They played Australia and New Zealand in 1973, a tour that proved them not only transcontinental but also transmorphic. In Canberra, the venue was a circus tent. Scott Cameron dragged him outside the tent to witness his newest fans. “It was the only time he laughed louder than when he first met me. There were these huge elephants that were chained to the ground but they were rocking back and forth like they were dancing to the music. Muddy went right down on his knees, laughing. Right on his knees.”
The band returned to America and began a West Coast tour. (They crossed paths with ZZ Top, a rock trio impressed by the band’s backstage pastime: playing poker on a guitar case, each man’s money next to his gun.) By this point, the road had finally become too long for guitarist Pee Wee Madison and he caught a bus to Chicago. Muddy quickly hired Hollywood Fats (born Michael Mann), who’d come to his attention through a stint with Albert King. Muddy’s tunes, even his arrangements, were the standard fare for bands around the country; there was someone everywhere who could play Muddy’s music Muddy’s way. Fats fell right in, but didn’t stay long; he wanted to be a front man. By then he’d switched bassists too, Calvin “Fuzz” Jones replacing Sonny Wimberley.
While Muddy’s career was taking an upswing, blues that music couldn’t cure came to his home. Gut pains had plagued Geneva, and as they got worse, the doctor’s news came: cancer. It had spread from her bowels to her stomach. “That whole thing with cancer,” said Cookie, “they never wanted to be educated about it. It was their belief, you got it, you’re dead. Muddy was very distraught that whole time. I don’t think he knew how to run the house — pay the bills, buy the groceries, and that was the first time I was really scared.” Geneva suffered for about a year. Muddy took Dennis, her son, off the road and put him on duty at Lake Park. Charles, Geneva’s other son, took his mother’s illness very hard. “I felt sorry for Charles,” said Cookie. “Geneva got ready to die, and I noticed a lot of changes in Charles with the drinking and not holding a job. Before then he wasn’t nothing like that. A big change.”
Changes were evident in Muddy too. His Boston friends noticed he was uncharacteristically drinking hard liquor, and hitting it hard. “I called Scott the next day and told him what was up,” said Al Perry, who managed a radio station there. “He thought it was about Geneva. I took Muddy to a doctor, he gave a scrip. I said, ‘Is there anything else he can do for himself?’ The doctor said, ‘Yeah, he can give up smoking cigarettes.’ ” Muddy never smoked another cigarette.
“With Muddy and Willie Dixon,” said Cameron, “I found I was arranging hotel rooms, I was setting interviews up, I was doing everything but driving the van, and they weren’t yet major income for Willard. So I had a meeting with both of them and we decided that as of February 1, 1973, I would quit Willard Alexander and I would go to managing them for a one- or two-year term, after which we’d assess the relationship. And it just kept going.” Lacking a lawyer of his own, Muddy left it to Scott’s to look over the agreement papers.
“Once I became Muddy’s manager,” Cameron explained, “everything came to me. He might talk business with people, but he never committed himself to do anything unless it was sent through me.” At an early meeting in the Chess offices, Cameron made his presence known. “We walked into Ralph Bass’s office,” said Cameron, “and I’m looking at some of the stuff up on the wall, I see a Grammy nomination plaque and it was for Muddy’s ‘Got My Mojo Working.’ Muddy never even knew he was nominated.” The plaque went home with Muddy Waters.
Geneva died on March 15, 1973. Cookie distinctly recalls that Muddy was at home. “We were called to the hospital and Muddy and I went. Bo drove us in the Cadillac. Geneva was kind of delirious, going out of her mind. We took my baby at the time, Chandra, because Geneva really felt that that was her child, the little girl that she lost. By the time we got back home, the doctor called and said she was even worse and we turned back around and that night she died. Geneva made Muddy promise that he would take care of Chandra. He swore it on her deathbed. And two seconds later she was gone and Muddy began to cry.”
Muddy bought a double plot in the Restvale Cemetery so he could be buried next to her. Geneva had purchased a dress she was hoping to wear to Cookie’s upcoming high school graduation; she was buried in it. In addition to losing his wife, Muddy had also lost Lucille’s kids; they were in foster homes. “After Geneva’s funeral,” said Cookie, “we had a conversation concerning those kids, that he wanted to take them into our home. They were wards of the state. If it hadn’t been for him and my grandmother, we would have been in the same situation.”
