Another night, with his band gathered in his hotel room to get paid, the mood was celebratory. The gig had been hot, the cash was all there, and drinks were flowing. Nobody remembers exactly how or why, but the effusive conversation turned to the old days and, specifically, a lecture from Muddy on how to make love in a Model T Ford. The positioning was the issue, and Muddy’s experience taught that her butt needed to be out the door while he employed the running board for support. Seeing the puzzled faces on the youngsters in the band, Muddy launched himself on the bed, sent his fanny into wild gyrations, teaching by demonstration.
In addition to card games, drinking, and women familiar and unfamiliar, Muddy kept his sense of home by keeping Robert Johnson at his side. He might go from one strange European country to the next several days in a row, but he could lean toward anyone in the band and say, “Give me my shit,” and instead of being handed a pistol, these days he’d get a cassette that had Robert Johnson on one side and Jimmy Rogers on the other. He amazed one European interviewer by casually pointing to the tape recorder and saying, “I got my favorite blues singer right on hand. I got Robert Johnson sitting on there now. And I play it about three or four hours a day, and sit back and listen to it. I like ‘Crossroads,’ ‘Kind Hearted Woman,’ ‘Walkin’ Blues,’ ‘Terraplane.’ He got a few things that I’m not crazy about, but really I don’t care what he plays.” (Muddy was less fond of what he called Johnson’s “ragtime” songs such as “Hot Tamales” and “From Four Until Late.”)
Cameron was working his end too. Journalists continued to come, all given the same basic restrictions: not to ask Muddy how he got his name nor what he thought about the Rolling Stones. (Cameron: “If you didn’t know the answer to those two questions, you don’t know enough to interview Muddy Waters.”) One interview, conducted by white journalists Margaret McKee and Fred Chisenhall, who were working on their book Beale Black and Blue, stood out. McKee had been raised on the McKee Plantation, near Stovall. “I’ll have to tell the truth, you’re from down in that way,” Muddy said when they began talking.
“It’s the black man and the white woman the ones they jealous of,” Muddy told them, referring to the white men who rule society, especially in the South, especially in the old days. “But a black woman could work for a white man all day long, that’s fine, nice. That’s the way it was.” Muddy had almost never spoken about racism in a public setting. Perhaps he didn’t have to say anything. Perhaps it would have been like talking about gravity or the wetness of water. “I think they’ll probably learn. About forty thousand years from now, maybe they’ll learn better. They know more now, that’s true. It’s so much different. You could stay in most any hotel you wants. You’d be surprised how some people treat me now. I was in Tennessee — Murfreesboro — last week. Man, seem like it not no Tennessee — seem like Chicago.”
Scott tried to keep surprises from Muddy, but Muddy managed to surprise him. “I learned about [Muddy’s daughter] Mercy, she was probably fourteen, fifteen,” he said. “I think we were in New Orleans and coming home. We stopped and saw her in Mississippi. Then I used to send her a check once a month.” She soon visited him in Chicago. “He had a house full of people I didn’t know, and I didn’t know him really,” Mercy said. “I had grown up so ridiculously horribly poor, to me his home looked like opulence. I was resentful. As the years went on, he saw I was resilient, that I would work and do something.”
In Florida Muddy collected another of his progeny. “My mother said I was about two or three when I left Chicago,” said Big Bill Morganfield. “I was raised by her mother. First time I remember seeing my daddy, I was around a teenager. He had came down to play the War Memorial Auditorium in Fort Lauderdale. My mother went, and I knew she was going to see him. They woke me up that night, came to the house. He was walking with a cane. I had a little plastic guitar, one of the strings was missing. He said, ‘That’s the E string.’ We talked, and that night he got rid of the cane. I still got that cane. That was the first time I can remember laying eyes on him outside of a picture. I was hurt for a while, I was deprived of the chance to spend a lot of those years with him. Like any son would do with his father.”
