Muddy Waters

McKinley Morganfield (Muddy Waters) was born on the Stovall Plantation in Rolling Fork Mississippi in 1915. Muddy got his nickname as a child by playing in the muddy buyou behind his grandmotherâs house. Muddy was raised by his grandmother and worked in the fields of the Stovall Plantation. Muddy worked in the field during the day, and played guitar at night in small houses for whoever would listen and for whatever they could give to him. Well, theyâd come get me on time for parties, but they wouldnât bring me back on time. And like lot of mornings I get home and change my little ironed blue jeans and put on my cotton-picking clothes and go out to the field and work.(Margaret McKee, and Fred Chisenhall, Beale Black & Blue(B,B,B), Louisiana State University Press, Batton Rouge, 1981 p.232) Muddy also supplemented his earnings by making whiskey on the side.

In 1941 Alan Lomax traveled to Mississippi to find and record Robert Johnson. Lomax was informed that Johnson had recently died, but Son House, another blues musician, referred him to Muddy. Lomax recorded Muddy from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. After the session Muddy ran off to play at a juke joint. Lomax sent Muddy two copies of the recording and twenty dollars, which was quite a bit of money for the time. Lomax returned the following year and recorded Muddy a second time.

Muddy left Mississippi in 1943 for Chicago. It was said that Muddy left because his field boss left Stovall for the army and was replaced by a manager that Muddy did not get along with. Muddy had also grown out of small town life and craved something more. "Waters wanted more than Clarksdale could offer him."(Lawrence Cohn, Nothing But the Blues(NBB): The Music and the Musicians Abbeville Press, New York, 1993 p.181) Muddy moved in with family in Chicago and played at house parties and bars. This was where Muddy first gained his audience."Waterâs fire was searing Chicagoâs clubs before it ignited on record."(NBB p.181) Blues was becoming popular again and Muddy found himself in the center of its rebirth.

Hey, yeah, when they started World War Two, blues people came up to Chicago like mad from down South. Thatâs what made Chicago such a big blues city. When I came in there and got myself settled down, it was the biggest blues city there was in the books.(Muddy Waters B,B,B p.237)

Muddy was pursued by Chess records shortly after he arrived in Chicago. "Chess was a company just trying to get off the ground and they was lookinâ for talent. They had a black dude out, Sammy Goldberg, hustling up blues talent. And he found me right away." (Muddy Waters B,B,B p.238) Muddy first recorded as a sideman for Sunnyland Slim in 1947 for Chessâ Aristocrat label. Soon enough he was the headliner. "Muddy and his down-home blues were what the newcomers from the South wanted to hear." (B,B,B p.238) Muddy grew in popularity and established himself and his style in the blues scene.

Muddy continued recording, but his style changed from its Delta origins.

Waters would later tag (his) sound Îdeep blues,â a dramatic reinvention of the Deltaâs most essential elemental music. Yet the past was not where Waters truly lived. He was anxious to record with his Headhunters, the terror of Chicagoâs blues scene.(NBB 183)

He moved away from a down-home style blues to the faster louder blues that was popular in the 1950âs. Although Muddy admitted that he thought his earlier recordings were his best he continued to record this faster version of the blues.
Muddy did not record with his full band until 1953. This was a sign of Muddyâs power over the record label. Musicians usually did not have enough clout with the producers to demand that they play with their full band.

The 1960âs were a rough period for Muddy. Stations like WVON (Voice of the Negro) in Chicago and WNOV in Milwaukee were owned by upper class African Americans who were not playing the blues. This hurt Muddyâs record sales. "They donât hear Muddy today on the radio or see him on television. And what you canât hear youâll never like."(NBB p.370) Through this dry spell Chess was still recording Muddyâs songs, even though they werenât selling. Different packaging was experimented with and some people wet so far as to try to get Muddy to change his style to appeal to new musical crazes. Chess Records struggled to get Muddy Waterâs singles back onto the rhythm and blues charts and at the same time packaged his albums as folk music before taking cues from the underground rock phenomenon and recording Îsuppressionâ albums, psychedelic LPs, and Muddy-as-godfather-of-rock sessions. Chessâs black attorney John Burton recalled, ÎSome people wanted Muddy to change. When the folk record idiom became popular we tried to sell Muddy as a folk artist.â(NBB p.358) But Muddy "never really transformed his electric Chicago ensemble act into that of a Îfolk singer,â." (NBB p.359) Other bluesmen were willing to make this transition because of the money involved.

The revival of the blues in 1960, due largely to European influence, reinstated Muddy and some other bluesmen to their former glory. Some artists even made enough from shows to live lavish lifestyles, as Muddy did. Muddy remained in this position until his death in 1983, but his looming presence is still felt in the blues today.

Music Critique