Can't Be Satisfied

by Robert Gordon

  Well my mother told my father

  Just before I was born

  “I got a boy-child coming, gonna be

  He’s gonna be a rolling stone.”

  Sure enough, he’s a rolling stone.

  The guitar break is lightly picked, his bass notes punctuating this little dance on the high notes. It’s not gleeful, but it’s impudent, buying the husband a shot at the bar while still tasting his wife’s lips.

  Well I feel

  Yes I feel

  Baby like that low-down time ain’t long.

  I’m going to catch the first thing smoking

  Back down the road I’m going.

  And a parting ping from the high notes, dust settling where once was a man, escaped. The stealth is reflected in the menacing distortion, the craggy amplified sustain; Muddy is a thin snake that cuts a wide swath. There is much empty space in this performance, imbued with the power of a pause, of letting a note hang in the air, the anticipation of the next one. Muddy doesn’t tell all. His pause asks us to fill the emptiness; it draws out our emotions, feelings, fears, compelling us to add meaning.

  This monument to time and rhythm, this anthem to mobility, is a remarkable appreciation of the divisions and subdivisions of space, of patterns and how they change. And it was an auspicious announcement by a new label, especially when paired with Gene Ammons’s solid but derivative interpretation of the standard “My Foolish Heart,” which was released simultaneously. “Rollin’ Stone” sold well and Muddy left his day job. Jimmy Rogers soon followed suit. Walter never needed what he couldn’t get on Maxwell Street; he had no job to quit.

  In the summer of 1950, Leonard finally began expanding Muddy’s sound. He wouldn’t listen to reason or to the musical possibilities, but he’d heard the response to the renegade “Rollin’ and Tumblin’.” First he added Walter, and then finally Jimmy, who brought his first hit, “That’s All Right,” to his first Chess session. Over the coming year and a half, Jimmy recorded all his material at the end of Muddy’s sessions, sometimes with Muddy and members of the band, but also with a group he put together for his own gigs. “Muddy was never a binding man or a selfish man,” said Jimmy. “So when I would be playing with Muddy, naturally the audience would know my records and ask for me to play them, so I would step forward, within the show Muddy was doing, and take my numbers.” Just as Big Bill and Sonny Boy had spawned his career, Muddy helped others, even if it ultimately meant losing their help. “I know when you make ’em a star they’re gonna leave. But I can’t hold the whole world by myself, they should get out there and do something.”

  After playing, Muddy, Jimmy, and Walter cruised the streets of Chicago’s night, free from the day shift, a few little bottles along for the ride. The musicians analyzed the night’s work, considered new musical possibilities, the Chicago competition, the Mississippi competition. In the driver’s seat was Muddy’s childhood friend Bo — Andrew Bolton, the backstage member of the band.

  “Bo was from Stovall,” said the Reverend Willie Morganfield, Muddy’s cousin. “He was a fine person, he just didn’t take anything. He was like a bodyguard for Muddy. And you just didn’t bother Muddy if he was around. He was that kind of guy.” When fans got too excited around Muddy, Bo would institute calm; when jealous women came at Muddy, Bo was a wall they couldn’t bust through. “Bo was a nice boy, just couldn’t read and write,” said one of Muddy’s later bandmates. “Wouldn’t know his name in boxcar letters. He got his learning from just looking and looking.”

  Muddy and Bo shared responsibility for each other. Bo ran errands for Geneva, cooked pancakes for Geneva’s sons at the kitchen stove, would later teach Cookie to drive. In the meantime, he kept his regular job. “I always remember Bo telling me that he got paid every week,” said Muddy’s granddaughter Cookie, “and therefore, if Muddy had a gig on Friday or Saturday, they were set because Bo would have money so Muddy could get his hair did.”

  “Seven nights a week, that’s how my schedule ran,” said Muddy. “And then Sunday afternoon we would do a matinee somewhere. I played out of town, but we could stay in the city and work seven nights a week.” Weekends in Gary or as far away as Memphis were common. Muddy handled many of his own gigs, though Leonard helped, and so did Big Bill Hill, a disc jockey with his own Colt Management Company.

