Blues-E-News Magazine This day in music history April 30, 1983 American Blues legend Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield) died in his sleep at his home in Westmont, Illinois, aged 68. Major influence of many acts, Cream, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones named themselves after Waters 1950 song Rollin Stone. Best known songs include I Just Want To Make Love To You, Im Your Hoochie Coochie Man, Got My Mojo Working. Via Wikipedia: McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983), known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician. He is considered the father of modern Chicago blues and was a major inspiration for the British blues explosion of the 1960 Early life Although in his later years Muddy usually said that he was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, in 1915, he was most likely born at Jugs Corner in neighbouring Issaquena County in 1913. Recent research has uncovered documentation showing that in the 1930s and 1940s, before his rise to fame, he reported his birth year as 1913 on both his marriage license and musicians union card. A 1955 interview in the Chicago Defender is the earliest claim of 1915 as his year of birth, which he continued to use in interviews from that point onward. The 1920 census lists him as five years old as of March 6, 1920, suggesting that his birth year may have been 1915. The Social Security Death Index, relying on the Social Security card application submitted after his move to Chicago in the mid-1940s, lists him as being born April 4, 1913. Muddys gravestone gives his birth year as 1915. Muddys grandmother, Della Grant, raised him after his mother died shortly following his birth. Della gave the boy the nickname Muddy at an early age because he loved to play in the muddy water of nearby Deer Creek. Muddy later changed it to Muddy Water and finally Muddy Waters. The shack where Muddy Waters lived in his youth on Stovall Plantation is now located at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He started out on harmonica, but by age seventeen he was playing the guitar at parties, emulating two blues artists in particular, Son House and Robert Johnson. On November 20 1932, Muddy married Mabel Berry. Guitarist Robert Nighthawk played at the wedding and the party reportedly got so wild the floor fell in. Mabel left Muddy three years later when Muddys first child was born; the childs mother was Leola Spain, 16 years old (Leola later used her maiden name, Brown), married to a man named Steven and going with a guy named Tucker. Leola was the only one of his girlfriends with whom Muddy would stay in touch throughout his life; they never married. By the time he finally cut out for Chicago in 1943, there was another Mrs. Morganfield left behind, a girl called Sallie Ann. Early career In 1943 Muddy moved to Chicago for the first time. He played with Silas Green a year later, and then returned to Mississippi. In the early part of the decade he ran a juke joint, complete with gambling, moonshine, and a jukebox; he also performed music there himself. In the summer of 1941, Alan Lomax went to Stovall, Mississippi, on behalf of the Library of Congress, to record various country blues musicians. He brought his stuff down and recorded me right in my house, Muddy recalled in Rolling Stone, and when he played back the first song I sounded just like anybodys records. Man, you dont know how I felt that Saturday afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice. Later on he sent me two copies of the pressing and a check for twenty bucks, and I carried that record up to the corner and put it on the jukebox. Just played it and played it and said, I can do it, I can do it. Lomax came back in July 1942 to record Muddy again. Both sessions were eventually released as Down On Stovalls Plantation on the Testament label. The complete recordings were re-issued on CD as Muddy Waters: The Complete Plantation Recordings. The historic 1941-42 Library of Congress field recordings by Chess Records in 1993, and re-mastered in 1997. In 1943, Muddy headed back to Chicago with the hope of becoming a full-time professional musician. He lived with a relative for a short period while driving a truck and working in a factory by day and performing at night. Big Bill Broonzy, then one of the leading blues-men in Chicago, helped Muddy break into the very competitive market by allowing him to open for his shows in the rowdy clubs. In 1945, Muddys uncle, Joe Grant, gave him his first electric guitar, which enabled him to be heard above the noisy crowds. In 1946, he recorded some tunes for Mayo Williams at Columbia but they were not released at the time. Later that year he began recording for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by two brothers, Leonard and Phil Chess. In 1947, he played guitar with Sunnyland Slim on piano on the cuts Gypsy Woman and Little Anna Mae. These were also shelved, but in 1948, I Cant Be Satisfied and I Feel Like Going Home became big hits and his popularity in clubs began to take off. Soon after, Aristocrat changed their label name to Chess Records and Muddys signature tune Rollin Stone also became a smash hit. Commercial success Initially, the Chess brothers would not allow Muddy to use his working band in the recording studio; instead he was provided with a backing bass by Ernest Big Crawford, or by musicians assembled specifically for the recording session, including