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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2014 12:28:56 GMT -5
Muddy Waters at the Guthrie Theater July 14 1968
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Post by Admin on Apr 26, 2014 7:53:56 GMT -5
On Thursday of this week, we honor the death of Muddy Waters who passed away on May 1, 1983. The following Obituary, written by Robert Palmer, says it all.
May 1, 1983
OBITUARY Muddy Waters, Blues Performer, Dies
By ROBERT PALMER
Muddy Waters, who played a key role in the development of electric blues and rock-and- roll and was the greatest contemporary exponent of the influential Mississippi Delta blues style, died in his sleep early yesterday at his home near Chicago. The singer and guitarist was pronounced dead at Chicago's Good Samaritan Hospital, reportedly of a heart attack. He was 68 years old.
Beginning in the early 1950's, Mr. Waters made a series of hit records for Chicago's Chess label that made him the undisputed king of Chicago blues singers. He was the first popular bandleader to assemble and lead a truly electric band, a band that used amplification to make the music more ferociously physical instead of simply making it a little louder.
In 1958, he became the first artist to play electric blues in England, and while many British folk-blues fans recoiled in horror, his visit inspired young musicians like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones, who later named their band the Rolling Stones after Mr. Waters's early hit "Rollin' Stone." Bob Dylan's mid-1960's rock hit "Like a Rolling Stone" and the leading rock newspaper Rolling Stone were also named after Mr. Waters's original song.
Played at Carnegie Hall Mr. Waters played his blues at Carnegie Hall in 1959, and in 1960 he made a triumphant appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, where he introduced his blues hit "Got My Mojo Working" to white music fans. His music was widely imitated by a generation of young white musicians, and virtually all the leading rock guitarists who emerged in the 1960's, including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Johnny Winter, named Muddy Waters as one of their earliest and most important influences.
Mr. Clapton returned the favor by hiring Mr. Waters to open the concerts on one of his American tours of the 1970's, where hundreds of thousands of rock fans heard Mr. Waters. Mr. Waters made his final concert appearance last June when he performed his early hit "Blow Wind Blow" in an Eric Clapton show in Miami.
But Muddy Waters was more than a major influence in the pop music world. He was a great singer of American vernacular music, a vocal artist of astonishing power, range, depth, and subtlety. Among musicians and singers, his remarkable sense of timing, his command of inflection and pitch shading, and his vocabulary of vocal sounds and effects, from the purest falsetto to grainy moaning rasps, were all frequent topics of conversation. And he was able to duplicate many of his singing techniques on electric guitar, using a metal slider to make the instrument "speak" in a quivering, voice-like manner.
His blues sounded simple, but it was so deeply rooted in the traditions of the Mississippi Delta that other singers and guitarists found it almost impossible to imitate it convincingly. "My blues looks so simple, so easy to do, but it's not," Mr. Waters said in a 1978 interview. "They say my blues is the hardest blues in the world to play."
Raised in Mississippi Delta McKinley (Muddy Waters) Morganfield was born April 4, 1915, in Rolling Fork, in the southern Mississippi Delta near Highway 61. His father, Ollie Morganfield, farmed and played blues guitar, but his parents separated when he was six months old and he went to live with his maternal grandmother on a plantation outside Clarksdale, Miss., a town in the central Delta where John Lee Hooker and other future blues and gospel stars grew up. His grandmother began calling him "Muddy" when he was a baby because he liked playing in the mud, and when he was a child on the plantation playmates added the surname "Waters."
Muddy Waters began making music when he was 3 or 4 years old. He began performing on harmonica at country picnics and fish fries when he was 12 or 13, and had plenty of opportunity to watch older blues singers and guitarists. Robert Johnson influenced him, and so did the impassioned singer-guitarist Son House. But he also listened to commercial blues recordings by Memphis Minnie, Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red, and Blind Lemon Jefferson on a neighbor's phonograph.
In 1941 and 1942, Alan Lomax and John Work recorded Mr. Waters in Mississippi for the Library of Congress. Hearing himself on records encouraged Mr. Waters to try to make commercial recordings, and in 1943 he moved to Chicago. The following year he acquired an electric guitar, and by 1948 his band, with Jimmy Rogers on second guitar, Little Walter on harmonica, and Baby Face Leroy on guitar and drums, was the most popular blues combo working on Chicago's black South Side. He recorded for Columbia records and for Aristocrat in 1948, and his recording career took off after Aristocrat, owned by Leonard and Phil Chess, became Chess Records, with Muddy Waters as its leading blues artist.