  Days, Muddy stayed at home. He relaxed, recovering from the previous night, preparing to expend it all again that evening. Geneva would make him ice packs, which he’d wear across his forehead, lying in his bed or watching a baseball game on TV. The White Sox were his team, though he admired Brooklyn’s Jackie Robinson, who had recently integrated Major League Baseball. He looked after Geneva’s two boys. “My first memory of Muddy?” Charles, Muddy’s younger stepson, said. “I was coming home from school, living on the West Side, and he was listening to his record with a fella that lived across the street. And when he would play down to different clubs, he would slick his hair back, have bangs the way black people used to wear their hair. When I got out of order, he’d put me over his lap and whip me with a belt, a big heavy thick belt. But I really didn’t get that much out of order.”

  Muddy’s classic lineup solidified with two new members, first in 1950, then in 1951. Drummer Elga Edmonds — that’s his rarely used correct name; friends usually called him Elgin, like both the dependable clock company and the nearby city in Illinois (though other variations for his last name included Edwards, Edmonton, and Evans) — was born in the land of Lincoln and had a musical mind-set different from the Delta. “Elgin” was steady playing jazz gigs and was known throughout town for the book he kept; if you needed a drummer or any other musician, Elgin could help.

  Muddy needed a drummer who knew to follow his singing and not to force turnarounds and changes just because standard convention called for it every eight or twelve bars. Elgin’s timing was good, he liked brushes so he wasn’t too loud, and if he lacked flair, flair was not short in Muddy’s group. As a jazzman, Elgin was not thrilled about taking a blues gig, but they paid and jazz bookings were increasingly losing out; the blues was drawing better audiences in Chicago, building on the excitement of the new sound.

  Despite their differing musical backgrounds, Elgin quickly found common ground with Muddy: cards, drinking, and food. “Elgin could eat,” drummer Freddie Crutchfield recalled. “He was a pork eater, wouldn’t eat no beef, nothing but pork. Ten dollars worth of pork chops, ten dollars worth of pork loin, nothing but pork. Pork, pork, pork, and all these sauces. He was a short guy but short and fat. He had a big round face, nice-looking guy, smiled a lot. He could talk and play cards. Him and Muddy and all of them, they’d be playing.” A dependable drummer who played Casino was just right for this band.

  When the fifth card player joined the band on piano in 1951, the template for the modern pop group was set. Otis Spann, a solid man who boxed in his youth and competed in semipro football, played the eighty-eights with fluidity, his left-hand rumble as agile as his right-hand tinkle. He could amble on the bottom and crash on the top — without getting in the way of the vocalist. Born on March 21, 1930, Spann was the child of musicians. His mother, Josephine Erby Spann, played guitar and recorded once with Memphis Minnie. His father, Frank Houston Spann, played piano and preached. Spann’s mother died in the mid-1940s, and her teenaged son went to Chicago, where his father and an aunt resided. He plastered walls by day and got plastered by night, hanging in bars and sidling up to pianos. He befriended the smoky-voiced Big Maceo Merriweather, listening to his swinging bass hand entwine with Tampa Red’s guitar; he keenly observed the rough-and-tumble piano style of Little Brother Montgomery and Sunnyland Slim. His boozy voice was early earned. Gin. Or anything alcoholic. It had little discernible effect on his behavior, and his playing was always superb, intricate, and relevant.

  Spann had lost a gig and Jimmy knew he was “scufflin’, sleepin’ in cars. So I told him Muddy needed a piano player. He said, ‘Yeah, man.’ As long as he get him a few nickels and g
et him some whiskey and get a girl to look at him — that was Spann.” Muddy was not eager for a piano, but Spann hounded him. They soon became such close friends that they called themselves brothers. Though they were not related by blood, their musical kinship, like their friendship, was of the closest kind.

  “It made a big difference to bring him in because we had a full-bodied music. That piano really fill up things,” said Muddy. “See, my blues is not as easy to play as most people think they are. I makes my blues in different numbers, sometimes thirteen, fifteen, fourteen, just the way I feel. Spann, that’s the way he was. He don’t care what kind of time you break, he can break it with you.” And Otis Spann was happy to serve as the preeminent blues sideman; he fully appreciated the possibilities of playing backup, and leading a band would have interfered with his drinking.