Baby Face Leroy Foster and Johnny Jones. Gradually Chess relented, and by September 1953 he was recording with one of the most acclaimed blues groups in history: Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds (a.k.a. Elgin Evans) on drums and Otis Spann on piano. The band recorded a series of blues classics during the early 1950s, some with the help of bassist/songwriter Willie Dixon, including Hoochie Coochie Man (Number 8 on the R&B charts), I Just Want to Make Love to You (Number 4), and Im Ready. These three were the most macho songs in his repertoire, wrote Robert Palmer in Rolling Stone. Muddy would never have composed anything so unsubtle. But they gave him a succession of showstoppers and an image, which were important for a bluesman trying to break out of the grind of local gigs into national prominence. Along with his former harmonica player Little Walter Jacobs and recent southern transplant Howlin Wolf, Muddy reigned over the early 1950s Chicago blues scene, his band becoming a proving ground for some of the citys best blues talent. While Little Walter continued a collaborative relationship long after he left Muddys band in 1952, appearing on most of Muddys classic recordings throughout the 1950s, Muddy developed a long-running, generally good-natured rivalry with Wolf. The success of Muddys ensemble paved the way for others in his group to break away and enjoy their own solo careers. In 1952 Little Walter left when his single Juke became a hit, and in 1955 Rogers quit to work exclusively with his own band, which had been a sideline until that time. Although he continued working with Muddys band, Otis Spann enjoyed a solo career and many releases under his own name beginning in the mid-1950s. Around that time, Muddy Waters scored hits with the rock songs Mannish Boy and Sugar Sweet in 1955, followed by the R&B hits Trouble No More, Forty Days & Forty Nights and Dont Go No Farther in 1956. England and low profile Muddy headed to England in 1958 and shocked audiences (whose only previous exposure to blues had come via the acoustic folk/blues sounds of acts such as Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Big Bill Broonzy) with his loud, amplified electric guitar and thunderous beat. His performance at the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival, recorded and released as his first live album, At Newport 1960, helped turn on a whole new generation to Muddys sound. He expressed dismay when he realized that members of his own race were turning their backs on the genre while a white audience had shown increasing respect for the blues. However, for the better part of twenty years (since his last big hit in 1956, Im Ready) Muddy was put on the back shelf by the Chess label and recorded albums with various popular themes: Brass And The Blues, Electric Mud, etc. In 1967, he joined forces with Bo Diddley, Little Walter and Howlin Wolf to record the Super Blues and The Super Super Blues Band pair of albums of Chess blues standards. In 1972 he went back to England to record The London Muddy Waters Sessions with Rory Gallagher, Steve Winwood, Rick Grech and Mitch Mitchell — but their playing was not up to his standards. These boys are top musicians, they can play with me, put the book before em and play it, you know, he told Guralnick. But that aint what I need to sell my people, it aint the Muddy Waters sound. An if you change my sound, then you gonna change the whole man. Muddys sound was basically Delta blues electrified, but his use of microtones, in both his vocals and slide playing, made it extremely difficult to duplicate and follow correctly. When I play on the stage with my band, I have to get in there with my guitar and try to bring the sound down to me. But no sooner than I quit playing, it goes back to another, different sound. My blues look so simple, so easy to do, but its not. They say my blues is the hardest blues in the world to play. Comeback Muddy Waters with James Cotton, 1971 Muddys long-time wife Geneva died of cancer on March 15, 1973. A devastated Muddy was taken to a doctor and told to quit smoking, which he did. Gaining custody of some of his outside kids, he moved them into his home, eventually buying a new house in Westmont, Illinois. Another teenage daughter turned up while Muddy was on tour in New Orleans; Big Bill Morganfield was introduced to his Dad after a gig in Florida. Florida was also where Muddy met his future wife, the 19-year-old Marva Jean Brooks whom he nicknamed Sunshine. Clapton served as best man at their wedding, also in 1973. On November 25, 1976, Muddy Waters performed at The Bands farewell concert at Winterland in San Francisco. The concert was released as both a record and a film, The Last Waltz, featuring a performance of Mannish Boy with Paul Butterfield on harmonica. In 1977 Johnny Winter convinced his label, Blue Sky, to sign Muddy, the beginning of a fruitful partnership. His comeback LP, Hard Again, was recorded in just two days and was a return to the original Chicago sound he had created 25 years earlier, thanks to Winters production. Former sideman James Cotton contributed harmonica on the Grammy Award winning album and a brief tour followed. The Muddy Waters Blues Band at the time included guitarists Sammy Lawhorn, Bob Margolin and Luther Snake Boy Johnson, pianist Pinetop Perkins, harmonica player Jerry Portnoy, bassist Calvin Fuzz Jones and drummer Willie Big Eyes Smith. On Hard Again, Winter played