In Florida Muddy met a young lady who would also become part of his family. “We were playing in Gainesville,” said Bob Margolin, “and Muddy asked me to run to the store for him. When I came back to his hotel room, the door was open and I stepped in. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the dark, and there was Muddy sitting on the bed, surrounded by four hotel employees. He pointed to one, who turned out to be Marva, and said, ‘Don’t look at that one, I’m gonna marry her.’ ”
“My girlfriend had taken me to see his show the night before,” the former Marva Jean Brooks recalled. She was nineteen years old and biding her time after high school working housekeeping. “At the hotel the next day, I was wearing an orange-and-white-striped miniskirt and we were all talking to Muddy. I went to his performance that night and it led from there. He started calling me Sunshine and we used to talk on the phone at night, and he told me point-blank, ‘You was born for me.’ I was a young kid and never thought a famous man like Muddy Waters would be interested in a young girl like me. I was a child, but he made me feel as a woman, as a woman should feel.”
Muddy was strengthening other family ties, bringing his kids on some summer tours. At the show’s end, he’d invite Renee, Joseph, Roslind, and Dennis and Charles (if they were around) to join him for “Got My Mojo Working.” “It didn’t sink in until I became an adult just how famous he really was,” said Joseph. “To me, I was just with my father, having fun.”
“Can you imagine growing up with this man and then seeing all these kids surface?” asked Cookie. “Mercy, Renee, Joseph, another boy — and me not knowing? It was hard learning the private side of Muddy. Joseph and Renee’s mother got strung out on drugs. Mercy’s mom was strung out on drugs. It made me see the man part of Muddy. Someone can be all dressed up and all cleaned up when you see the outside, but they made me see what Muddy was really about.
“I always think about Muddy’s song, ‘I’m a Man.’ When he’d sing that song, he really meant it. He’d put his whole heart in it, you could see he really meant it. When I was younger, he was a god to me. As I have gotten older, and dealt with things, I will always be grateful for the things he did in my life, but as a person, he was not a very nice person.”
Touring emphasized to Cameron that the part of Muddy’s career that did not involve Chess Records was doing very well, and the part that did involve Chess was not. Howlin’ Wolf, not far from his death by kidney disease, had recently sued Arc Music, Chess’s publishing arm, for $2,500,000, charging they had fraudulently induced him to sign over “sole and exclusive” ownership of all his compositions to the company and owed him for unpaid composer’s royalties and profits. While Cameron was investigating the possibilities of leaving the company, calls were coming in that further confirmed Muddy’s stature. Muddy cut a few songs for the Hollywood film Mandingo and recorded a Dr. Pepper radio jingle.
Levon Helm was the drummer in The Band, the popular roots music group that had backed Bob Dylan and enjoyed many hits of their own; Henry Glover was a legendary black record producer, involved in the early days of Syd Nathan’s King and Federal labels: he produced hits with James Brown, Hank Ballard, and Little Willie John. Helm and Glover had recently formed RCO, “Our Company,” and were hiring themselves out to labels to produce artists at a studio in Woodstock, New York. They wanted Muddy to be their first production and were excited about working with Chess Records. Levon’s audience was exactly the one Scott wanted Muddy to reach. “Muddy had two or three options left with Chess,” said Cameron. “I went to New York and met with the people running Chess Records. I told them we’d do the Woodstock album, but if it didn’t sell, Chess would release Muddy from his contract. ‘Oh, no problem, no problem.’ ”
In early February of 1975, Muddy and Scott flew to New York. Pinetop and Bob Margolin were coming
the next day; they’d be joined in the studio by several people Muddy didn’t know (including Levon’s band mate Garth Hudson) and by Paul Butterfield, a familiar face. Glover and Helm wanted to cut a couple Louis Jordan tunes with Muddy, “Let the Good Times Roll” and “Caldonia.” Glover had collected some new material that seemed like it might fit. “For ‘Why Are People Like That,’ ” said Helm, “we just started going over it — head arrangements, a tempo that Muddy liked, and follow Muddy. It was like the music played us. And we knew Muddy had ‘Fox Squirrel’ and some more original songs.”