  Muddy, Jimmy, Walter, Elgin, and Spann were a solid unit for a year and a half. Muddy’s classic group was not only powerful, they were also a good show; Spann, Jimmy, and Walter could step in to sing backup and also take the lead on their own songs, and Walter and Jimmy could double on the other’s instrument. There was always something to watch. The piano had previously restrained Muddy’s contemporary edge, but that was before he heard Otis Spann; the band would revolve around both men for the next two decades, fully two-thirds of Muddy’s career. But while club patrons heard the sound of the future, Leonard (his sales indicating no need to change Muddy’s sound) didn’t, and it would be two years before Otis Spann appeared on a Muddy Waters recording.

  Powered by the band’s club success, Muddy cut several of his deepest amplified Delta blues over the next eight months: “Long Distance Call,” “Honey Bee,” “She Moves Me,” “Still a Fool,” and, first, “Louisiana Blues.”

  “All that stuff came to me real good,” said Muddy. “I can remember that a lot of the records I have made, I first made those songs up during my workdays out on the farm.” Muddy’s wiry electric slide and Walter’s acoustic harmonica entwine in this backwoods shuffle like Spanish moss on an oak. The rhythm evokes the banging of a tattered suitcase being pulled down a bumpy road. “Louisiana Blues,” a slowed variation on the “Rollin’ and Tumblin’ ” melody, secured Muddy’s introduction to a national audience by becoming his first top-ten blues hit.

  With a hit, times got real good for the new blues stars. They picked up a regular night at Ada’s Lounge and Chicken Shack, and three gigs weekly at Joe’s Rendezvous Lounge. They played regular Sunday afternoon matinees at Silvio’s, rushing over to Sam Evans’s Ebony Lounge for a night gig, Sam hawking Muddy’s talent on his daily radio show. (Muddy dedicated the flip side of “Louisiana Blues” to his patron, naming the instrumental the “Evans Shuffle.”) Previous ads had announced him as “Young Muddy Waters,” but with the release of “Louisiana Blues,” they began trumpeting: “Blues Guitar King.”

  Muddy did not forget those he’d displaced. He gave his intermission spots to Big Bill Broonzy and tried to assist Tampa Red. “I was playing at the 708 Club on the South Side,” said Muddy. “I tried to give Tampa a few dollars. He say, ‘No, I don’t need no charity.’ That kinda embarrassed me. I thought I was doing something great.”

  “Long Distance Call” and “Honey Bee,” from the same session, followed “Louisiana Blues” onto the charts — three top-ten hits within six months. “Long Distance Call” was a cheating song, but the perspective was Geneva’s. Outside his home, even just blocks away, Muddy made no pretense of hiding his extramarital affairs. He openly courted young women, even while his young mistress du jour was in the club. Soul star Bobby Rush remembered he and Willie Mabon playing and three women getting in a fight over Muddy. “I instigated it just to get them fighting,” said Rush. “Willie Mabon was playing the piano, his hands never stopped, he said, ‘Let ’em fight, me and you will fuck ’em all.’ ”

  The session on July 11, 1951, was one of the most amazing of Muddy’s career. Walter, barely twenty-one and still dismissive of the world’s slow turning, was at a creative peak this day, what Jimmy Rogers called “popping.” This session, which produced “She Moves Me” and “Still a Fool,” was later called Independence Day for the harmonica, but really it was Independence Day for Walter. Previously, he played his harp into a microphone that, like a vocal, went directly to the tape recorder. On this session, he plugged into an amplifier and had the engineer mike that instead. He could manipulate the amp and have that mediating sound recorded instead of his harp directly. The difference is night and day, akin to the change Muddy achieved on electric guitar. The harmonica was about to move from the country to the city. It was a revolution.

  (The new route for Walter’s microphone caused some complications. The studio amplifier — there was only one — had two inputs, and with Walter joining Muddy, he displaced Jimmy. Jimmy had very little but contempt for Leonard, so he may not have felt like giving his blood and guts that day; he sat out. But Walter was on a tear. He was heaving blood and guts.)

