Blues" and "Walking Blues." House's powerful vocals and slashing slide guitar style established him as a giant of the Delta School but did not lead to commercial success. House continued playing with Willie Brown during the 1930s and developed a relationship with a young Robert Johnson after moving to Robinsonville, Mississippi. After Johnson had learned to play guitar, he began to gig with House and Brown, learning the older musicians' licks.

House, Willie Brown, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and Leroy Williams were recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax near Lake Cormorant, Mississippi, in 1941 for the Library of Congress. Lomax returned the next year to record House in Robinsonville, but the musician did not make another commercial record until the "blues revival" of the 1960s. His influence, however, would be felt through the recordings of Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, Robert Nighthawk, and other successful blues artists.

Son House died October 19, 1988.

Mississippi John Hurt - You Got To Walk That Lonesome Valley

"Mississippi" John Hurt

Born July 3, 1893, in Teoc, Mississippi, Hurt and his family moved in 1895 to Avalon, a town on the edge of Mississippi's hill country. He dropped out of school at the age of nine to begin working as a farmer. In 1902, Hurt picked up the guitar, a $1.50 "Black Annie" his mother bought him. Self-taught, Hurt developed a distinctive three-finger style that bears no resemblance to other area musicians. He also developed proficiency with the harmonica but was always a self-accompanied musician. Unlike Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie, Hurt refused an offer to accompany a traveling medicine show, preferring to stay close to home.

Hurt played solo at local parties where his fluid yet highly syncopated guitar style made him a favorite among Carroll County dancers. His fame was localized, however; it was not until 1912 that he started playing parties around Jackson, Mississippi, 103 miles from his native Avalon. While Hurt worked mostly outside music as a farmer and laborer, his musical reputation among whites as well as blacks led to his first recording session in Memphis in 1928. Willie T. Narmour and Shell W. Smith, two white country musicians from Carroll County, recommended him to their record producer, Tommy Rockwell.

Hurt recorded eight sides for the Okeh label, two of which were released and sold well: "Frankie" and "Nobody's Dirty Business." In Memphis for the same recording session was St. Louis guitarist/pianist Lonnie Johnson, and Hurt later recalled that Blind Lemon Jefferson and Bessie Smith were also in town. He saw none of these famous musicians play but instead returned home to Avalon. Okeh called Hurt to New York City for another session in December 1928, where he cut twelve additional sides, including "Avalon Blues." Again, Hurt returned home to Avalon to farm and play music for local parties.

These two sessions were the extent of Hurt's recording before the Great Depression curtailed record sales. His graceful picking, gentle crooning, and homespun lyrics marked him as an exceptionally talented musician. The preponderance of songs about legendary figures in his repertoire ("Casey Jones," "Frankie," "Stack O'Lee Blues") and the lack of then-modern blues influences on his style, establish Hurt as a link between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Okeh originally designated two of his songs "Old Time Music," an appellation reserved for the label's hillbilly series. This, together with the fact that white musicians were familiar with and recommended his musicianship, suggests strongly that Hurt's music sprang from a common source that produced blues and country music.

Hurt lived a quiet life as a farmer and laborer, playing occasional parties and fish fries until 1963. He was rediscovered in Avalon, a consequence of having named it as his hometown in a record made thirty-five years before. Hurt enjoyed great popularity during the blues revival of the 1960s, making television appearances, playing folk festivals, and recording albums. Exceptionally well liked by all who came in contact with him, he became the most famous of all the rediscovered 1920s bluesmen, eclipsing in his fame the celebrated Son House and Skip James.

His newfound fame lasted three years before his death on November 2, 1966. Mississippi John Hurt's grave is located outside his hometown of Avalon, Mississippi.

Muddy Waters - Long Distance Call

McKinley Morganfield "Muddy Waters", born April 4, 1915, in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, to a sharecropping family, Morganfield moved to the Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale to live with his grandmother after the death of his mother in 1918. As a toddler he acquired the nickname Muddy from his grandmother because he loved to play in the muddy water of nearby Deer Creek. At age seven, Morganfield began playing the harmonica and became proficient enough to play fish fries, picnics, and parties by age thirteen. His family attached "Waters" to his nickname when he began playing harmonica, and the name stuck. Waters first heard records by Blind Lemon Jefferson, Memphis Minnie, Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red, and the Memphis Sheiks on a neighbor's Victrola. He bought his first guitar at age seventeen with his sharecropper's wages and taught himself to play.

