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A dominant figure in electrified blues and the post-war Chicago blues scene, Muddy Waters was a superlative singer, songwriter, and powerful slide guitar player. Waters took the roots of African-American Mississippi music, plugged it into an amplifier and created an electric orchestra, forever changing the landscape of popular music. His bands were a breeding ground for some of the biggest names in the blues, including Little Walter, Otis Span, Jimmy Rogers, Junior Wells, James Cotton, and Buddy Guy. Waters’ recordings for Chess Records became the blueprint for future generations of blues and rock musicians. McKinley Morganfield was born in a Delta enclave called Jug‘s Corner, Mississippi on April 4, 1913. When his mother died at the age of three he was sent to live with his grandmother in Clarksdale. As a child playing on the banks of a local creek he earned the nickname Muddy Waters. Life on the Delta cotton plantations was harsh and Waters was moved by blues music very early in life, learning how to sing while working in the fields for fifty cents a day. He picked up the harmonica first and started learning the guitar when he was seventeen. Waters was soon digging the bottleneck guitar playing of Son House and soaking up the recordings of Robert Johnson. In short shrift he had mastered bottleneck guitar playing and was pinning down a subtle and sonorous singing style. He began performing at house parties and fish fries with a local string band which included fiddler Henry “Son“ Simms, a past collaborator of Charlie Patton‘s. In 1941, the Library of Congress sent a team headed by Alan Lomax to collect field recordings of rural folk blues. They recorded Waters, then twenty six years old, at his plantation home, cutting two tracks called “Country Blues” and “I Be Troubled.” Both potent slide blues songs acknowledged a debt to House and Johnson with a distinctive edge and impressed Lomax enough to return a year later for more recordings. Lomax’s endorsement convinced Waters that he could make a real go of it and in1943 he caught the train north to Chicago, leaving the cotton fields forever. Chicago had a thriving blues scene, though changes were in the air. Waters played acoustic back-up for Sonny Boy Williamson and met Big Bill Broonzy, who helped him get small gigs in Chicago’s South and West side slums. By 1944 Waters had switched to electric guitar and beefed up his Delta bottleneck sound with fatter tones and a richer baritone. His first recordings for Columbia Records made little impression, but when Chess agreed to record “I Can’t Be Satisfied/Feel Like Going Home” Waters’ success was sealed and the post-war Chicago blues scene was ignited. Waters trail-blazed the Chicago blues scene, surrounding himself with other talented musicians from the rural south, creating the classic Chicago combo of guitars, harmonica, piano, bass, and drums. It was a model for heavy amplified blues with distorted, sizzling guitars and sledgehammer beats, a sound that perfectly exemplified the anguish and isolation of the black man in the white man’s big city of the north. Waters culled together some of the greatest players ever - harp genius Little Walter, guitarist Jimmy Rogers, and pianist Otis Span. In those days they called themselves The Headcutters, hitting bars and asking to sit in with the house band, inevitably blowing them off the stage. The working class clubs of south side Chicago were raucous environments where black audiences were free to whoop, shout, dance, and brawl, usually all at once. To compensate Waters and the other musicians had to play amplified and loud. Their big sound started as a method to be heard, but remade the way blues could be played. Muddy applied tight-to-the-mike, moaning vocals while wailing guitar licks, pounding bass, piano, and drums backed him. Later, Little Walter’s howling, amplified harmonica filled out the barrage. It was a sound that literally rocked the house. Throughout the 1950s Muddy and his band perfected their raw and rollicking ensemble approach, recording many seminal Chicago blues sides like “Mannish Boy,” “Got My Mojo Working,” “Long Distance Call,” and “Hoochie Coochie Man.” Faces in the band came and went, but Waters always attracted more top notch talent like Sammy Lawhorn, Luther Johnson, Junior Wells, James Cotton, and Pinetop Perkins to step in. Chess stable songwriter Willie Dixon often supplied tailor-made compositions which fostered a classic urban blues sound. The only bluesman who could challenge Waters’ tenure was Howlin Wolf and understandably the two Chess artists became long-standing rivals. Waters’ first tour of England in 1958 coupled with a growing fascination in folk blues by a young white generation re-energized his career in the 1960s. This led to full-fledged acceptance by rock and roll audiences who recognized Waters as a pioneer. In one of the great examples of live blues, Waters and band took the 1960 Newport Folk Festival by storm with a cool, hard-charging performance that showed the audience what their sound was all about. A sound that would soon influence modern rock. By Tim Kirker Want to listen to a Muddy Waters tune? Click here. Click here to purchase Muddy Waters or other artists MP3 packages
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