In the early and middle 1950's, Muddy Waters and his band made a number of records popular with black record buyers, especially in the Deep South and in Middle Western cities with large populations of Southerners, like Chicago and Detroit.
The songs Mr. Waters recorded and performed in the 1950's included "Hoochie Coochie Man," "Just Make Love To Me," "She Moves Me," "Mannish Boy," and "Louisiana Blues." His songs, some of which were original while others came from the blues tradition or were written for him by Willie Dixon, are still in the repertories of countless blues and rhythm-and-blues bands in the United States and around the world.
He received widespread recognition in the 1970's, including six Grammy awards and a dynamic featured performance in Martin Scorcese's 1978 film "The Last Waltz."
Mr. Waters never grew rich from his music, but he was able to work virtually as often as he wanted to, and in recent months he had been taking time off, "enjoying the fruits of his labor," according to his manager, Scott Cameron. He lived comfortably in Westmont, Ill., a Chicago suburb. His most recent albums, recorded for the Columbia distributed Blue Sky label and produced by his longtime admirer, the rock guitarist Johnny Winter, sold better than all but a handful of his earlier recordings, and he was proud of them. "This is the best point of my life that I'm living right now," he said in 1978. "I'm glad it came before I died, I can tell you."
He is survived by his wife, Marva; three daughters and one son; four grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.
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Post by Admin on Apr 28, 2014 10:15:26 GMT -5
Where it all began. Thanks to Alan Lomax for going to Stovall and making these recordings.
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Post by Admin on May 5, 2014 10:29:44 GMT -5
I remember the first time I heard Muddy Waters on the radio. It was late one night and I was driving home and tuned in WLAC...heard Muddy Waters "Mannish Boy". It made me think about all of the racist comments I heard on a daily basis - calling the African Americans "Boy", expecting them to act docile toward the Caucasian race. I felt extreme shame for all of those comments I heard around town. It changed my entire attitude for the rest of my life.
Everythin', everythin', everythin's gonna be alright this mornin' Ooh yeah, whoaw Now when I was a young boy, at the age of five My mother said I was, gonna be the greatest man alive But now I'm a man, way past 21 Want you to believe me baby, I had lot's of fun I'm a man I spell mmm, aaa child, nnn That represents man No B, O child, Y That mean mannish boy I'm a man I'm a full grown man I'm a man I'm a natural born lovers man I'm a man I'm a rollin' stone I'm a man I'm a hoochie coochie man
Sittin' on the outside, just me and my mate You know I'm made to move you honey, come up two hours late Wasn't that a man I spell mmm, aaa child, nnn That represents man No B, O child, Y That mean mannish boy I'm a man I'm a full grown man Man I'm a natural born lovers man Man I'm a rollin' stone Man-child I'm a hoochie coochie man The line I shoot will never miss When I make love to a woman, she can't resist I think I go down, to old Kansas Stew I'm gonna bring back my second cousin, that little Johnny Cocheroo All you little girls, sittin'out at that line I can make love to you woman, in five minutes time Ain't that a man I spell mmm, aaa child, nnn That represents man No B, O child, Y That mean mannish boy Man I'm a full grown man Man I'm a natural born lovers man Man I'm a rollin' stone I'm a man-child I'm a hoochie coochie man well, well, well, well hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry Don't hurt me, don't hurt me child don't hurt me, don't hurt, don't hurt me child well, well, well, well
Yeah ,
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Post by AlanB on May 6, 2014 7:52:11 GMT -5
Here's a lengthy review I've found of Robert Gordon's Muddy biography from Blues & Rhythm, July 2002
SATISFACTION GUARANTEED Robert Gordon puts real flesh and bone on a legend and adds a new dimension to the Muddy Waters song that gives his biography its title.