  Leonard was on edge. Not one for changes, he was already made tense by the vocal echo chamber he’d just jury-rigged from a sewer pipe. Now Walter was seriously fucking with the sound. Something had to give, and it did after the first tune, when they were cutting “She Moves Me.” “My drummer couldn’t get that beat on ‘She Moves Me,’ ” said Muddy. “My drummer wasn’t doin’ nothing, just dum-chick dum, but he couldn’t hold it there to save his damn life, and Leonard Chess knew where it was, so Leonard told him, ‘Get the fuck out of the way. I’ll do that.’ ” Leonard liked the beat emphasized, appealing to the dance floor. (“You sure worked for your money,” said Odie Payne, another Chess drummer. “[Leonard] had you playing so hard, I just didn’t believe it. The drummer would be the loudest thing in there.”) When Elgin could not deliver, Leonard burst from the studio glass and, as if on a dare, took the drumsticks from him.

  Psychology has as much to do with record producing as does musical knowledge. If artists are trying too hard and have lost their natural feel, the producer deflects their attention, unleashing their innate artistry. A producer will set an artist on edge — if that discomfort will create great art. “Blues is nothing but the truth, truth that at one time or another in his lifetime the singer has felt,” said Phil Chess. “Our job was to try to bring out points in his mind that he might have forgotten, to give him ideas, to get him to think about some things that were happening down in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, or wherever. It’s actually like psychiatry, you try to talk to him for him to bring out the things himself.”

  Leonard was known as a particularly aggressive shrink. “Leonard calling people a motherfucker,” said Jimmy Rogers, “that was just his way of saying good morning to blues musicians. At Chess if you didn’t curse you wasn’t recognized!” (Muddy was immediately comfortable with that; Colonel Stovall had been the same way.)

  On “She Moves Me,” Leonard pounded the bass drum to make the dead jump up and run. It reverberates through the years right to the listener’s gut, like a heart that pounds when your crush enters the room. In response, Walter shapes his notes like a sculptor — elongating, eliding, quivering, and shaking. You can almost hear him figuring out how to play by listening to the sounds he’s just made emanate from the amp. His notes float like crimson leaves that skip in the wind. “Oh man, I wished you could have seen Little Walter,” Muddy said. “While you’re recording, he be dashing all around you everywhere, changing harps, running all around the studio, but he never get in your way. He had ideas, put a lot of trick things in there, getting all different sounds. Aww, he was the greatest. He always had ideas.” “She Moves Me” again put Muddy on Billboard’s top ten.

  But they weren’t done yet. Next, Walter put down his harp and plugged in Jimmy’s guitar. The creative juices were spilling off him and Jimmy didn’t want to slip in the puddle. Walter couldn’t play a lot of guitar, but the bit he learned he mastered, and he throws his whole physical self into this song. “Still a Fool” is played with all the heaviness of Muddy’s full ban
d in the clubs, but with the band stripped away. No concessions are made, no accommodations for the pared-down instrumentation. Two guitars and a drum in 1951 can’t get more electric than this; in Glen Allan, Mississippi, or broadcast live on the Delta’s KFFA, this sound would have caused riots.

  “Still a Fool,” a paean to the outside woman, is a song as important for what it suggests as what it says. The guitar’s burning distortion evokes an over-the-top madness, an uncontrollable desire beyond all reason, of fucking a woman between rows of cotton, then stepping one row over and having her sister. “They say she’s no good,” he sings, “but she’s all right by me.” Women were a matter of quantity over quality to Muddy, and “Still a Fool” is his best attempt to explain himself. Musically, the song revisits the “Rollin’ Stone” riff. Leonard is still on the studio floor, banging the bass drum; the sweat has got to be soaking his shirt, pouring from his brow. Walter’s bass notes are like a pulse: you can feel the beat as it approaches, as it rides through you, as it passes. Muddy picks the six strings, raw and visceral, a deep world of hard blues, ominous, horrific, his guitar in unison with his vocal, Walter attuned to Muddy’s spatial and aural insights, dirty dancing around him. Moaning and humming reach for what words fail to say. There are four verses with no guitar break, nothing to diminish the onslaught; and slaughter is ultimately this music’s subject. “Still a Fool” hit the national top-ten charts in late November of 1951, and advertisements announced “King of Blues Muddy Waters And His Blues Boys.” Playing a Chicago jazz club during an off night, they were drawing bigger crowds than the main attraction. “They even named it the Muddy Waters Blues,” said Freddie Crutchfield. “When they were going to play the blues, most of the guys said, ‘We’re going to play the Muddy Waters Blues.’ ” He was becoming his own genre.