“I didn’t know about Joe and Renee and Roslind until after Geneva died,” said Scott. “He told me about them and he said that he wanted to formally adopt them and get them out of the situation they were in.”
“I was put in the foster home for maybe two years,” said Joseph Morganfield. “Then my dad finally got me out. I knew it was in the process. My social worker would talk to my foster parents and they would relay it to me. My sisters were in the same neighborhood, I’d see them going to school. It was kind of tough.”
Spent and drained extracting Lucille’s kids from the system (her mind still on dope), emotionally ragged from the death of his wife, and frayed by the road, Muddy must have thought it a blessing when Phil Chess called from the publishing company’s Chicago office asking him to swing by and collect another “big check,” $2,000 this time, and to sign a few more papers. On April 23, 1973, Scott drove Muddy to the John Hancock Building, waited in the car while Muddy went in. “He didn’t tell me that he signed something to get the check,” said Scott. According to the lawsuit filed three years later, Phil
exhibited to plaintiff [Muddy] a check . . . in the sum of $2,000 and at the same time, defendant Philip Chess tendered to plaintiff a document which he informed plaintiff was “another exclusive songwriter’s agreement” and that it was “that time again.” . . . Schedule “A” . . . was again blank and was later completed by defendants in such fashion as to list thereon those compositions previously composed by plaintiff which defendants had omitted from the schedule annexed to the March 3, 1971, agreement.
The two grand was tendered as an annual “salary payment recoupable” against future royalties, making it not a salary at all, for he was being paid with his own money — thirty-eight dollars and forty-five cents per week. If he didn’t sell enough records, he’d have a debt to the company.
When Muddy finally got his Chicago children collected at home, he began looking for a new house. No one was comfortable bringing the outside kids into Geneva’s home. Scott lived west of Chicago, in Clarendon Hills, and Muddy bought a house near there, paying the down payment from his increased savings; he rented Lake Park to Willie Smith.
The new home was on a large lot in the suburban, all-white town of Westmont, about an hour from downtown Chicago. White frame, it was unpretentious and thoroughly middle class. It had five bedrooms, a basement where Bo could live, a yard where Muddy could establish a garden, and, as cachet, a swimming pool. Muddy and Renee, his youngest, slept on the main floor; upstairs, Laurence (Muddy’s adolescent grandson, Cookie’s younger brother, who had been living with Leola and whose favorite songs were suddenly “Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Mannish Boy”) and Joseph shared a room, Cookie had a room with her daughter (Muddy’s great-granddaughter and his youngest daughter were the same age), and Roslind had a room. Birds sang in the trees, lawn mowers roared in summertime, church bells pealed on the hour. There was no bustle, no hustle, no hassle. The sand in this oyster was sugar. “I hated Westmont,” Cookie said. “I was like, ‘Where has he taken us?’ ” Charles stayed there the first week, then returned to the South Side. Dennis and his fiancée settled in as live-in baby-sitters and supervisors.
“In the beginning, I was really bitter toward the outside kids,” Cookie said, “because I knew where they came from. I knew their mom. And I felt that Geneva had just died and we were disrespecting her. So there wasn’t a lot of
love in that house in the beginning. And just to hear them call Muddy ‘Daddy,’ it really threw me a loop. I felt they had no right. I’d been with this man through the neck-bones, the chicken and dumplings, the no money, and now you bring your outside kids.”
But in time, Cookie assumed a matriarchal role. “She kind of raised me,” said Joseph. “She was there for us. Back then, she was all we knew. Bo and Cookie were in charge of everything, made sure we got to school, ate, whatever. Dennis would prepare all the meals, make sure everything ran smooth. Most of the outside work was my responsibilities, inside was my sisters’. Muddy didn’t believe in the male washing dishes, vacuum cleaning, laundry. He was kind of old-fashioned that way. I had to cut the grass. I had to shovel the snow out of the path, and had to feed the dogs every day. We had two German Shepherds. Plus we had a pool I had to keep clean.”