For satisfied readers of 'It Came From Memphis', the news that Robert Gordon was going to gather his thoughts on the subject of Muddy Waters' life and times was greeted with happy expectation. In his Foreword to 'Memphis', Peter Guralnick reckoned Gordon 'is possessed by an imaginative grasp of history' and the proof is that in his writing history is part of the tale rather than being tacked on as an afterthought. Until his last years, Muddy was circumspect in interviews about his life and opinions, and this reticence was interpreted as a kind of personal dignity when in reality it was a combination of justified self-belief and an awareness of his inability to adequately express himself. Like Wolf, he was acutely embarrassed by his lack of education but unlike Wolf he did little about it, retreating instead behind a facade of good-natured but distant bonhomie. His biography must therefore rely on a large amount of outside input and a degree or two of intuition. In his 'General Reading Suggestions', Gordon summarily dismisses Sandra Tooze's previous effort for using 'an extended Muddy discography as its foundation, tracing his life through his recordings'. That's perhaps unfair, given the extensive interview work that went into it, but a penchant for idolatrous words like 'icon' and 'colossus' and a reference to Muddy's cabin as a 'sacred shrine' in its early pages sets the tone for her book. Tooze's Muddy remains a one-dimensional figure, an idealised portrait that evinces little effort to probe the blemishes that made up the whole man. Not so Gordon, who tempers his admiration with a salutary number of unpleasant revelations about Muddy's sedulous and unbridled libido. Where Tooze makes brief acknowledgement and moves on to more praiseworthy matters, Gordon lingers long enough to illuminate his subject's peccadilloes and their consequences without undermining the achievements that stemmed from the same imperative urges. In his view, the one is inseparable from the other. Muddy Waters is revealed as a flawed man who nevertheless achieved true greatness as a musician and as the architect of a style that had a direct bearing on more than just Chicago blues. Gordon's larger vision is evident in his introduction, in which he contrasts the fact that Muddy's Stovall cabin has been preserved and presented around America - a crass example of what he calls 'the commodification of the blues' - whereas the Chicago home where he lived while he made a series of historic records, achieved a sort of stardom and transformed the blues is now derelict. And a thought coalesces, one that could serve as a metaphor for the story he's about to tell: 'It is easy to put Muddy in that cabin, easy to relocate him and his rural beginnings around the world, a neat stitch in the American quilt - picturesque and just the right colors. But easy doesn't make it so.' The surprises begin early. Within two pages,Muddy is described as 'a man born in a year he wasn't born in, from a town where he wasn't born, carrying a name he wasn't born with'. That follows the revelation that he was born at a bend in the road called Jug's Corner, alongside the Cottonwood Plantation in the next county over from Rolling Fork, and that the date was April 4, 1913. To corroborate this, a page of John Work's original field notes is reproduced in which the year 1913 is prominently displayed. Much to Alan Lomax's imminent confusion, Gordon has discovered Work's original manuscript pertaining to the 1941/2 field recording trips, including 158 song transcriptions (including lost recordings by Muddy) and a treatise ten chapters long. It has languished undocumented at Fisk University for almost sixty years; a copy went to the Library of Congress but perhaps someone there had no wish to find it. The story of Muddy's early years has been well rehearsed but the author has turned up a few new witnesses to Muddy's life on Stovall. Add to that an easy writing style with a felicitous turn of phrase: when Muddy first encounters Son House, the latter is described as 'a hammer of a man', a phrase that puts mealy-mouthed vindictives like Stephen Calt in their place. Muddy was getting into other things, as well. His friend Myles Long (later the Reverend, etc.) noted, 'You got to keep your head when it comes to women and whiskey. Muddy, he wasn't so bad at whiskey, it was the women. The women messed him up.' Muddy married Mary Berry when he was nineteen but he was already running around on her. Cousin Elve Morganfield made the point: 'Muddy loved women. Just like any other man, you supposed to love a woman. But you ain't supposed to try to have all of 'em.' From now on, Muddy's inability (or downright refusal) to put a restraining collar on his trouser snake will continue to slither through the manuscript but not at the expense of the story to be told. Within three years, Mabel left her husband, prompted no doubt by the birth of his first child, a daughter Azelene, born to Leola Spain, herself already married and with another boyfriend. Cousin Elve: 'It gets complicated.' Nevertheless, Muddy never lost touch with Leola, his daughter and his grandchildren. They became part of his extended family, most of whom benefitted from the largesse he was able to divide among them. Chapter Three is devoted to the first LoC recordings and Gordon is punctilious in emphasising John Work's major role in the sessions. Originally mooted as a trip to Natchez to discover a year on the consequences of the death of the Walter Barnes band and patrons of the Rhythm Night Club, the eventual destination became the Clarksdale area. Despite Work's crucial importance to the project, in Mississippi he had to take a back seat to Lomax's paternalistic lead. At chapter's end, Gordon quotes from Lomax's The Land Where The Blues Began and from Work's manuscript and notes the similarities. Work's name appears only once in the former text and, as Gordon states, 'Lomax virtually erased the scholarship of John Work. Far more troubling . . . is Lomax's refusal to acknowledge the contributions of others, especially of an African American whose ideas, research and knowledge were pivotal to his own achievements.' Surely this can't be the man who so generously added himself to the composer credits for Leadbelly's 'Goodnight Irene'? The story moves on to Chicago and Muddy's assimilation into the music scene and the gradual accrual of a group of musicians around him. Again, the turn of phrase delights: '(Little) Walter was a cat what liked a hat. Crisp suits, snappy shirts, he dressed like cash money, or the lack thereof;: one day chicken, the next day feathers.' And of course, there's the women. Initially, it's Annie Mae Anderson (commemorated at the first Aristocrat session) and probably there were others before Geneva Wade came into his life; she became a Morganfield but the bond was never solemnised. The momentum of Muddy's recordings increases as his band style moves further away from its Mississippi inspiration. As one witness reports, 'When they were going to play the blues, most of the guys said, We're going to play the Muddy Waters blues.' As Gordon simply states, Muddy 'was becoming his own genre'. The success of 'Mad Love' and 'Hoochie Coochie Man' allowed him to move from the West to the South Side. The House on South Lake Park became not just his home but that of Otis Spann, 'Bo' Bolton, uncle Joe Grant and Geneva's two sons, Charles and Dennis. Future tenants would include St. Louis Jimmy Oden. Leola Spain and her daughter Azelene moved in nearby. With the help of new recruit Jimmy Cotton, the narrative goes on the road with the band, recounting some of the shenanigans that ensued, including a drunken night in Tuscaloosa when Muddy took a hotel maid to his room, accused her of stealing and started beating her with a bucket. The whole band went to jail. Back in Chicago, the string of Muddy's outside women continued unwinding; there was Mildred with whom he sired another son and Dorothy, who was given an apartment. When she got two-timed she turned up at Ruby's Show Lounge and the two began to fight. Muddy paid the jail another brief visit and Dorothy broke all the windows in the band's station wagon. The Chicago Defender ran a photograph and Muddy tried to prevent Geneva from seeing it. A little old lady came to Muddy's door and gave Geneva a copy, saying 'I just want to show you what a rotten motherfucker you got'. And so the story goes. As the Sixties progress into the Seventies, Gordon draws back from an endless list of records made and gigs played to present some of the chaotic circumstances that resulted from Muddy's one-eyed view of his world. Girlfriends come and go, children proliferate. Meanwhile, his recording career falters with nonsense like 'Muddy Waters Twist'; 'There is no Mississippi in the song, there is no Chicago.' Then there's Muddy, Brass & The Blues and brass is emphatically not what Muddy is about. But that's as nothing compared to Electric Mud and After The Rain, the brainchildren of Leonard Chess's son Marshall, that each shipped gold and returned platinum. Leonard Chess dies (as does Geneva) and Chess Records is sold but not before Muddy puts his mark to some dubious paperwork that appropriates his copyrights with a pitifully small financial carrot. Then Johnny Winter turns up and with Grammy-winning records and honest management, Muddy enjoys his declining years with the appurtenances of modest wealth. In his later tours, he brought his children onstage to sing along with 'Got My Mojo Working'. But other members of the family weren't so happy when they realised the number of their siblings. 