Howling At The Moon-When Howlin’ Wolf Held Forth  

By Jack Callahan

I have been encouraged by fellow older writers in this space to not put my extraneous remarks about the turmoil, the now vaunted internal in-fighting at this blog over the past several months, in brackets but let it flow as part of the narration for the piece. Their idea is that the remarks are more likely not to be famously red-penciled (famous since most editor like to use blue pencil to cut out parts they don’t like for whatever reason) by the current site manager Greg Green who gained his position as a direct result of that faction fight. And it really was a faction fight since it pitted the so-called “Young Turk” younger writers against the old guard around the previous manager whose name I will not use here as an added guarantee that the piece will be posted although my real ace in the hole is my serious financial backing for this site, and on-line American Folk Gazette, American Film Gazette and Progressive Nation. 

This is my opening shot in defense of those older writers who rely on these outlets for their daily bread and to get their material before as Seth Garth always likes to say “a candid world.” I am a very sporadic article contributor here but the latest rumors which are persistent that the “winning” side is planning a “purge” of the older writers (and any other writers who disagree with the direction of the current site manager and his hand-picked Editorial Board created in the wake of the dispute to “guide” the work) and a serious change of direction in the political, cultural, music, film and book material presented has me very concerned both for the older writers and for the direction of the blog. For example the notion which I am not sure how far it has been discussed to eliminate coverage of the classic blues, electirc blues which forms the basis for this short review. My God eliminating one of the central organic Amercian musical forms. I will expand on this more in a review I am writing for the book version of Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show. Hopefully this opening shot will get by the more “democratic red pencil of the current regime.

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 Some music you acquired naturally, you know like kids’ songs learned in school (The Farmer in the Dell, etc. in case you forgot) and embedded in the back of your mind even fifty years later. Some reflected the time period when you were growing up but were too young to call the music your own like the music that ran around the background of your growing up house on the mother housewife radio or evening record player which in my case was the music that got my parents through my father’s slogging and mother anxiously waiting World War II. You know, Frank, The Andrew Sisters, Peggy Lee, etc.   Other music, the music of my generation, classic rock and rock came more naturally since that is what I wanted to hear when I had my transistor radio to my ear up in my bedroom. Yeah, Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Buddy, Jerry Lee, etc. again. The blues though, the rarified country and electric urban blues of the likes of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf was an acquired taste.       

Acquired through listening to folk music programs which I had been turned onto by Sam Lowell, another older writer here who sided with the “Young Turks” against his old friend the previous site manager on that very same transistor radio in the early 1960s when they would take a break from down home mountain music, western swing ballads, and urban protest music to play some cuts of country or electric blues. See all the big folkies, Dylan, Tom Rush, Dave Van Ronk, people like that were wild to cover the blues in the search for serious roots music from the American songbook. So somebody, I don’t know who, figured if everybody who was anybody was covering the blues in that minute then it made sense to play the real stuff.

The real stuff having been around for while, having been produced by the likes of Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf, going back to the 1940s big time black migration to the industrial plants of the Midwest during World War II when there were plenty of jobs just waiting. But also having been pushed to the background, way to the background with the rise of rock and roll. So it took that combination of folk minute and that then well-hidden electric blues some time to filter through my brain. What did not take a long time once I got “religion” was going crazy over Howlin’ Wolf when I saw him perform. Once I saw him practically eat that harmonica he was playing on How Many More Years down in Newport and which is now immortalized, immortalized as far cyberspace will be able to accomplish that feat on YouTube clips which will allow younger and future generations to see and hear what it was like when men and women played the blues for keeps.  Played like that was the last chance stance. Yes, that is an acquired taste and a lasting one.