The result was Muddy’s best studio album to date, the players bringing a vitality that had been missing at least since Leonard Chess died. It wasn’t Muddy’s deepest blues, but it was relaxed and fun. Cameron was pleased, though he knew Muddy could do better. “Muddy was at the ultimate point of not wanting to make another record for Chess,” he said. “He finds himself in a place that he wasn’t familiar with, and he’s with these musicians who think so much of him but have never played with him. We had a genuinely good time, but the musicians were a little bit in awe of Muddy and they folded in behind him instead of pushing him. Muddy’s thing was get in there, get this done, and go home.” Recording away from Chicago, however, distanced Muddy from his troubles. “Any problems between Muddy and Chess were far away from us, nonexistent in the studio,” said Helm. “Not only was there none of that kind of tension, there was no tension.”
The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album was on the streets three months after it was recorded, and Muddy hit the road. In New York City, he played a week at the Bottom Line. Bob Dylan, who was emerging from retreat, showed up several nights in a row, bringing a drunken Phil Ochs (a folksinger not long from suicide) and 1920s blues singer Victoria Spivey — who made everyone address her as Queen Victoria. She wore a flowing white gown decorated with snakes, and Muddy kept asking her to take it off; the snakes gave him the heebie-jeebies.
“Dylan came into our tiny dressing room with a group of musicians who were soon to become his Rolling Thunder Revue,” said Margolin. “Muddy could tell he was someone important because of the intense excitement. It was arranged for Bob to sit in.” Muddy, more acquainted with the gangster than the pop star, the gun than the poet, got the name mixed up. “Muddy announced to the audience, ‘We have a special guest on harmonica, please give a nice round of ‘acclause’ (that’s how Muddy pronounced applause, and no one ever corrected him) for . . . JOHN DYLAN.’ A couple of people clapped politely, and most turned to their friends and asked, ‘Who?’ I leaned over and stage-whispered to Muddy, ‘His name is Bob, like my name — Bob Dylan,’ and Muddy repeated, ‘Bob Dylan,’ as though that’s what he had said the first time. The audience went apeshit.”
Rock stars didn’t much impress Muddy because he didn’t know who they were. When Rod Stewart had recently come backstage at a gig in Detroit, Muddy heard his English accent and couldn’t understand why the musician would come to America to find an audience. He was more comfortable with the Allman Brothers, with whom he toured in the fall of 1975. One of their gigs was in New York’s Central Park, and they stayed at the fancy Plaza Hotel. Songwriter Terry Abrahamson showed up and Muddy shared his room with him. “He didn’t like air-conditioning, and we couldn’t figure out how to turn off the air conditioner, so Muddy and I stuffed towels in the air-conditioning vents. I was always coming to his hotel rooms, bringing food and we’d drink champagne. Once I knew I had his ear, I’d usually bring him some lyrics. I never saw him pick up his guitar in his hotel room. We’d just hang out, usually have the TV on, he’d be wearing his black undershirt and black silk boxer shorts.”
In the meantime, Cameron received the first accounting of Muddy’s Woodstock album, claiming tens of thousands of copies sold. “I was a little suspicious because I hadn’t seen anything really happen with the record. The end of twelve months comes along and now the number has gone even higher — with an extraordinary number of copies being held in reserve. It didn’t make a lot of sense, so I flew back and said, ‘You’re going to take those out of reserve or we’re off.’ ”
“Chess was by then a disaster, really,” said Esmond Edwards. “The main problem was that the Chess mystique, without Leonard, was not there. Len and Phil had a relationship with the artists, even if it was calling everyone ‘motherfucker.’ GRT was a white-bread operation, with business grad people running it, they didn’t have a feeling for the music.”
In June of 1975, GRT closed the Chess’s longtime studio in Chicago. They sold Chess Records in August to All Platinum Records, a label whose president, Sylvia Robinson, had had a hit with “Love Is Strange,” which owed a debt to Chess’s Bo Diddley. The sale, less than a million dollars, was said to be a tax write-off for GRT. All Platinum hired a young rock bassist to oversee the marketing of the new acquisition. Despite this kid’s brave talk — “GRT was sitting on a gold mine and they were treating it like a pile of shit”— Cameron and Muddy wanted off. By November, All Platinum agreed to let them go. “That be the second time they sold me,” Muddy said, “and I got tired of being sold to everybody.”
Unceremoniously, and without any fanfare, Muddy concluded his twenty-eight-year association with Chess Records on November 20, 1975.
