One of the handful of true giants emanating from postwar Chicago scene, Howling Wolf aka Chester Burnett spent much of his early life in the Delta region and recorded for the first time in 1951, But in the next 10 years he became the only serious rival to Muddy Waters on the Chicago scene, and was a huge influence on countless musicians since. Well over six feet tall, Wolf would throw himself around on stage with reckless abandon, electrifying his audiences as he reacted to the stark rough-hewn blues he and his group put out.

Wolf was born Chester Burnett in West Point, Missisippi, into a sharecropper family, and early in his life began showing intense interest in the music around him. As a teenager he heard such key delta musicians as Charlie Patton and Tommy Johnson, both of whom played in the area.AS the 1920s came to a closeWolf himself began performing, playing rudimentary guitar and singing as well as weilding his harmonica. A weekend player, he gathered together his influences thoroughly reinventing them into a barely recognizable new form and sound. He was not heard oustide of the Delta region until after World War II though, when he began frequenting Memphis joints and whorehouses and appearing on the occasional radio show. By this time his working band had the core personel of Willie Johnson on guitar and Wille Steele on drums. It was this band that Sund Records owner Sam Philips heard on the Radio and which he rushed to record in the summer of 1951. The first single "Moanin' at Midnight" was leased to the chess label and was an immediate hit. By the close of 1952 Wolf had been talked into moving to Chicago by Chess, making definitive recordings not only of his own material, but classic songs by the tireless Willie Dixon. His band comprised of guitarist Hubert Sumlin and drummer Earl Phillips, giving him that rough, rowdy edge he preferred.

In the next decade Wolf would make such raw blues classics as "Evil (is going on)," "Smokestack Lightning," "I Asked for Water," "Moanin for my Baby," "Back Door Man," "Spoonfull," "Killing Floor," "Red Rooster" and many others. Wolf's career recieved a boost from the British beat boom of the 1960s, and he appeared on TV on both sides of the Atlantic. Wolf participated in a lackluster Chess session, titled "Super Super Blues Band", along with Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley in September 1967, and three years later in 1970, he led a London session for Chess featuring Eric Clapton, Stevie Winwood, and the rhythm section of the Rolling Stones, which he candidly described later as "dogshit." In between this he made his only really off-beam album, "Message to the Young", wrapped in an innappropriate soul coating.

By now Wolf was in his sixties and a life of hard work and high living, aggravated by a car accident in 1970, was catching up with him. He worked intermittenly, recording sessions where he felt at ease, and a revisit to the recording studio with Muddy Waters in 1973 proved marketly more successful than the first effort. Wolf died of complications to his long-term kidney and heart conditions.