June 10 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute

BlackFacts.com: Learn/Teach/Create Black History

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 10.

Howlin' Wolf was born.

Born as Chester Arthur Burnett, he was an American blues singer and composer who was one of the principal exponents of the urban blues style of Chicago.

He was brought up on a cotton plantation, and the music he heard was the traditional tunes of the region. He started singing professionally when quite young and in the 1920s and ’30s performed throughout Mississippi, playing in small clubs.

He accompanied himself on guitar and harmonica, but his main instrument was his guttural and emotionally suggestive voice, which gave his songs power and authenticity.

After his first record, “Moanin’ at Midnight” (1951), became a hit, he moved to Chicago, where he, along with Muddy Waters, made the city a center for the transformation of the (acoustic) Mississippi Delta blues style into an electrically amplified style for urban audiences.

Wolf traveled to Europe as part of the Chess blues revival series. His intense, energetic performances of brought him a new generation of blues-influenced rock ‘n’ roll fans.

His work was known only to blues audiences until the Rolling Stones and other British and American rock stars of the 1960s and ’70s acknowledged his influence.

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