'Wolfman' Belfour is just hitting his stride

The blues is a medium of well-worn symbols and time-honored stories. From the crossroads of Robert Johnson to the Chicago-bound Delta bluesman, familiarity and heritage define the blues. But occasionally one stumbles across a blues story that defies convention and brings a fresh perspective to the ongoing saga of the blues idiom.

In some ways Robert "Wolfman" Belfour's story sounds pretty standard, as far as the blues go: born and raised on a farm in Mississippi, been playing since he was a kid, plays more in Europe than in the States. But that's where the same old story ends and the real story begins.

Belfour is from North Mississippi, the territory of R.L. Burnside and, until his recent death, Junior Kimbrough, a region as distinctly different from the river delta proper as Memphis itself. Born in Holly Springs and raised in Red Banks, Belfour picked up the guitar at age seven. His early musical development occurred in a vacuum, without any actual instruction or live input.

"I didn't really have nobody to teach me. I learned how to play (listening to the radio)," Belfour says. "I wasn't around nobody that played. I was raised up on a farm. My mother had one of these old-time battery radios. We didn't have no electricity."

Through that old battery radio Belfour became familiar with the mightiest figures of the blues renaissance in the late '40s and early '50s. John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters left an impression. But one voice called to him above the rest. It belonged to a man named Howlin' Wolf. "The one I was trying most to play like was Howlin' Wolf. I just loved his voice." Though he grew up and stayed within 100 miles of the places Howlin' Wolf traveled and played, he never had the opportunity to see his nickname-sake in person - or any other of the voices he heard on the radio.

The first guitar Belfour could call his own came to him at the age of 13, when his father died. "My dad gave me his guitar before he passed. He and my mother had been separated," he says. "I got the guitar, the shotgun and the horse, but my mother wouldn't let me have the horse. She was scared for me to ride it."

With age came the responsibilities of adulthood - marriage and work - but also the pleasures - being able to go out play when the opportunity arose.

"The only time I ever played was at night and at juke joint houses. They would have a guitar and I would play when they would get tired," Belfour says. "I wasn't getting paid no money, just drinkin'. I would go to this old guy by the name King Hardaway. He used to have something like an open house all night. Sold white liquor, sometimes old musicians would be there such as Cotton and Puddin'. I don't know their last names. I hung around with them a lot. They would run together. And I used to listen to Junior [Kimbrough] sometimes. He ran one of those houses like that, too, on 72 highway.

"After I had married I mostly played around places like that. A lot of 'em couldn't play too good, they'd just play one or two songs all night, you know. And they never would finish a song. I just hung around those places a bit when I was off work or something. They were places in the country where people would go to drink all night. They'd be there from Friday night till Sunday night. I hung around those places till I moved to Memphis. Because I didn't play in no clubs around Holly Springs coming up. I only started playing in clubs in late years when I had done been in Memphis."

Belfour moved his family to Memphis in 1968. But even in a larger town with a real music scene, Belfour still didn't think of his music in professional terms, and he didn't pursue performing in public. He was still playing in a vacuum; it was still something he had to do. "I could never get away from the guitar. It was something that I could do, and then I could lay it down, set it back in the corner, and I had to go back and get it. Something always would bug me to play. I'd go to sleep with it in my lap."

At some point, about 15 years ago, Belfour's passive attitude began to change and slowly he began playing publicly. "Before I started playing, me and my wife used to drive through there (on Beale Street) and we'd see the bands playing. She kept bugging me, 'Why don't you go down there on Beale Street and see if they'll let you play. You just sit around home and play.' I'd say, 'Oh, I ain't going down there to play for no tip bucket.' I used to be real shamefaced to sing. I really didn't know if I could sing or not, really. I started trying to sing and got myself used to singing along with the music, and everything just fell into place. I got to where I could sing whatever I played. Then I really made my mind up, but I didn't go down on Beale Street until I made my own mind up to do it."

He started playing in Handy Park on Beale about 15 years ago, where he quickly caught the attention of University of Memphis musicologist David Evans. "He got me to come down and play on his radio show at WEVL. And from then on he got me booked in different places. He got me into Germany and all them places. When people heard me, they started trying to get me to play."

How often do you hear deep Mississippi acoustic blues intermingled with good-time honky tonk? That's exactly what happened when Belfour started playing around town with Greg Hisky and the Rhythm Method. "I would always sit in whenever they took a break."

Since that time Belfour's local appearances have remained regular, but not prolific. In 1993, under the management of Evans, he began going to Europe, where he performs and conducts workshops to demonstrate his unique style of playing. "I play the bass, the lead and all. And I sing. Where you normally have five or six guys in band, I do it all myself."

Hearing the amount of music this man makes by himself, with a strong and distinct voice eerily mindful of his idol Howlin' Wolf, is truly a stirring experience. Making it even better is the fact that while much of his material comes from the common blues repertoire, many of his songs are originals.

Belfour has been "getting letters from different people who want to record" him, including Evans, who wants to record him at the University of Memphis, and Jim O'Neill of Rooster Blues. However, nothing concrete is presently in the works.

Robert "Wolfman" Belfour certainly qualifies as an undiscovered treasure. And at 57, though his health "ain't as good as it used to be," there is reason to hope his career hasn't truly started yet.