Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983),[1][2] known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer and musician who was an important figure in the post-World War II blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago blues".[3] His style of playing has been described as "raining down Delta beatitude".[4]
For other uses, see Muddy Waters (disambiguation).
Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield
April 4, 1913
Issaquena County, Mississippi, U.S.
April 30, 1983 (aged 70)
Westmont, Illinois, U.S.
- Musician
- songwriter
- bandleader
- Vocals
- guitar
- harmonica
1941–1982
Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by age 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, emulating local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson.[5] He was recorded in Mississippi by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941.[6][7] In 1943, he moved to Chicago to become a full-time professional musician. In 1946, he recorded his first records for Columbia Records and then for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess.
In the early 1950s, Muddy Waters and his band—Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds (also known as Elgin Evans) on drums and Otis Spann on piano—recorded several blues classics, some with the bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon. These songs included "Hoochie Coochie Man," "I Just Want to Make Love to You" and "I'm Ready". In 1958, he traveled to England, laying the foundations of the resurgence of interest in the blues there. His performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960 was recorded and released as his first live album, At Newport 1960.
Muddy Waters' music has influenced various American music genres, including rock and roll and subsequently rock.
Early life[edit]
Muddy Waters' place and date of birth are not conclusively known. He stated that he was born in 1915 at Rolling Fork in Sharkey County, Mississippi, but other evidence suggests that he was born in the unincorporated community of Jug's Corner, in neighboring Issaquena County, in 1913.[8] In the 1930s and 1940s, before his rise to fame, the year of his birth was reported as 1913 on his marriage license, recording notes, and musicians' union card. A 1955 interview in the Chicago Defender is the earliest in which he stated 1915 as the year of his birth, and he continued to state that year in interviews from that point onward. The 1920 census lists him as five years old as of March 6, 1920. The Social Security Death Index, relying on the Social Security card application submitted after his move to Chicago in the mid-1940s, lists him as being born April 4, 1913. His gravestone gives his birth year as 1915.[9]
His grandmother, Della Grant, raised him after his mother died shortly after his birth. Grant gave him the nickname "Muddy" at an early age because he loved to play in the muddy water of nearby Deer Creek.[10] "Waters" was added years later, as he began to play harmonica and perform locally in his early teens.[11] He taught himself to play harmonica.[12] The remains of the cabin on Stovall Plantation where he lived in his youth are now at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi.[13][14]
He had his first introduction to music in church: "I used to belong to church. I was a good Baptist, singing in the church. So I got all of my good moaning and trembling going on for me right out of church,"[15] he recalled. By the time he was 17, he had purchased his first guitar. "I sold the last horse that we had. Made about fifteen dollars for him, gave my grandmother seven dollars and fifty cents, I kept seven-fifty and paid about two-fifty for that guitar. It was a Stella. The people ordered them from Sears-Roebuck in Chicago."[15] He started playing his songs in joints near his hometown, mostly on a plantation owned by Colonel William Howard Stovall.[16]
Career[edit]
Early career, 1930s–1948[edit]
In the early 1930s, Muddy Waters accompanied Big Joe Williams on tours of the Delta, playing harmonica. Williams recounted to Blewett Thomas that he eventually dropped Muddy "because he was takin' away my women [fans]".
In August 1941,[7] Alan Lomax went to Stovall, Mississippi, on behalf of the Library of Congress to record various country blues musicians. "He brought his stuff down and recorded me right in my house," Muddy told Rolling Stone magazine, "and when he played back the first song I sounded just like anybody's records. Man, you don't know how I felt that Saturday afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice. Later on he sent me two copies of the pressing and a check for twenty bucks, and I carried that record up to the corner and put it on the jukebox. Just played it and played it and said, 'I can do it, I can do it'."[6] Lomax came back in July 1942 to record him again. Both sessions were eventually released by Testament Records as Down on Stovall's Plantation.[17] The complete recordings were reissued by Chess Records on CD as Muddy Waters: The Complete Plantation Recordings. The Historic 1941–42 Library of Congress Field Recordings in 1993 and remastered in 1997.
