WEST POINT – In honor of one of the world’s most dynamic and electrifying blues musicians, organizers of the 15th Annual Howlin’ Wolf Festival have proclaimed 2010 to be “The Year of Wolf.” Blues enthusiasts from around the world will celebrate Wolf’s legacy by attending a memorial to his music this weekend in West Point.
The blues festival will be held at the West Point Civic Center and gates open at 4 p.m. The music starts at 5 p.m.
Several artists are slated to perform on Friday, Sept. 3, including Homemade Jamz, James “Super Chikan” Johnson, Blind Mississippi Morris, The Boondocks Blues Band and several others.
Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.
Organizers said the purpose of the festival is to further blues education within the community and to celebrate the music of Clay County’s native son, Chester Arthur Burnett, better known as Howlin’ Wolf.
“We’ll probably have about 700 to 800 people there,” said Richard Ramsey, program director for the Howlin’ Wolf Museum in West Point. “[People] will come all the way from Norway, the UK, Connecticut and New York. We expect a big crowd, especially since it’s [Wolf’s] 100th birthday.”
Howlin’ Wolf was born on June 10, 1910 in White Station, just north of West Point, and became a towering figure of a man at 6-feet 6-inches tall and weighing about 300 pounds. Wolf spent much of his childhood farming, but after receiving his first guitar from his father, at the age of 18, he began to take his musical career seriously and became one of the most successful and influential blues musicians of his day.
Recording such hits as “Spoonful,” “Smokestack Lightning,” “Evil,” and “Wang Dang Doodle” with his cracked and gruffy voice and expansive yodels and moans, Howlin’ Wolf left behind his impoverished childhood and enjoyed tremendous financial success as an international blues artist.
Reportedly, Wolf learned to play guitar by watching and listening to Charley Patton, and he learned to play the harmonica from the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson.
Historian’s said Wolf’s gripping histrionics and sheer physical intensity gave new meaning to the blues nearly every time he performed.
Wolf was known to jump around the stage like an angry man trying to work off dangerous steam, or wriggle on the floor as if he was in unbearable pain. Whatever the case, Howlin’ Wolf acted out his most potent blues; and became the living embodiment of its most powerful forces.
Howlin’ Wolf died at the age of 66 in a VA hospital in Illinois in 1975 from complications of kidney disease caused by an automobile accident.
Since his death, the legacy of Howlin’ Wolf continues.
In 1980, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. His hometown formed The Howlin’ Wolf Blues Society in 1996 and the first annual Howlin’ Wolf Blues Festival was also held that year.
The Howlin’ Wolf Blues Museum opened its doors in West Point in 2005, and Wolf was also honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail.
Howlin’ Wolf’s life was immortalized in the recent film “Cadillac Records,” which told of the rise and fall of Chess Records in Chicago.
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