Howlin’ Wolf

Well, the connection between Allen Ginsberg and Chester Burnett, we’ll confess is an oblique one – but it’s a real one

Allen to Harvey Kubernick, back in 1996:

“I grew up on the Blues – Ma Rainey and Lead Belly. I listened to them live on radio station WNYC, back in the late ‘thirties or early ‘forties. So I have a blues background. There’s some kind of Hebraic cantillation relation to the blues that I’ve always had…”

Jayne Cortez (from A Jazz Fan Looks Back (2002):

Allen couldn’t sing the Blues/ So he started howling/ Not like Howlin’ Wolf  but Howlin ‘ Allen/ Howling all over the place/ About sex & God & global excess of carbon emissions….

Chester Burnett, Howlin’ Wolf, one of a kind, one of the great legendary Chicago bluesmen. Born on June 10, 1910, in Whites, Mississippi. Died January 10, 1976.

Here’s some rare footage of the man himself:

and this historic footage (from 1965) when Howlin’ Wolf played with The Rolling Stones