But the newfound lifestyle could only do so much. “Me and Muddy didn’t get along,” said Laurence, whose drug problems echoed his late mother’s. “I was the only black guy in my high school and I didn’t do typical sports that fit the old ways that he had. [Muddy’s son] Joe played basketball and he went to every basketball camp that was. I was a swimmer and a diver. I was very good but I couldn’t go to the university. In Chicago it was gangs and in the suburbs there was drugs. I got through high school, I didn’t want for anything, but basically we didn’t get along.”
Cookie felt Muddy lost his “self-worth” when they moved to the suburbs. “The last few years, it was like there was another man there. When he got his outside kids, I think he thought that if he bought them things, they’d love him. The quiet time on Forty-third, when it was his cooling down time, those were good nights, you saw McKinley Morganfield. You didn’t see Muddy Waters. You saw him laying around resting and joking and eating ice cream — those were good times. When we moved to Westmont, our life changed. When he was McKinley, it was one thing, but when he was Muddy Waters, he could do anything he wanted to.”
Chess Records had devoted effort and expense to Muddy’s London Sessions and been rewarded with both a Grammy (Muddy’s second) and strong sales. Unk in Funk, Muddy’s next studio effort, was recorded January 29 and 30, 1974 — the same month that Muddy’s additional tracks from London were coupled with Wolf’s to create the album London Revisited, complete with expensive gatefold and très chic comic book liner notes. Unk, the first album since Cameron had assumed management, was the first to credit Muddy as a producer, sharing the duty with Ralph Bass. It also marks the appearance of Muddy’s own publishing company, Watertoons. (Prevented by his contracts with Arc Publishing from putting his own name on his new company’s songs, he used Cookie’s name as author until the lawsuit was settled.)
Before the recording began at the end of January 1974, the band personnel changed again. While on tour in a small town in western Massachusetts, Sammy Lawhorn encountered a cop who noticed the illegal gun on his person. When Lawhorn’s call for help came from jail, it went unanswered. “Muddy disbanded Sammy, left him in the air,” said Pinetop.
For Lawhorn, this was the end of his career in the bright lights. He hung out at Theresa’s, a basement blues bar on the South Side. “He had a drinking problem,” said Bob Koester, “and Theresa would put up with him because he was so damn good. But the last set, he’d often be in a booth, sleeping.” Living Blues writer Ken Burch encountered him in the late 1970s in Chicago, and Lawhorn was pimping his own daughter.
His replacement was Bob Margolin, a man in the right place at the right time. In the Boston area, Snake Johnson’s band was Muddy’s regular opening act, and Margolin (rhymes with “Steady Rollin’ ”) had been a member since the early 1970s. “Bob could slide just like Muddy,” said Pinetop. “Sometimes Muddy’d take the slide and give it to him.” Margolin recalled, “Muddy used to say that there were two kinds of players: those who are born talented, and those you can ‘build with a hammer and nails.’ I’m sure Muddy was the first kind, and though I may have a little talent and a lot of desire, I’m the second kind. I am indebted to the carpenter.”
Initially, Muddy showed little interest in tutoring — until he was baited by the sound of a guitar from the living room. “I started to play ‘Can’t Be Satisfied,’ which was my favorite song long before I knew Muddy. Immediately I heard a huge ‘Wrong!’ from the kitchen. Muddy wouldn’t pick up the guitar and show me, but he sang the corrections at me. As well as I thought I knew the song, there were subtle nuances I was missing that were critical to him.”
Luther “Guitar Jr.” Johnson (not to be confused with Luther “Georgia Boy” / “[Creepin’] Snake” Johnson) had come up playing the West Side sound with Magic Sam, and had a high-pitched, soulful voice. His trebly, tightly wound sound added a distinct new texture to Unk in Funk. The album’s harmonica duties were mostly given to Carey Bell, except for two tracks on which Mojo Buford plays, and the title track, for which Chess laid out money getting Paul Oscher to Chicago.
Muddy contributed several new selections, including “Katie,” about a girl from the Chicago suburbs living in Boston; she’d been another blues singer’s girlfriend till Muddy stole her. “When Muddy had a new song, he would specify a key and just start playing it,” said Margolin. “We’d usually have it in a couple of takes. Occasionally there was a song where everyone would talk it through first. There was minimal arranging, just cues for solos.”
