Got My Mojo Working

Preston 'Red' Foster wrote the song and Ann Cole recorded it first, in 1956. Waters released his own version in 1957 with some different lyrics and a new arrangement, after recording it for Chess in Chicago on 1 December 1956. Where Cole's version reflects more of a doo-wop style, his emphasizes a driving rhythm. He added a line about acquiring a mojo from his own 1950 song Louisiana Blues. Asked about the subject, he said you can't leave out something about that mojo thing when writing songs that come from the Mississippi Delta.

It was a fixture of his live shows for the rest of his career. The version that secured the song's renown, wrote the Blues Foundation's Jim O'Neal, was the two-part rendition on At Newport 1960, which ends with the band and guest bluesmen on stage for medleys. A performance of it from Newport was nominated for a Grammy. Waters's rendition is number 202 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs list, received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999 and is named one of the RIAA's Songs of the Century. It was also played in two parts, with Buddy Miles on drums in part two, on Fathers and Sons in 1969.