guitar in addition to producing; Muddy asked James Cotton to play harp on the session, and Cotton brought his own bassist Charles Calmese. According to Margolins liner notes, Muddy did not play guitar during these sessions. The album covers a broad spectrum of styles, from the opening of Mannish Boy, with shouts and hollers throughout, to the old-style Delta blues of I Cant Be Satisfied, with a National Steel solo by Winter, to Cottons screeching intro to The Blues Had a Baby, to the moaning closer Little Girl. Its live feel harks back to the Chess Records days, and it evokes a feeling of intimacy and cooperative musicianship. The expanded reissue includes one bonus track, a remake of the 1950s single Walking Through the Park. The other outtakes from the album sessions appear on King Bee. Margolins notes state that the reissued album was remastered but that remixing was not considered to be necessary. Hard Again was the first studio collaboration between Muddy and Winter, who produced his final four albums, the others being Im Ready, King Bee, and Muddy Mississippi Waters - Live, for Blue Sky, a Columbia Records subsidiary. In 1978, Winter recruited two of Muddys cohorts from the early 1950s, Big Walter Horton and Jimmy Rogers, and brought in the rest of his touring band at the time (harmonica player Jerry Portnoy, guitarist Luther Guitar Junior Johnson, and bassist Calvin Fuzz Jones) to record Im Ready, which came close to the critical and commercial success of Hard Again. The comeback continued in 1979 with the lauded LP Muddy Mississippi Waters Live. Muddy was loose for this one, wrote Jas Obrecht in Guitar Player, and the result is the next best thing to being ringside at one of his foot-thumping, head-nodding, downhome blues shows. On the album, Muddy is accompanied by his touring band, augmented by Johnny Winter on guitar. The set list contains most of his biggest hits, and the album has an energetic feel. King Bee the following year concluded Waters reign at Blue Sky, and these last four LPs turned out to be his biggest-selling albums ever. King Bee was the last album Muddy Waters recorded. Coming last in a trio of studio outings produced by Johnny Winter, it is also a mixed bag. During the sessions for King Bee, Muddy, his manager and his band were involved in a dispute over money. According to the liner notes by Bob Margolin, the conflict arose from Muddys health being on the wane and consequently playing fewer engagements. The bandmembers wanted more money for each of the fewer gigs they did play in order to make ends meet. Ultimately a split occurred and the entire band quit. Because of the tensions in the studio preceding the split, Winter felt the sessions had not produced enough solid material to yield an entire album, and filled out King Bee with outtakes from earlier Blue Sky sessions. The cover photograph is by David Michael Kennedy. For the listener, King Bee is a leaner and meaner record. Less of the good-time exuberance present on the previous two outings is present here. The title track, Mean Old Frisco, Sad Sad Day, and I Feel Like Going Home, are all blues with ensemble work. The Sony Legacy issue features completely remastered sound and Margolins notes, and also hosts two bonus tracks from the King Bee sessions that Winter did not see fit to release the first time. In 1981, Muddy Waters was invited to perform at ChicagoFest, the citys top outdoor music festival. He was joined onstage by Johnny Winter—who had successfully produced his most recent albums—and played classics like Mannish Boy, Trouble No More and Mojo Working to a new generation of fans. This historic performance was made available on DVD in 2009 by Shout! Factory. Later that year, Waters performed live with the Rolling Stones at the Checkerboard Lounge, with a DVD version of the concert released in 2012. In 1982, declining health dramatically curtailed Muddys performance schedule. His last public performance took place when he sat in with Eric Claptons band at a Clapton concert in Florida in autumn of 1982. Death On April 30, 1983 Muddy Waters died in his sleep from heart failure, at his home in Westmont, Illinois. At his funeral at Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois, throngs of blues musicians and fans showed up to pay tribute to one of the true originals of the art form. Muddy was a master of just the right notes, John P. Hammond, told Guitar World magazine. It was profound guitar playing, deep and simple... more country blues transposed to the electric guitar, the kind of playing that enhanced the lyrics, gave profundity to the words themselves. Two years after his death, Chicago honored him by designating the one-block section between 900 and 1000 E. 43rd Street near his former home on the south side Honorary Muddy Waters Drive. The Chicago suburb of Westmont, where Muddy lived the last decade of his life, named a section of Cass Avenue near his home Honorary Muddy Waters Way. Following his death, fellow blues musician B.B. King told Guitar World, Its going to be years and years before most people realize how greatly he contributed to American music. A Mississippi Blues Trail marker has been placed in Clarksdale, Mississippi by the Mississippi Blues Commission designating the site of Muddy Waters cabin. Blues-E-News Magazine Your partner in blues! Blues-E-News youtube/watch?v=w5IOou6qN1o
Posted on: Wed, 30 Apr 2014 08:47:15 +0000
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