Doc Watch- The Howlin Wolf Story- The Secret History of Rock n Roll

 The Howlin Wolf Story- The Secret History of Rock n Roll is a 2003 documentary. It doesn’t have big budget sparkle. What it does have is a glimpse into a music legend.

Howlin Wolf is one of the few bluesmen whose career spans the early 20th century musicians- he played with Robert Johnson and Son House and was mentored by Charlie Patton but he also was part of the 60s blues revival.

Wolf has success in the 1950s, recording for Sam Phillips at Sun Studio and recording for Chess Records. He moves to Chicago and records a series of R&B hits like “Smokestack Lightning” during a hot period for the Blues. When that scene starts to go out of style, in a matter of a few years, it has become popular in the mid 1960s in the UK. The Rolling Stones famously invite Wolf to perform with them on the show Shindig.

It’s amazing to me that Wolf only appeared on American television once but maybe it shouldn’t. There’s some home video footage here from the 1960s and we see some blues legends that we don’t always get to see, like Sonny Boy Williamson 2 and Willie Dixon. There’s also footage of Son House and a famous fight that the two had in the 60s when House had too much to drink.

It’s also interesting to note that Wolf was an astute businessmen with his wife as his manager. He kept his band paid and even though he had not learned to read and write as a child, he taught himself to do so as an adult.

While this feels like a fairly low budget affair, I don’t have any complaints in that it doesn’t a great job. Wolf’s guitarist Hubert Sumlin is interviewed and it has been nice to see Sumlin’s work get more attention in recent years. The interviews include his daughters as well, so we get a good view of him from these talks with the family and his band and footage of Sam Phillips and Marshall Chess

(Sumlin passed in 2011, but he spent his last years playing with the likes of Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Keith Richards and David Johansen. Rolling Stone had him on their 2014 list of Greatest Guitar Players ever).

I always liked Wolf because of his rough voice and the driving guitar. It is nearly impossible to overstaee what impact he had on the Rolling Stones and the British blues rockers (and of course any gravel voiced singer since). His electric Chess albums (such as the 1969 electric album (with the infamous "(Howlin' Wolf) doesn't like it" cover) and the superstar guest filled 1971 London Howlin' Wolf Sessions) gets a good word put in for them (they have quite a few detractors though I like them and generally agree with the notion they brought blues to the masses. Blues purists be damned.) and it’s nice to know for the London session, Eric Clapton only would play on it, if Sumlin was flown in.

The movie ends with heartache as Wolf goes to find his mother but she doesn’t want to see him because he plays :the devil's music". Health issues followed and he dies in 1976 at the age of 65.

This was a great way to learn about Wolf and despite not having a big budget makeover, is a really well done doc. He has always has been a favorite of mine and it’s well worth discovering an influence which we would not have Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and Hendrix but we would also not have the inspired rock of Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart or even the primal early sounds of punk rock.