In 1943, Muddy headed to Chicago with the hope of becoming a full-time professional musician. He later recalled arriving in Chicago as the single most momentous event in his life.[18] He lived with a relative for a short period while driving a truck and working in a factory by day and performing at night.[19] Big Bill Broonzy, then one of the leading bluesmen in Chicago, had Muddy open his shows in the rowdy clubs where Broonzy played. This gave him the opportunity to play in front of a large audience.[20] In 1944, he bought his first electric guitar and then formed his first electric combo. He felt obliged to electrify his sound in Chicago because, he said, "When I went into the clubs, the first thing I wanted was an amplifier. Couldn't nobody hear you with an acoustic." His sound reflected the optimism of postwar African Americans. Willie Dixon said that "There was quite a few people around singing the blues but most of them was singing all sad blues. Muddy was giving his blues a little pep."[15]
In 1946, Muddy recorded some songs for Mayo Williams at Columbia Records, with an old-fashioned combo consisting of clarinet, saxophone and piano; they were released a year later with Ivan Ballen's Philadelphia-based 20th Century label, billed as James "Sweet Lucy" Carter and his Orchestra – Muddy Waters' name was not mentioned on the label.[21] Later that year, he began recording for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess. In 1947, he played guitar with Sunnyland Slim on piano on the cuts "Gypsy Woman" and "Little Anna Mae". These were also shelved, but in 1948, "I Can't Be Satisfied" and "I Feel Like Going Home" became hits, and his popularity in clubs began to take off.[22] Soon after, Aristocrat changed its name to Chess Records. Muddy Waters's signature tune "Rollin' Stone" also became a hit that year.
Commercial success, 1948–1957[edit]
Initially, the Chess brothers would not allow Muddy Waters to use his working band in the recording studio;[23] instead, he was provided with a backing bass by Ernest "Big" Crawford or by musicians assembled specifically for the recording session, including "Baby Face" Leroy Foster and Johnny Jones. Gradually, Chess relented, and by September 1953 he was recording with one of the most acclaimed blues groups in history: Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds (also known as Elgin Evans) on drums, and Otis Spann on piano.[24] The band recorded a series of blues classics during the early 1950s, some with the help of the bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon, including "Hoochie Coochie Man", "I Just Want to Make Love to You", and "I'm Ready".
Muddy Waters's band became a proving ground for some of the city's best blues talent,[25] with members of the ensemble going on to successful careers of their own. In 1952, Little Walter left when his single "Juke" became a hit, although he continued a collaborative relationship long after he left, appearing on most of the band's classic recordings in the 1950s. Howlin' Wolf moved to Chicago in 1954 with financial support earned through his successful Chess singles, and the "legendary rivalry" with Muddy Waters began. The rivalry was, in part, stoked by Willie Dixon providing songs to both artists, with Wolf suspecting that Muddy was getting Dixon's best songs.[26] 1955 saw the departure of Jimmy Rogers, who quit to work exclusively with his own band, which had been a sideline until that time.
In the mid-1950s, Muddy Waters' singles were frequently on Billboard magazine's various Rhythm & Blues charts[27][28] including "Sugar Sweet" in 1955 and "Trouble No More", "Forty Days and Forty Nights", and "Don't Go No Farther" in 1956.[29] 1956 also saw the release of one of his best-known numbers, "Got My Mojo Working", although it did not appear on the charts.[27] However, by the late 1950s, his singles success had come to an end, with only "Close to You" reaching the chart in 1958.[27] Also in 1958, Chess released his first compilation album, The Best of Muddy Waters, which collected twelve of his singles up to 1956.[30]
Performances and crossover, 1958–1970[edit]
Muddy toured England with Spann in 1958, where they were backed by local Dixieland-style or "trad jazz" musicians, including members of Chris Barber's band.[31] At the time, English audiences had only been exposed to acoustic folk blues, as performed by artists such as Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Big Bill Broonzy.[31] Both the musicians and audiences were unprepared for his performance, which included electric slide guitar playing.[31] He recalled:
Legacy[edit]
Two years after his death, the city of Chicago paid tribute to him by designating the one-block section between 900 and 1000 East 43rd Street near his former home on the south side "Honorary Muddy Waters Drive".[66] In 2017, a ten stories-mural commissioned as a part of the Chicago Blues Festival and designed by Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra was painted on the side of the building at 17 North State Street, at the corner of State and Washington Streets.[67] The Chicago suburb of Westmont, where he lived the last decade of his life, named a section of Cass Avenue near his home "Honorary Muddy Waters Way".
In 2008, a Mississippi Blues Trail marker has been placed in Clarksdale, Mississippi, by the Mississippi Blues Commission designating the site of Muddy Waters' cabin.[68] He also received a plaque on the Clarksdale Walk of Fame.[69]
Muddy Waters' Chicago Home in the Kenwood neighborhood is in the process of being named a Chicago Landmark.[70]
A crater on Mercury was named in his honor in 2016 by the IAU.[71]
In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Waters at number 72 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.[72]
In film[edit]
Muddy Waters' songs have been featured in long-time fan Martin Scorsese's movies, including The Color of Money, Goodfellas, and Casino. A 1970s recording of "Mannish Boy" was used in Goodfellas, Better Off Dead, Risky Business, and the rockumentary The Last Waltz. In 1988 "Mannish Boy" was also used in a Levi's 501 commercial and re-released in Europe as a single with "Hoochie Coochie Man" on the flip side.
Waters is a central character in the 2008 American biographical drama film
Cadillac Records. The role of Muddy Waters is played by Jeffrey Wright. Wright recorded "(I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man" for the movie soundtrack.
Studio albums