Waters's early influences were local guitarists Charley Patton and Son House. One of the first blues tunes he learned was House's "Walkin' Blues." At age eighteen, Waters opened a juke joint where patrons could drink, gamble, eat fried fish, and listen to the jukebox. He played parties, juke joints, and suppers in the Clarksdale vicinity with guitarist Scott Bohannah or his own string band. Waters fell under the sway of Delta guitarist Robert Johnson, whom he saw on the front porch of Hirsberg's Drugstore in Friars Point and whose records he played on his jukebox. Helena-based bluesman Robert Nighthawk offered to bring Waters to Chicago with him on a recording trip during the late 1930s, but he refused the invitation, preferring to remain with his infirm grandmother. In 1940, Waters did venture to St. Louis, then a hotbed of blues, but disliked it and returned to Stovall Plantation.

On August 28, 1941, folklorists Alan Lomax and John Work recorded Waters and fiddler Henry "Son" Sims at Waters's juke joint. Impressed with Waters's ability, they returned in July of the following year for additional material. The sound of his voice emanating from the recording machine's playback convinced Waters he had commercial ability. He caught a train to Chicago in May 1943, found a job, and was soon playing rent parties in the city. A recording session for Columbia Records in 1946 went unreleased. Another for the 20th Century label resulted in the release of "Mean Red Spider," a B-side to James "Sweet Lucy" Carter's 1947 single. Waters next recorded for the fledgling Aristocrat label, owned by Leonard and Phil Chess, in 1947. His second Aristocrat release, "I Can't be Satisfied" backed with "Feel Like Going Home," quickly sold out several pressings, thereby making Waters a bona fide star and solidifying the foundation of the Chess record label.

"I Can't be Satisfied" incorporates all the elements that would make Muddy Waters famous. His strong, rich tenor, sung slightly behind the beat, had a drawl that appealed to southern-born black record buyers. Waters's dark, bass-laden slide guitar conjured shades of blue that stood in stark contrast to the jazzy, single-string guitarists such as T. Bone Walker who were then in vogue. He also became a noted bandleader whose groups became a spawning ground for later blues stars "Little" Walter Jacobs, Jimmy Rogers, Otis Spann, James Cotton, and Junior Wells.

Waters returned to the Delta in 1949 with a trio composed of Jacobs, Rogers, and himself. They based their activities in Helena, Arkansas, where they appeared daily on radio station KFFA, then broadcasting from the Floyd Truck Lines Building. KFFA was famous throughout the Delta as the home of King Biscuit Time, a noontime radio show that featured Sonny Boy Williamson and his guitarist/sidemen Robert Jr. Lockwood, Elmore James, and Joe Willie Wilkins. Waters's trio performed on the 6 a.m. slot and used the exposure to advertise their upcoming gigs at the Owl Café and across the Delta. In 1950, he returned to Chicago and resumed his recording career. He continued to record for Chess during the 1950s, churning out down-home hits like "Long Distance Call," "Louisiana Blues," and the Memphis Minnie derivative, "Honey Bee." Waters continued to tour the Deep South during the 1950s and 1960s, often with John Lee Hooker, but his home was now Chicago. In 1958, he toured England, opening the door for bluesmen to tour Europe. In 1960, Waters's band played the Newport Jazz Festival and won a large white following.

Muddy Waters died April 30, 1983, and is buried in Chicago.
Muddy Waters - guitar & vocals,
'Pee Wee' Madison - guitar,
Otis Spann - piano,
Paul Oscher - harmonica,
Sonny Wimberley - bass,
S.P. Leary - drums

Muddy Waters - Kansas City

Kansas City is a rhythm and blues song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1952. First recorded by Little Willie Littlefield the same year, the song later became a #1 hit when it was recorded by Wilbert Harrison in 1959. "Kansas City" became one of Leiber and Stoller's most recorded tunes, with more than three hundred versions, with several appearing in the R&B and pop record charts.

SON HOUSE W/ BUDDY GUY - MY BLACK MAMA - LIVE 1968

Born near Lyon, Mississippi, March 21, 1902, Son House (Eddie James House Jr) chopped cotton as a teenager while developing a passion for the Baptist church. He delivered his first sermon at the age of fifteen and within five years was the pastor of a small country church south of Lyon. His fall from the church was a result of an affair with a woman ten years his senior, whom he followed home to Louisiana. By 1926, House had returned to the Lyon area and began playing guitar under the tutelage of an obscure local musician named James McCoy. He developed quickly as a guitarist; within a year he had fallen in with Delta musician Rube Lacy and began emulating his slide guitar style. House shot and killed a man during a house party near Lyon in 1928. He was sentenced to work on Parchman Farm, but was released within two years after a judge in Clarksdale re-examined the case. Having been advised by the judge to leave the Clarksdale vicinity, House relocated to Lula and there met bluesman Charley Patton while playing at the Lula railroad depot for tips.

