Happy Friday Hour with The Howlin' Wolf: Smokestack Lightning (1964)

- 'Howlin' Wolf' Chester Arthur Burnett-

Among his many accomplishments in music and in life, the anti-pretentious Howlin' Wolf chose to drive a Pontiac station wagon instead of an expensive car even when he could have afforded several.

Howlin' Wolf on war:

“Somebody has been cashing checks and they’ve been bouncing back on us. And these people, the poor class of Negroes and the poor class or white people, they’re getting tired of it. And sooner or later it’s going to bring on a disease on this country, a disease that’s going to spring from mid-air, and it’s going to be bad. It’s like a spirit from some dark valley, something that sprung up from the ocean—like Lucifer is on the earth telling people these obvious things, causing a lot of the people to get irritated. But we can’t afford what’s going to happen. A lot of innocent people is going to get killed unless they get some kind of satisfaction...The black people fighting in Vietnam now, when they come back they ain’t going to settle for these little offers and these back-door handouts like they been doing. They ain’t going to take it ’cause they realize they been cheated. We’re going to have to make a sacrifice to stop what’s going to come to this country. Somebody has got to get up and try to drive this into people’s head. They’re going to have to hand things out or we’re going to take ’em. They’ll bring in some kind of persuader and get some kind of satisfaction.”

—Interviewed in 1968 at the Ash Grove, Los Angeles

-2Truthy