Howlin' for the Wolf

A good buddy of mine says he wouldn't be caught dead walking the streets with an iPod plugging his ears with music - no matter how great the beat. Being from Chicago's South Side, conventional wisdom dictates that without the use of his ears..well, anything could jump off. And he just might be "caught dead."

I guess he has a point but I was raised in Seattle at a time when it was a little shy, cloudy hamlet in the Northwest and don't have that particular reservation (we can talk about why I prefer not to live above, say, the third floor of any building at another time). Howlin' Wolf has been serving up the backbeat to my life these days. Here's what's pumping in my brain while I explore the Baltimore streets. And, yes, I might look like an absolute fool waiting for the light to change to the beat but I don't care:

I especially love this video. He was some kind of raw man with an overpowering animal magnetism.

Here's an NPR piece I found:

I am reminded of a trip to a Washington, DC bookstore famous for its liberal inclinations. It was where all the hip, NPR-listening DC literati shopped for their books. I was with a distinguished, highly educated friend who was a dean at an exclusive New England college. Her head of beautiful silver natural hair drew a lot of attention. And so it was this particular afternoon that we stood in this bookstore when were became aware of a good white couple paying attention on the q-t to our every word. We'd move, they'd move a little closer, especially the woman. We'd slide around a corner, here they'd come acting real casual like. She was listening so hard, you could easily imagine her ears stetched taut straight out from her head. It was as though a cartoon bubble sat above her head that said, "My, they are sooo articulate. Honey, listen! They speak just like us."

So we racheted it up a notch and began using our $50 and $100 words, words with a whole bunch of letters in them. I don't even recall what we were talking about but it was no doubt some esoteric nonsense. The woman leaned ever closer in restrained disbelief. She had never heard such! In fact, she seemed almost proud by our articulation as if she had discovered some unusual species. Articulate black people! Two of them! This was pre-Obama. Hopefully things have gotten better but I can't be sure.

And then the funniest thing happened. On the store sound system, in the middle of our conversation, we heard, "how, how, how, how!" And like two tribes women we answered the call with our own, "how, how, how, how!" And loud, too. It was like some DNA programming kicked in and we were right there with the call and response thing. When John Lee Hooker calls, you got to answer. And so we did. It was so fast, so spontaneous, so DNA-esque, that it stunned us as much as it did our eavesdropper. Poor thing. She was convinced that we were somehow unusual, unique. How else could you explain our ability to speak the Queen's English so well? But instead we were black women - howling - out in public, even.

Well, she had to rethink all of that. Her mind was blown along with all of her assumptions (and now I'm assuming). I swear she almost fainted from the shock of it all. And we ran, tumbled out of the bookstore screaming with laughter. I love African American culture.

from B'More

LAFF