HOLLERIN' AND MOANIN':
Equipment for the Overdriven Blues



Chicago by way of Mississippi blues artist Howlin Wolf was known for the ferocious power of his voice combined with a harmonica and guitar sound every bit as raw and assertive. At an imposing 6’3 and wearing size 16 shoes, Howlin Wolf (born Chester Arthur Burnett) had a now legendary stage presence as he wailed and moaned above the relatively new sound of amplified guitars. Wolf’s first commercial success came in 1952 with two tunes recorded by Sam Philips of Sun Studio who legendarily introduced Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis to the world. “Moaning at Midnight” and “How Many More Years” made it into the top 10 on the Billboard R&B charts and led Wolf to an extended career as a recording artist for Chess Records. Howlin Wolf is credited as one of a handful of musicians who helped to develop the urban blues sound Chicago has become famous for. Sound samples are available in .ogg format at the Howlin Wolf Wikipedia page. For those unable to play .ogg files, a much shorter sample loads automatically when you visit www.howlinwolf.com.

So how exactly is that raw musical guitar tone achieved? In modern times, people spend big bucks buying tube pedals and modern high gain amplifiers in an attempt to emulate a sound garnered from pushing simple inexpensive tube amplifiers far past the level the amp engineers of the day ever imagined. This was a sound born out of necessity as much as creativity. Most early electric guitarists needed gear that was easily portable (e.g. small suitcase sized tube amps) but still had to get over a full band that often contained a drummer and a horn section. Turning the amp to ten resulted in a saturated sustaining sound that shared some sonic similarities with a saxophone. Working with this tone on a nightly basis, musicians were quick to adapt the sound as a part of their style and to expand their technique repertoire to more fully utilize the distorted tone.

One of our favorite “old timey distortion” gear combinations amongst the Empire stock is a Harmony Stratotone with flat wound strings played through a late 60’s Gretsch 6151. At ten, the tone is near identical to many a Howlin Wolf record and is unlike any sound modern technology has managed to create. The Stratotone was Harmony’s response to the development of Leo Fender’s Stratocaster which was taking the guitar market by storm. Of course, the Stratotone is nothing like a Fender Strat. The Harmony model has a gigantic baseball bat neck with reinforced steel, hollow body, concentric colored volume knobs and a groovy atomic eighth note logo on the headstock. The original 1962 catalog description reads:

“Stratotone "Mars" cutaway model double pickup
Provides outstanding value in its price class. Hollow "tone chamber" construction. Ebonized maple fingerboard. Straight-line hardwood neck with built-in steel reinforcing rod. Finely finished in warm sunburst effect showing the grain of the wood. White celluloid bindings. Adjustable bridge. Hinged tailpiece.
Twin built-in pickups, each with tone and volume control. 3 position selector switch permits playing forward pickup for rhythm - bridge pickup for take-off or solo - or both pickups at once, for maximum tone variation. $85.00. Carrying case, $10.00.”

The Gretsch 6151 features a 10” Jensen Special Design brown speaker, an RCA 6v6GT tube, an RCA 5Y3CT and two RCA 12AX7 tubes in the preamp section. The amp has two inputs labeled standard and treble and a foot switch controlled tremolo (sadly we do not have the footswitch but the trem can be engaged manually without it). Controls are Tone, Volume and Tremolo Speed.

The Dual pickup Stratotone is priced at $695 and the Gretsch amp at $495. I should mention we have a good number of other Stratotone guitars with the Harmony, Airline, Holiday and Silvertone brand markings. For more info on Harmony guitars visit The Harmony Database. For more on Gretsch amps try the Gretsch Pages Amp Section. Happy playing!