Muddy Waters: celebrating a great blues musician

Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters Credit: Rex Features

Van Morrison, not a man given to hyperbole, said: "Muddy Waters is a prime influence for anybody who's ever done anything rock 'n' roll."

Just ask Eric Clapton or surviving members of the Rolling Stones — named after one of his songs, of course — why we should toast the memory of the 'father of modern Chicago blues', who was born on April 4, 1915. They still listen to the vast and splendid catalogue of well-preserved music, created from his first record in 1941 until shortly before his death at 70 on April 30 1983. 

Born McKinley Morganfield, he earned the nickname 'Muddy' from his love of playing in the Deer Creek mud along the Mississippi River as a child. It was a name given to him by his grandmother, Della Grant, who raised him after his mother died shortly following his birth. 

Muddy waters
Muddy Waters was the nickname of McKinley Morganfield Credit: Rex Features

 

His tale of a tough plantation upbringing is well known but it was heartening to know that even late in life he relished thinking about the early days of learning to play blues and performing for hardworking sharecroppers at Saturday night fish fries. Little did they know they were watching a man who would change the face of music and bring the Delta blues to Chicago. 

That surging powerful voice and awesome slide guitar has lost none of its electrifying impact and his brilliance was captured in a performance of Mannish Boy in Martin Scorsese's concert film of The Band called The Last Waltz.  Muddy Waters had nearly been left off the bill because of time and money constraints — and only one camera was left on while he played — but it's a show-stopping performance. 

As a 14-year-old, I was lucky enough to see him play and then meet him as he performed at the 1979 Capital Radio Jazz Festival in London's Alexander Park. Thankfully a friend (with a cheap Polaroid camera) was there to take a snap as we chatted. 

Muddy waters
Muddy Waters playing at Alexandra Palace in 1979 Credit: Martin Chilton

 

Waters had been to England many times before, starting in 1958, but some of the early trips weren't exactly triumphs. He was booed for being electric ahead of his time (to a crowd perhaps expecting the softer acoustic blues of Big Bill Broonzy) and then again when he returned a couple of years later and played an acoustic folk set when the crowd wanted electric. Small wonder that he later told a friend that the "the goddammed English got their heads up their ass". 

His real impact was on young British musicians, especially the Rolling Stones. Although I noted that in Buddy Guy's 2012 autobiography When I Left Home, the old bluesman pointed out: "When the Rolling Stones came to Chess Records in 1964, they started telling everyone — and even wrote it up in books — that they saw Muddy Waters standing on a ladder where he was whitewashing the walls. They said the Mud had whitewash all over his face. For years Keith Richards repeated this story.

 

His point was that Leonard Chess was using poor Muddy as a handyman. Leonard and Muddy are long gone, but I was there — and so was Marshall Chess — and we both know know this ain't true . . . Muddy had put Chess on the map. If anyone had been used as a handyman, it would have been me."  

Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters Credit: Rex Features

 

Musicians liked Waters, who had a roving eye for female fans. Yet he was a curious mix of a tough old blues man who followed the White Sox baseball team passionately yet would sometimes sit watching games in his silk underwear and hair curlers. 

What really mattered to him, though, was playing the blues, "the pure blues", as he would sometimes correct people with feeling. The great songs he recorded are legendary. Fast songs like Caldonia, slow blues like Long Distance Call, searing songs like Hoochie Coochie Man and Rollin' Stone and powerful sex songs like I Just Wanna Make Love To You. The style  didn't matter, Muddy Waters nailed them all.   

He worried at the end of his life, when he was in declining health, whether the blues would survive. Let's hope people will still be celebrating his double century in 2113. For now, as Van The Man sings on When The Healing Has Begun:  "Let's play this Muddy Waters record you got there." That's an enjoyable thing to do anytime but on the anniversary of his birthday it seems entirely fitting. 

 

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