Hard Again

Chess Records was sold to All Platinum Records in August 1975 and became a reissue label. Waters left and recorded no new studio material until he signed with Johnny Winter's Blue Sky label in October 1976. Hard Again was his first album for Blue Sky and the first Winter produced for him. Dave Still engineered it. Waters used his touring band of the time, guitarist Bob Margolin, pianist Pinetop Perkins and drummer Willie 'Big Eyes' Smith, joined by the harmonica player James Cotton and the bassist Charles Calmese, who had worked with both Winter and Cotton. Winter played guitar and is credited with miscellaneous screams.

Three songs were new versions of Chess-era recordings: Mannish Boy, I Want to Be Loved and I Can't Be Satisfied. The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock and Roll, Pt. 2 was co-written with Brownie McGhee, and Bus Driver with Terry Abrahamson. An outtake, Walking Through the Park, appeared on the 2004 Legacy reissue, and several more unused tracks came out on King Bee in 1981.

Critics were warm. John Quaintance of Yahoo! Music called it a remarkable album and a return to form. DownBeat heard Waters playful and proud, brawny and insistent. Dan Oppenheimer of Rolling Stone wrote that he sounds happy, energetic and out for business. Oppenheimer and Daniel Gioffre of AllMusic both singled out Smith's drumming and both called it a comeback. Robert Christgau, after naming B.B. King's Live at the Regal and Otis Spann's Walking the Blues, said he could not recall a better blues album than this.

It peaked at number 143 on the Billboard 200, his first appearance on that chart since Fathers and Sons in 1969, and it won the Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording in the year it was released.