Last Friday night, Dustin Hinz and I had a wonderful dinner with blues legend, 77 year-old Hubert Sumlin, and his manager Toni Ann Mamary. Hubert was the grinding, burning force behind Howlin’ Wolf’s band for decades, playing on all their seminal Chess recordings like Back Door Man, I Ain’t Superstitious, Killing Floor, Red Rooster, Smokestack Lightnin’, Spoonful, Wang Dang Doodle and dozens more. He’s worked with Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Willie Dixon, Sonny Boy Williamson and a list of icons that would fill a blues encyclopedia.
Hubert’s got a sweet and easy manner to him, with a flow of stories that surges like a rolling river. He clearly remembers the first “guitar” he ever played, which it turns out, wasn’t wasn’t a guitar it all. In the 1930‘s, his brother nailed some boards to the side of their house in Hughes, Arkansas, stretched 4 piano wires tuned with screws, and literally played the wall with a bottle slide. The whole house was effectively a giant resonator. (We’re going to try this in a hallway close to the Guitar Center marketing department, and we’ll post here when we get it working.)
Hubert also talked about his work on The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions record in 1971, playing alongside Steve Winwood, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Ringo Starr and then 26 year-old Eric Clapton. Eric was a huge fan of Hubert’s, and fought with Chess records to make certain that Hubert wasn’t left behind in Chicago for the recording dates.
After the sessions, Hubert tells us that he was invited to Clapton’s house and escorted into a room that housed Eric’s extensive guitar collection. Eric told a wide-eyed Hubert that he could pick out any guitar in the room and keep it as a gift. Hubert spent some time opening cases and trying out axes until he came upon a certain black Strat he totally fell for. Unfortunately, it was love triangle: Hubert had unwittingly picked out one of Eric’s most cherished go-to instruments. Still, Clapton kept his word, and Hubert left London and returned to the States, Strat in hand.
It wasn’t long afterwards that word got back to Hubert that Clapton badly missed his guitar. “I even got a call from Eric’s butler”, Hubert remembers. So Hubert reunited a relieved Clapton with the precious Strat a few months later backstage at a concert.
The Guitar in question? Turns out it was “Blackie”, an iconic instrument that Guitar Center went on to purchase for a record-setting $959,500 in 2004 at a Christie’s auction to support the Crossroads Centre, a drug and alcohol addiction rehabilitation facility founded by Clapton.
We badly wanted to reunite Hubert and Blackie, but alas, Blackie was “on tour” that Friday night at Guitar Center Hollywood as a part of our series of traveling Legends Collection events featuring iconic instruments from our vaults. Next time for sure.
