Born June 10th, 1910 (died January 10th, 1976)
Key Tracks "Smoke Stack lightning," "Back Door Man," "I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)"
Influenced Robert Plant, Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits

John Fogerty was nine when he first heard Howlin' Wolf's sandpaper voice on the radio. "It was just so powerful, and so mystical and spooky," he says. Wolf's preternatural croak on tracks like 1956's "Smoke Stack Lightning" and 1961's "Back Door Man" would inspire British Invasion bands such as the Yardbirds and the Rolling Stones, not to mention Fogerty's own Creedence Clearwater Revival: "We followed his career the way that we would later follow Elvis and Buddy Holly," he says. Wolf's greatest legacy was the sense of soulful menace that singers like Fogerty would try to approximate. "When I heard Howlin' Wolf," said legendary Sun Records producer Sam Phillips, "I said, 'This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies.' "