Re: Fwd: [Harp-L] Howling Wolf



IMHO, "Moanin' At Midnight" is one of the all time great harmonica classics. Simple and to the point, the harp line in that song is incredibly powerful and is probably the best single example of what Otis Spann was talking about when he said that the harp was the "mother of the band".
I've taken to playing "Moanin' At Midnight" a lot when I'm practicing, in order to try and approach that level of drive and power.


Just my $0.02,
Russ

Winslow Yerxa wrote:

The Wolf was a powerful and tasty, though simple, harp player. he learned to play from his brother in law, Sonny Boy II.

As to his voice, he had at least three dramatically different vocal sounds in addition to his wolf howl, all of which which he used to great effect. There was the pinched, nasal sound, the hollow sound that seemed to be coming out an airshaft, and the flat out gravelly belt. Listen to his recordings of "Evil" and "How Many More Years" for a demonstration.

In his day he was as big as Muddy Waters and they had a rivalry going.

Do you know what network that's on? The channel numbers in my area are probably different.

Winslow

--- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Joe and Cass Leone <leone@xxxx> wrote:

Anyone see the 90 min. profile on Howling (upper premium channel #168)? While predominately known as a singer/guit. player, he also did some harp. Supposedly being very big in the Chicago area in the late 40s to early 60s, I never followed him at the time because I was in "Blue Note" mode. Besides, he had a voice roughly equivalent to chalk screeching on a blackboard. I felt this was roughly analogous to having long hatpins stabbed into my ear drums. :)

formerly known as smo-joe

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