CHAPTER 14
HARD AGAIN
1976–1983
This is a big time for me tonight,” chuckled the birthday boy over the din of big Texas blues fans who packed Antone’s blues club to help their main man celebrate in 1976. “I’m gonna be forty years old tonight, and I guess that makes me about the oldest young person I know of.”
Midnight approached in Austin, Muddy would be sixty-three, but those awake were not concerned with counting, certainly not higher than twelve, as in twelve-bar blues, and if bars were the subject, the correct answer was one: Antone’s. “You see a guy that’s a king, an immortal from Mt. Olympus,” said Clifford Antone, proprietor of the establishment, “first time I heard him play slide, it almost scared me. It touched something in me I didn’t know I had. ‘Please don’t stop, keep playing.’ ” When Antone’s opened in 1975, blues was not the healthiest of wild beasts. After the boom of the 1960s, the new sincerity gave way to the pyrotechnics of acid rock, theatricality, and — hissssss — fusion jazz. Disco’s mechanized throb, sweeping the nation, was antithetical to the natural beat and sway of the rhythm of the blues. Few bluesmen wore high-heeled glitter boots (though many took to leisure suits). But hope was not lost. A new generation was arriving. “I did all my shows for five nights,” continued Antone, “Tuesday through Saturday. Jimmie Vaughan was twenty-three, Stevie was twenty. We put Jimmie Vaughan on stage with Muddy, he played slide and Muddy’s head snapped. He told me that Kim Wilson was the best harmonica he’d heard since Little Walter. The blues players had never seen no kids like this.”
After a week in Austin, a bluesman felt like a player again. Several nights in one place meant when they woke, instead of packing, the band could go downtown and shop for plaid jackets and polyester clothes. It meant Pinetop could unpack his tool and grease up some bird. “Muddy would have a big room,” said Antone, “and Pinetop would have an electric deep fryer. They’d be drinking champagne and eating fried chicken. I was twenty-five and in heaven. And the chicken was good.”
The minute hand approached midnight. As Margolin led the crowd in “Happy Birthday,” Austin gifted Mud with some of his own: Buddy Guy and Junior Wells strode onstage. Muddy’s jaw dropped; you could have wiped him off the floor. “I raised these two blues musicians since they was only thirteen!” he shouted, and they ripped through “Got My Mojo Working.”
How was the old bluesman surviving in the modern 1970s? Quite well. He owned a suburban home and was landlord over another, owned a couple suburban road vehicles, several cars. He had friends in high places and won his third Grammy a month earlier for the Woodstock album. He had dates booked across America and across the oceans. He was free, free, free at last from his withering record company and on a roll with a manage
r who had a vision and who exercised might. In his lifetime he’d gone from plantation scrip to an American Express card (and Visa, Amoco, and Dominick’s Finer Foods cards). He’d inspired a top magazine and a top rock and roll band. And he was about to rise to a new height of stardom.
“I wanted Muddy on Epic and Associated Records,” said Scott Cameron. “They had a real machine going and they seemed supportive with their artists on the road. Their marketing was second to none. Johnny Winter and the whole Blue Sky Records thing was really hot.” It helped that the head of the label, Ron Alexenburg, was a fan; he’d entered the biz working for a record distributor in Chicago. It was a homecoming too; Epic was a division of Columbia, which was the label he’d done his second Chicago sessions for in 1946.
Muddy assembled a band in Westport, Connecticut, for a week’s recording, October 4 to October 10, 1976. From his own group he brought Pinetop, Margolin, and drummer Willie “Big Eyes” Smith. Pine, like Spann before him, had become an anchor to Muddy’s sound. He’d learned to play in the same school as Muddy — a cotton field, where the conjugation was done with a hoe and the school lunch was a fish sandwich and homemade whiskey. If Pine brought the root, Margolin brought the licks. He’d seen a cotton field only on television, but he’d studied it, brother, watching Mud’s fingers night after night, bugging him at Westmont, playing the old tapes. Big Eyes brought the delay, and that delay is what moved behinds. Muddy called him “the greatest Saturday-night drummer alive,” and a Saturday-night record was his intention. Harp duties went to James Cotton, a natural choice.
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