The electric guitar sound at the heart of Chicago blues has become like a multinational brand over the course of the past 50 years, a thing so familiar that you can practically hear it in your sleep. Chicago blues propels everything from radio hits to TV commercials, you can earn a college degree learning how to play it, and find a corner bar in just about any town in America on any Saturday night where some hot young gun is cranking out an entirely competent, if often over-heated, approximation of “the sound.” But the real artists at the heart of this sound are those whose playing sounds as fresh and radical today as it did the day their classic sides were cut, an accolade that fits none so aptly as it does one Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s lead guitarist for 25 years.
Born in Greenwood, Mississipi, in 1931, and raised just across the Mississippi River in Hughes, Arkansas, Sumlin first saw Howlin’ Wolf perform in West Memphis as a young boy of just 11 or 12 years old. Like so many Delta players, he learned his licks from both sides of the tracks—playing spirituals alongside his church deacon, while studying the technique of Charlie Patton and other early blues masters whenever he could get his hands on their records or dial them in on the radio waves. Sumlin left home at the age of 14 to pursue his love of the guitar, played with his contemporary and one-day blues-harp legend James Cotton in West Memphis for a time, and moved to Chicago in the early ’50s shortly after Howlin’ Wolf’s journey north, to become Wolf’s guitarist and musical right-hand man until the great blues howler’s death in 1976.
Sumlin is one of the great originators of Chicago blues, and one of the most influential forces upon the British blues-rock boom of the mid 1960s, but a close examination of his playing displays the Delta and rural blues roots of the sound more than does the music of many of the other Chicago greats. And in so doing, Sumlin’s sound and technique are arguably more unique, even more timeless. While he can squeeze out stinging, hot blues leads when required, he is also equally capable of taking a quirky, askew approach to a musical motif and making a strikingly original solo out of it. Ever humble, Sumlin even attributes one of the critical elements of his playing style—his frequent use of fingertips in place of a pick—to Howlin’ Wolf. Legend has it that Wolf forbid Sumlin to use a pick for a time during the early years, because his playing was too nimble when he did so and the resultant guitar frenzy crashed all over the vocals. Sumlin developed his fingerstyle playing and has used it ever since, although you do hear evidence of a pick in some of the faster, more aggressive solos, even in the early years. Ironically, however, in using his fingers for a lot of his playing, Sumlin developed a style that was more distinctive than it might have been if he’d stuck with a pick throughout, and was no less nimble and exciting either.
A study of Sumlin’s playing, from both the Wolf cuts and elsewhere, makes for a spirited exercise in keeping on your toes. Genre-tied clichés and standard blues-scale runs are nowhere to be found here, although the body of work absolutely defines electric blues. Examine, as cases in point, the relentlessly snakey fills in “Goin’ Down Slow,”the funky, syncopated riffs behind “Three Hundred Pounds of Joy,” the pinched, playful leads that punctuate “Shake For Me,” and of course the legendary licks behind seminal tunes like “Smokestack Lightning,” “Wang Dang Doodle,” and “Killing Floor.” Just as Sumlin learned from Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters, it was his playing that inspired the likes of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Peter Green, Michael Bloomfield, and Jimi Hendrix to play the blues.
Like most any player of such longevity, Hubert Sumlin has used a range of guitars and amps throughout his career, but the instrument most associated with his formative playing with Howlin’ Wolf is the Gibson Les Paul Goldtop. Sumlin reports that Wolf gave him his first Les Paul, a Goldtop with wraparound bridge and P-90 pickups, in the mid ’50s, and after that was stolen he bought himself another, very likely the 1956 Les Paul Goldtop with P-90s and Tune-o-matic bridge that he is documented as having played later. The single-coil P-90 pickups on these models have a sizzling tone, with plenty of midrange aggression and a biting treble response. With their wide coils and dual alnico magnets, however, they are still about as hot as an early PAF humbucking pickup, and can drive a vintage tube amp into easy break up when desired. Mount a pair of these on a Les Paul, with its solid mahogany body and carved maple top, and you’ve got a great blend of crackle and roar, a classic all around blues tone that is snappy and well defined, yet driving, warm and juicy along with it. Playing them with the fingertips, as Sumlin also did, will also contribute an element of meaty warmth—and some surprising, percussive pop—to the tone. The early Les Pauls with all-in-one wraparound bridges exhibit a certain round, compressed edge to their attack, while the Tune-o-matic makes the note response sharper and more immediate. Otherwise, these guitars’ core tonalities are extremely similar.
Sumlin played through a range of amps during his years with Wolf, but spoke fondly in an interview with Gibson’s Ari Surdoval in 2005 of a Wabash amp that he acquired with his second Les Paul Goldtop. These little-seen amps were manufactured in 1955 by Danelectro for the Wabash brand, and featured two 6L6 output tubes, fat and juicy sounding octal preamp tubes, and a single 15-inch speaker. Sumlin also purportedly used Gibson amps on occasion, possibly a GA-30 or GA-40, and is said to have plugged into the hotter “Mic” channel that these carried in the ’50s in order to really drive the output. With any such tube amp, with the Les Paul cranked up and played hard, you can elicit plenty of beefy tube overdrive with little effort. Listen to Sumlin’s most evocative playing, however, and you hear how often he exercises restraint, too, reining in the volume to achieve a distinctive, clean, biting tone, then winding it up to let loose as the mood required.
Tasteful in both tone and technique, a forger of blues fashion rather than a follower, and a rare artist who can simultaneously sound as fresh as the sunrise and as innovative as tomorrow, Hubert Sumlin makes a great place to begin any education in the electric blues.