Patton befriended House, who began working as a musician around the Kirby Plantation. In 1930, Patton brought him, guitarist Willie Brown, and pianist Louise Johnson to Grafton, Wisconsin, for a recording session with Paramount Records. House's influence on the Delta School of musicians can be judged from a handful of recordings made in Grafton. His song "Preachin' The Blues Part I & II" was a six-minute biography of his life and served as inspiration for Robert Johnson's "Preaching Blues" and "Walking Blues." House's powerful vocals and slashing slide guitar style established him as a giant of the Delta School but did not lead to commercial success. House continued playing with Willie Brown during the 1930s and developed a relationship with a young Robert Johnson after moving to Robinsonville, Mississippi. After Johnson had learned to play guitar, he began to gig with House and Brown, learning the older musicians' licks.

House, Willie Brown, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and Leroy Williams were recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax near Lake Cormorant, Mississippi, in 1941 for the Library of Congress. Lomax returned the next year to record House in Robinsonville, but the musician did not make another commercial record until the "blues revival" of the 1960s. His influence, however, would be felt through the recordings of Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, Robert Nighthawk, and other successful blues artists.

Son House died October 19, 1988.

Muddy Waters - Train Fare Home Blues

Muddy Waters Live at Copenhagen Jazz Festival 1968

Astor Piazzolla - Otoño Porteño

Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla was an Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player. He revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music.

Piazzolla.org

HOWLIN' WOLF - Smokestack Lightning

Chester Arthur Burnett, "Howlin' Wolf", born June 10, 1910, in West Point, Mississippi, Chester Arthur was one of Dock and Gertrude Burnett's six children. Burnett refined his singing at Life Board Baptist Church in Aberdeen as a lad. At the age of thirteen, he moved with his family to sharecrop on the Young and Myers Plantation near Ruleville. Burnett learned to play the guitar as a teen, influenced by guitarists Charley Patton and Willie Brown, who played on the square in nearby Drew. Burnett moved to the Dockery Plantation in 1929, both to work and to be around Patton.

Between 1928 and 1933, Burnett augmented his sharecropping income playing fish fries, dances, and the streets of Drew, Cleveland, and Ruleville, Mississippi. He adopted the stage name "Howlin' Wolf" during the 1930s, possibly from a record by Texas bluesman J. T. "Funny Paper" Smith. In 1933, Wolf moved to Twist, Arkansas, to farm, occasionally playing on the road with Robert Johnson, Texas Alexander, and brother-in-law Sonny Boy Williamson. Williamson also taught him the rudiments of harmonica, though not to Sonny Boy's own level of expertise. During the late 1930s Wolf often ventured to Memphis, playing local juke joints off Beale Street or in W. C. Handy Park for tips.

Wolf entered the U.S. Army in 1941, often entertaining troops during his hitch. After being mustered out in 1945, he returned to farming in the Delta. During the 1940s Wolf received his first radio work at KFFA, broadcasting King Biscuit Time from the Floyd Truck Lines Building in Helena, Arkansas. Joe Willie Wilkins contacted Wolf while the latter was in Moorehead and offered him work on King Biscuit Time playing harmonica when Williamson was away. In 1948, Wolf moved to West Memphis, Arkansas, where he landed a job as a DJ for radio station KWEM. Adapting to new technologies in electrical amplification, he assembled a crackerjack band featuring Willie Johnson on guitar, Bill "Destruction" Johnson on piano, and Willie Steel on drums. Sam Phillips, a white recording engineer in Memphis, heard Wolf's show and immediately arranged a recording session for the band at his 706 Union Avenue studio.

The session yielded the songs "Moanin' at Midnight" and "How Many More Years," which were leased to Chess Records and released as a single. On record, Wolf's huge, ferocious voice sounded as if it were torn from the back of his throat. His high-pressure moaning punctuated by a wolfish howl sounded like an amped-up Tommy Johnson. Wolf's harmonica playing held the melody while Willie Johnson played slashing guitar riffs and Willie Steel pounded the drums ferociously. The single soon entered Billboard's R&B Top 10, rising to number eight.

Wolf moved to Chicago in 1952 to be closer to the Chess studio but he continued to record Delta blues including "I Asked for Water" (a version of Tommy Johnson's "Cool Drink of Water Blues") and the Mississippi Sheiks' "Sitting on Top of the World." He continued to tour the South, and eventually became a successful international draw.

Howlin' Wolf died January 10, 1976, in Hines, Illinois. He is buried in Chicago.