THE LATE, GREAT HUBERT SUMLIN

Hubert Sumlin, guitarist, died the day before yesterday, at the age of 80. My own tribute was written while he was still alive, inside the entry for Howlin Wolf in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. I wrote that...

... the main guitarist Wolf used from 1954 onwards was the consummate Hubert Sumlin, whose best work is amongst the finest electric guitar playing in the universe. He plays solos of divine, deranged descending notes, tense as steel cable, grungy as hot-rod cars crashing, and as piercing as God cracking open the sky. Howlin’ Wolf brought Sumlin up to Chicago from the south... Hubert Sumlin’s influence is as plain as lightning on MIKE BLOOMFIELD - you can hear it on ‘Maggie’s Farm’, Dylan’s electric début performance at the Newport Folk Festival of 1965 - and on ROBBIE ROBERTSON, as you can hear equally on the 1966 Dylan concert performances and the later album Planet Waves.

I'd like to add that regardless of whom he influenced, Hubert Sumlin was it. If you want just one sample of his shuddering prowess, listen to Howlin Wolf's completely brilliant 'Goin' Down Slow' (on which the monologue is not by Wolf but by Willie Dixon). Sumlin was young then, while the song asks the singer and speaker to sound old, and the way Sumlin brings together the pent-up passion of youth and the song's dramatic thrust is sheer genius. It's my single all-time favourite slice of guitarwork, and it's here: