Muddy Waters exploded out of Rolling Fork Mississippi to set Chicago on fire. He’d spent his youth living in a wooden shack on a plantation ploughing the land with an old tractor. He’d developed his Blues style from the early Bluesmen Son House and Charlie Patton. When he moved from Mississippi to Chicago he electrified to create a style that could be stark and agonised or rhythmic and shrill. Muddy was unique.
The rural acoustic Muddy had first been recorded by Alan Lomax as he toured the Deep South in the 1940s recording as many Blues-singers as he could find. Those early field recordings showed a young Muddy brimming with talent. He soon left those muddy tracks for the skyscrapers to try his luck with Chess and his electrified style was an immediate success. His band took the place by storm. He’d learnt his craft from the street performers and knew how to generate excitement. Those Chicago clubs were hot, loud and sweaty and he was competing with the likes of Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James. He knew he had to pull out all the stops. He made sure his act was eye-catching. He was reputed to shake up a bottle of coke and shove it down his trousers, at the climax of the song he would flip the lid off and spray the crowd.
Those clubs were tough places to play. Life was cheap. There were guns, knives, drink, drugs, womanising and the gangsters that went with it all. You had to hold your own or you’d be eaten alive. Muddy always went tolled up to deal with all eventualities.
Muddy became one of the top acts at Chess vying with Howlin’ Wolf for the best Willie Dixon numbers. They had to share!
Without Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Jimmy Reed the British Beat boom of the early sixties would have been greatly impoverished.
In Chicago perversely by the early sixties the Chicago Blues scene was dying on its feet. The young Black kids were getting into the more sophisticated style of Tamla. Blues was for the old folks. It left the Blues guys like Muddy high and dry. Fortunately there was an avid European market opening up and eager to snatch up all the Blues offerings they could get their hands on. The Chicago Blues guys, lauded by the British Beat Bands who had been inspired by them, found themselves with a large following of young White kids. It must have seemed incredibly strange.
Muddy seemed to lap it up. He performed a number of successful tours and festivals where he delighted in playing to his new enthusiastic white fans who hung on his every word, move and note.
I was fortunate enough to catch him a number of times backed by James Cotton and Otis Spann. He was great but I could not help thinking that he was a little restrained. I think there had probably been a great deal more of the unrestrained sexuality in those steamy Chicago clubs. I would have loved to have been there!
Muddy was a giant!