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drink at all. He’d have a nervous cigarette now and then before he went on the stage. He was a
very nice, polite man. He met my mum. He came and met Mrs Clarke. At the time, now I was
probably 19. He, I think, was about 33, so he was a grown-up man to us but actually quite a
young guy really at 33. But I liked his music more from that time. I think later he got kind of
harder and gruffer and got into all that sort of heavy funk kind of thing. I don’t think it was as
good, but when we worked with him, his voice was beautiful. He would sing, it was quite
mellow, and it was quite gentle, and it was a pleasure and he used to play through my
Marshall amp, which he got to like after a bit, and it was the old repertoire. He used to do a
version of ‘That’s All Right’, the Jimmy Rogers one, which is the version that I’ve copied ever
since and a bunch of shuffles, yes, ‘See See Baby’ and a few other things and ‘San José’ and a
few funky things like – I think did he do ‘Get Out Of My Life Woman’ or something like that
and he did ‘Look on Yonder’s Wall’. He did that as a kind of a funky thing. It was only a 40-
minute set that we’d do. We’d play
and then he’d come out and do his
40 minutes.

BiTS: Did you ever actually work
and play for Wolf as well?

MC: Well, we did gigs with Wolf. I
never personally never played with
him, but he did jam with Killing
Floor one night when I think we’d
done the Bag o’ Nails with Freddie
and we were just sort of sitting
around and then Wolf turned up
out of the blue, and he got up with
Freddie and our drums and bass
and they did ‘Smokestack
Lightning’, and it was lovely. Just
sat there and enjoyed it.

BiTS: Despite his kind of stage
persona, which was rolling on the
floor and climbing the curtains and
all that kind of thing, I gather he
was a very nice guy as well?

MC: Who, Wolf?

BiTS: Yes.

MC: Yes, I mean, I don’t know, I’ve never seen him climb the curtains. The first time I saw him,
he crawled on stage on all fours, and yes, he would shake his tummy around and roll his eyes.
He was a showman, for sure.

BiTS: I did an interview some years ago with Chris Barber, who told me that of all the people
that he brought over to the country, he was the only one who came to dinner at his house and
insisted on saying grace.

MC: Oh, right, yes. I believe that. I think he was a very nice guy, but I didn’t get the chance to
see that side of him. The only long chat that I had was when we were all sitting around for a
long time after a gig and Freddie was there as well. He was talking mainly with Freddie. And