Muddy Waters

Stovall to Chicago

Muddy Waters was born McKinley Morganfield and grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi. His grandmother raised him after his mother died and gave him the nickname Muddy because he loved to play in muddy water. By seventeen he was playing guitar and harmonica, copying Son House and Robert Johnson. In August 1941 Alan Lomax recorded him for the Library of Congress, in his own house. He later said that when the playback began he thought, 'I can do it, I can do it.'

In 1943 he moved to Chicago to become a full-time musician. He bought his first electric guitar the next year, because, he said, nobody could hear you in the clubs with an acoustic. In 1946 he recorded for Columbia and then for Aristocrat, a new label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess. Aristocrat became Chess Records, and in 1948 'I Can't Be Satisfied' and 'I Feel Like Going Home' were hits.

The Chess band

Rollin' Stone, a solo performance, was the first of his records released on Chess. It sold about 70,000 copies and let him leave his day job. At first the Chess brothers would not let him use his working band in the studio. By September 1953 he was recording with Little Walter on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds on drums and Otis Spann on piano, sometimes with the songwriter Willie Dixon on bass.

Dixon supplied (I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man in 1954, and I'm Ready followed the same year. In 1955 Waters recorded Mannish Boy as an answer to Bo Diddley's I'm a Man, and in 1956 Got My Mojo Working. Chess gathered twelve of his singles in 1958 as The Best of Muddy Waters, his first album.

Newport and the sixties

He toured England with Otis Spann in 1958 and said he was definitely too loud for the audiences. Younger musicians, among them Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, were inspired by it. His set at the Newport Jazz Festival on 3 July 1960 was released that November as At Newport 1960, sometimes called the first live blues album. In September 1963 Chess recorded him with an all-acoustic band, including Buddy Guy, for Folk Singer.

Electric Mud (1968), made at Marshall Chess's urging with members of the psychedelic band Rotary Connection, reached 127 on the Billboard 200. Many critics scorned it and Waters eventually disowned it. Fathers and Sons (1969) paired him with Michael Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield, longtime fans, and reached 70, the most successful album of his career. In 1972 he won his first Grammy, for They Call Me Muddy Waters.

Hard Again

Chess was sold in August 1975 and Waters left. In October 1976 he signed to Blue Sky, the label of the guitarist Johnny Winter, and the next month he appeared as a special guest at The Band's farewell concert, The Last Waltz. Hard Again, released on 10 January 1977, was the first of four albums Winter produced for him. It was recorded with his touring band and the harmonica player James Cotton, it won a Grammy, and critics have tended to call it his comeback album.

Winter also produced I'm Ready (1978), the live Muddy 'Mississippi' Waters Live (1979) and King Bee (1981). In November 1981 Waters played the Checkerboard Lounge in Chicago with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood. He cut back his playing in 1982, and his last public performance was sitting in with Eric Clapton's band in Florida that summer. He died on 30 April 1983.

Legacy

The Rolling Stones took their name from Rollin' Stone. Jimi Hendrix said he first heard Waters as a little boy and it scared him to death. B.B. King said it would be years before most people realized how greatly Waters contributed to American music. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 1987 and says you could call his the guitar that launched a thousand bands.