Howlin’ Wolf

Chester Arthur Burnett was born in Mississippi in 1910 and worked as a farmer and juke-joint singer before recording in Memphis and moving to Chicago in the early 1950s. At Chess he cut “Smokestack Lightning,” “Spoonful,” “Little Red Rooster,” and “Killing Floor” — much of it written by or with Willie Dixon — in a voice that no British singer ever managed to imitate. His 1964 European tour with the American Folk Blues Festival found him larger crossover crowds than he had at home; the following year the Rolling Stones made his booking a condition of their own Shindig! appearance, and he played American national television for the first time at 54. He died in 1976.