There have been many great blues guitarists, but Muddy Waters stands alone as a musician who, with his talented band, created a distinctive style that came to be called the “Chicago blues.” Waters turned what had been a regional form of expression, traditional Delta blues, into an internationally respected popular music.
Born on April 4, 1915, in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, McKinley Morganfield got his nickname as a child because he liked to play in a muddy creek. Waters played the Jew’s-harp and harmonica before buying his first guitar for $2.50 when he was 17. His early influences included Son HOUSE and Robert JOHNSON, and he became a talented slide guitarist.
Waters was working as a sharecropper on a plantation at Sto vail, Mississippi, in 1941, when folk historian Alan LOMAX visited and recorded him. Lomax returned the next year and recorded more songs, feeding Waters’ musical ambition.
In 1943, Waters moved to Chicago, where he found work at a paper factory and began to play at house parties. He bought an electric guitar and soon became a sideman for established musicians. Waters recorded several times for the Aristocrat (later Chess) label before scoring his first hit, “I Can’t Be Satisfied,” in 1948. He dominated the national rhythm and blues charts in the 1950s with hits that have become standards, including “I Just Want to Make Love to You,” “Rollin’ Stone,” “Honey Bee,” “She Moves Me,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Got My Mojo Working,” “Mannish Boy,” and many others.
The Muddy Waters Band was formed in 1951 and featured some of the finest musicians in the blues, many of whom became well known in their own right. They included harmonica players LITTLE WALTER, Junior Wells, and James Cotton; pianists Sunnyland Slim and Otis SPANN; guitarists Jimmy Rogers and Pat Hare; bassists Ernest “Big” Crawford and Willie DIXON (who wrote some of Waters’ biggest hits); and drummers Elgin Evans and Fred Below.
Waters electrified the country blues, incorporating traditional themes such as sexuality, homesickness, and superstition into a sophisticated sound. His songs reflected the alienation and anxiety of many urban African-Americans of the time, while the country themes appealed to their longing for home. The acoustic sound he had learned in the Mississippi Delta was featured in his guitar playing as single-note slide phrases. Enhanced by a slow, solid beat he played sparely, stripping a tune to its essentials and creating a palpable tension. He used amplification to turn the music into something physical and ferocious. The guitar playing was complemented by his rough, barrel-chested voice, which was at times boastful, menacing, brooding, or celebratory.
A recording of the Muddy Waters Band’s outstanding performance at the I960 Newport Jazz Festival proved influential in the U.K., and by Waters’ second British tour in 1963, he had a substantial international audience. When musicians such as the ROLLING STONES (named after one of his hits) began covering his songs, white American music fans began to listen, and Waters became a star back home. Waters spent much of the 1970s on the U.S. college and festival circuits, until his band split up in 1980. The other members of the band later performed as the Legendary Blues Band.
Muddy Waters made several records for Blue Sky in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and continued to enjoy a successful career until his death in Chicago on April 30, 1983.
Daria Labinsky
SEE ALSO: BLUES; JAZZ; ROCK MUSIC.
FURTHER READING
Palmer, Robert. Deep Blues (New York: Penguin Books, 1981);
Rooney, James. Bossmen: Bill Monroe and Muddy Waters (New York: Da Capo, 1991).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Best of Muddy Waters; The Chess Box; Muddy Waters at Newport; The Real Folk Blues.