“People ask if we wrote the lyrics or the melody,” said Terry Abrahamson, who shares writing credit with Muddy on two of Unk’s songs. He was a twenty-two-year-old blues fan, transplanted from Chicago to Boston, who’d dug the Rolling Stones in college, which led him to Muddy in his own hometown, and a friendship developed. “Hey, it’s the blues, all the melodies were written before I was born.”
A couple months after Unk was recorded, Mojo Buford left the band to tend to his children. (Six years later he’d be back; bad pennies and good harp players — you can’t shake ’em.) His replacement was a young player who’d befriended Paul: Jerry Portnoy. Portnoy had picked up technique from Big Walter Horton and made a name around Chicago accompanying Walter’s former partner, old-school guitarist Johnny Young. Portnoy’s father sold rugs at the Maxwell Street Market until the expressway ran him out in the early 1950s. “They’d send me down to Lyon’s Delicatessen to get corned beef sandwiches for the store. Little Walter used to play right across the street.”
Portnoy sat in with Muddy and three days later was hired. “I felt like a light was shining on me. You want to be a brain surgeon, there’s a course of study. You get good grades, you take the right courses, it’s not impossible given an ordinary set of circumstances. But Muddy’s band, the harmonica has always been the centerpiece, and all the great players that went through there, and all of these millions of harmonicas they are selling to all these people all over the world — Muddy’s band put you in the royal line of succession.” Portnoy was the final component in the band that would carry Muddy into his comeback; this grouping lasted six years, the longest of the lineups.
On July 18, 1974, Muddy anchored the debut of a new public television performance series, SoundStage. Augmenting his own band was a host of guest stars: Junior Wells, Willie Dixon, Koko Taylor, Johnny Winter, Dr. John, Phillip Guy (Buddy’s brother), and a minireunion of the soulful Electric Flag, with Buddy Miles, Nick Gravenites, and Michael Bloomfield. Muddy was warming up as the guests began arriving, and the greetings were discreetly recorded and incorporated into the show. Caught sneaking a little Crown Royal backstage, Muddy told a Rolling Stone reporter, “You don’t know how happy I am. It’s the thrill of my life, man. Just to think that the kids didn’t forget me.”
Far from it. His fans came out in great numbers to hear him create the sounds he’d played in broken juke joints decades ago. The sound was bigger now — the band had grown in size and vastly amplified their volume, letting large arenas feel what used to reverberate off clapboards and echo from the space between the floor and the ground, where the wind howled.
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The summer of 1974, Muddy returned to Europe. He played Montreux with an all-star band that featured Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, and members of the Rolling Stones and of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s band. Stones bassist Bill Wyman called a rehearsal, but before they could even get through a whole song, Muddy said it sounded great and called an end to the ordeal.
The spirit hit one night in Reims, France, coincidentally the home of Muddy’s beloved Piper-Heidsieck. “It should have been just another show on a European tour in the midseventies,” remembered Margolin. “But somehow on this night, for no apparent external reason, the years fell away. A powerful, passionate young man in his prime sang from his big heart about his hard life. He pulled off his picks, slipped into his slide, and tuned his guitar to open-A, taking the Chicago blues he pioneered a deep step back toward Mississippi. Using the full dynamic range of his cranked amplifier, from a breath to a roar, he held his own voice up with full-bodied, percussive runs that were rock solid yet suggested swinging syncopation. His slide fills and solos were intricate, but raw and over the top both in volume and emotion. Then he put his guitar down and began to sing ‘Still a Fool,’ a rare and very deep song choice. Luther ‘Guitar Jr.’ Johnson and I came in with Muddy’s ‘Rollin’ Stone’ guitar licks. With the audience, the band followed the story in each verse and we were sucked into the depth of Muddy’s singing. At the end of the verse where he sang, ‘Well they say she’s no good, but she’s all right,’ Muddy suddenly broke double time and began to chant: ‘She’s all right, she’s all right / She’s all right, she’s all right’ over the band’s jumping, one-chord pattern. But every time Muddy sang the line, he sang it more intensely. He put progressively more power and meaning into the same phrase, over and over. For ten minutes, he built steadily until it seemed like we would all explode. When he cut his arm down and ended the song, we were all dropped back onto the ground, to pick up the shattered pieces of our little lives and go on as best we could.”
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