'When I was younger, he was a god to me,' Azelene's daughter Cookie Cooper admits. 'As I have gotten older, and dealt with things, I will always be grateful for the things he did in my life, but as a person, he was not a very nice person.' The author rounds out the story in his fifteenth chapter, charting the family's fortunes since their father's death. And he assesses Muddy's impact on his century: '. . . Muddy's achievement is the triumph of the dirt farmer. His music brought respect to a culture dismissed as offal. His music spawned the triumphant voice of angry people demanding change. This dirt has meaning.' Robert Gordon has produced an immensely readable biography, as rowdy and dangerous as its subject. Even though much of what is documented is familiar, the imperative to keep reading never slackens and it's uncluttered by reference notes. These are contained in 74 pages at the end of the manuscript. Each chapter is prefaced by a page or more of background which teems with information before the annotation of the sources for each note. Apart from taking quotes from others' interviews with Muddy, he also questioned some 80 interviewees of his own. The detail in these notes would have impeded the narrative; it's almost like reading a second biography and it's a necessary exercise. It's not faultless, though. He misquotes the lyrics to 'Rollin' Stone', neither take makes reference to Rolling Fork, as he does. He also reckons Bristol is a suburb of London but perhaps to a Memphian that might seem the case. He's also addicted to an American abbreviation that refers to 'a couple times', 'a couple records', 'a couple days' - except on page 266, where a paragraph begins, 'A couple of weeks later,'. At least he doesn't start any of his sentences with 'Too, . . .' Well, you have to find something to complain about. But no one will complain at the excellent job Robert Gordon's done. There'll be no need for another Muddy Waters biography, this will do handsomely. NEIL SLAVEN
CAN'T BE SATISFIED The Life And Times Of MUDDY WATERS Robert Gordon Little, Brown & Company, 408pp. illus. ISBN 0-316-32849-9 hbk $25.95 currently available from Amazon for £15.79.
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Post by JamesP on Apr 4, 2015 7:53:36 GMT -5
On the anniversary of his birth:
McKinley Morganfield, known by his stage name Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician. He is often considered the "father of modern Chicago blues". Wikipedia
Born: April 4, 1913, Issaquena County, MS
Died: April 30, 1983, Westmont, IL
Height: 5' 9" (1.75 m)
Children: Big Bill Morganfield, Rene Morganfield, Rosiland Morganfield, Joseph Morganfield, Mercy Morganfield
Spouse: Marva Jean Brooks (m. 1979–1983), Mabel Berry (m. 1932–1935), Geneva Morganfield (m. ?–1973)
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Post by voodoo on Apr 4, 2015 8:19:44 GMT -5
Muddy, the Wolf, pretty much anyone on CHEES had a heavy influence on me.
IMO it was MUDDY AND LIL WALTER who brought electric to the blues.....mature there some first but it was MUDDY, HUBERT SULMIN who truly put ROCK into the blues and tune the guitar into more than a chord playing Instrument...... That and Fenders a tweed . N U were breaking new ground,
IT WAS MUDDY WHO GAVE US THE ROLLING Stones n let's admit there BESTTRUTH stuff was from,album 1 to Exile on MainStreet...they were a true blues band.THEN THEY WENT POP, got a lot of younger record buyers but those who grew up with The Stones were not to impressed by the albums fro Black N blue on....sure they had a song or,two one, that were good but nothing like a Beggars BAnquet, Stixky Fingers etx......
As each album came out MUDDY got more n more electrified.....then player like.BUDDY GUY took it s step,further, zthen the Brit invasion was listening to the Bluesmen of the 40-50-60,s and innovators like JIMI, SRV! PAGE CLAPTON ca,e out but they seemed to be the next step,after BB ALBERT! FREDDIE KING,MAGIC SIm PINETOP but with each came new stle of blues but it is and will always be the BLUES !!!!!!!!!
Muddy just gave the BLUES a kick in the assssss !!!!!!
HAPPY B DAY MUDDY
V
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Post by JamesP on Nov 29, 2015 13:12:44 GMT -5
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Post by rooster on Mar 31, 2018 20:23:57 GMT -5
I know this is an old thread, but with Muddy Waters' 105 birthday rapidly approaching, I'd just like to say... Blues at it's most, Muddy Waters...
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Post by jbone on Apr 13, 2018 16:14:52 GMT -5
I have sung Mojo and I'm Ready many times. But really anything Muddy did is just all right with me. (Just saw my post from 4 years ago!)
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