Can't Be Satisfied
Page 33
July 19
Jones and co. arrive in Clarksdale; record Turner Johnson, a blind harmonica player, and then Miss Chapman, a white piano teacher
July 20–22
Recordings with David Honeyboy Edwards as “Joe Williams”
July 23
Recordings in Clarksdale with Rev. E. M. Martin, and toasts from M. C. Orr
July 24–25
Recordings at Stovall’s store with Muddy and the Son Sims Four
July 26
Recordings with Asa Ware and “old McClennon,” followed by “ice cream and cake with a young Negro planter”; recordings that evening in a sanctified church
July 27
Recording date with Muddy postponed while Lomax fixes recorder
July 28
Recordings and interviews with Alec Robinson, Annie Williams (Friar’s Point), Jaybird Jones
July 29
George Adams and Mr. McClellan discuss old and bloody Delta days; interview with Charley Idaho/Aderholt; Lomax conducts the Family Report interview with Muddy and his family
July 30
Before leaving for Dallas and a personal visit, Lomax meets with teachers at the County Agricultural High School in preparation for a program of recording and presentation upon his return; he departs for Memphis
Aug. 8
Lomax returns to Clarksdale from Dallas, reunites with Lewis Jones; that evening they record the stories and songs of a section-gang singer
Aug. 9
Lomax records a public ceremony, Clarksdale, honoring the Negro soldier; meets with Coahoma County high school teachers
Aug. 10
Records game songs with Coahoma County high school teachers
Aug. 11
Records and films with Coahoma County high school teachers; meal at Ruby Harris’s house
Aug. 12
High school demonstration; includes a lecture by Lewis Jones
Aug. 13
Clarksdale to Hollandale and back
Aug. 14
Clarksdale to Como and hill country
Aug. 15
Recordings near Como with Sid Hemphill; then Lomax departs for Nashville
Aug. 16
Arrives in Nashville at noon
Aug. 17
Nashville
Aug. 19
Recordings in Nashville at the Church of God Tabernacle
Aug. 20
Recordings at Smithville Church
Aug. 22
Sacred Harp Singing Convention in Birmingham, Alabama
Aug. 25–27
Nashville to Bowling Green to Nashville
Aug. 28
Lomax departs for Washington, D.C.
1943
June
John Work returns to Coahoma County; photographs Muddy
APPENDIX B
MUDDY’S DELTA RECORD COLLECTION AND REPERTOIRE
On July 29, 1942, Alan Lomax conducted the Family Report interview with Muddy and his family at their cabin on Stovall. In his journals, Lomax noted both the records in Muddy’s collection and Muddy’s repertoire. They follow as he listed them.
MUDDY’S RECORD COLLECTION
Arthur Crudup, “Black Pony Blues” / “Kind Lover Blues”
Arthur Crudup, “Death Valley Blues” / “If I Get Lucky”
Peetie Wheatstraw, “Sweet Woman Blues”
Tony Hollins, “Crawlin’ Kingsnake”
Sonny Boy Williamson, “Bluebird”
Jay McShann and His Orchestra, (no title)
Elder Oscar Saunders, “Conqueror” / “Preaching”
MUDDY’S REPERTOIRE
“You Are My Sunshine”
“The House”
“Dinah”
“St. Louis Blues”
“Country Blues”
“Texaco”
“Deep in the Heart of Texas”
“Home on the Range”
“I Be’s Troubled”
“Take a Little Walk with Me”
“County Jail Blues”
“Thirteen Highway”
Walter Davis
“Angel Blues”
Walter Davis
“Thirty-Eight Pistol”
“Down South”
Sonny Boy Williamson
“Sugar Mama”
Sonny Boy Williamson
“Bluebird Blues”
Sonny Boy Williamson
“Canary Bird Blues”
McKinley Morganfield
“Burr Clover Blues”
McKinley Morganfield
“North Highway”
McKinley Morganfield
“Ramblin’ Kid”
McKinley Morganfield
“Rosalie”
McKinley Morganfield
“Boots and My Saddles”
“What You Know, Joe?”
“Missouri Waltz”
“Be Honest with Me”
Bill Monroe [sic]
“I Ain’t Got Nobody”
“Corinna”
“Down By the Riverside”
“Chattanooga Choo-Choo”
“Blues in the Night”
“Dark Town Strutter’s Blues”
“Red Sails in the Sunset”
“Bye-Bye Blues”
APPENDIX C
HOW TO BUY MUDDY WATERS AND OTHER RELATED RECORDINGS
ESSENTIAL MUDDY WATERS RECORDINGS
Any Best of Muddy
Hard Again
Can’t Be Satisfied
Hoochie Coochie Man (Laserlight)
The Complete Plantation Recordings
Live the Life
ALSO RECOMMENDED
The Aristocrat of the Blues
Half Ain’t Been Told (Otis Spann)
The Blues World of Little Walter
Hoochie Coochie Man (Just a Memory)
Bottom of the Blues (Otis Spann)
I’m Ready
Chicago Blues Masters Volume One
Live (At Mr. Kelly’s)
Collaboration
Muddy Waters at Newport
Electric Mud
One More Mile
Fathers and Sons
Woodstock Album
To gain a deeper feel for Muddy, I researched many filmed performances and interviews. A documentary was a natural result and, with Morgan Neville, I made Muddy Waters Can’t Be Satisfied. This video features the best performances by Muddy and interviews with many of the people featured in this book. It’s an excellent companion piece and, following its TV broadcast, the tape will be available through Wellspring Video (www.wellspringvideo.com).
MUDDY’S BILLBOARD R&B CHART HITS
(According to Joel Whitburn’s Top R&B Singles, 1942–1955, www.recordresearch.com.)
BUYING MUDDY WATERS
Through the prime of his career, Muddy’s music came out on singles, two songs at a time. In 1958, his first album, The Best of Muddy Waters, was compiled from these singles, and it remains one of his strongest releases. Since then, Muddy’s hits and most famous recordings have been packaged and repackaged, and most any way you mix them up, they’re great listening.
Under the direction of Andy McKaie at Universal/MCA Records, Chess has enjoyed a revitalization befitting its original accomplishment. Currently, the Muddy compilations available through MCA are His Best: 1947–1955, His Best: 1956–1964, Rolling Stone: The Golden Anniversary Collection (a two-CD set that focuses on his Aristocrat and Chess recordings through 1952), and The Millennium Collection: Twentieth-Century Masters (a career overview). Any of these is a good place to start. Muddy Waters: The Chess Box is a three-CD set that spans his Chess career and includes some obscure tracks and remixes. Trouble No More focuses on Muddy’s latter 1950s releases, a period that mixes some of his best with some of his worst recordings.
When I compiled my companion CD to this book, Can’t Be Satisfied, I assumed all those hit tracks would be easily accessible and I focused on the rest of Muddy’s catalog. I drew from non-Chess as well as Chess recordings, es
tablishing Muddy’s versatility within the deep blues form. It shines a light into dark corners, and hopefully the deal being negotiated for its release will have been consummated and you’ll have no trouble finding it.
Muddy’s first recordings, done for the Library of Congress, are available on MCA’s The Complete Plantation Recordings. This release features not only the acoustic versions of some songs he later electrified, but it also contains the interviews Muddy and Son Sims did with John Work and Alan Lomax. The tracks where Muddy plays solo give a sense of the foundation upon which electric blues and rock and roll are built; the group tracks are in the string-band tradition, earlier and more ragtimey sounding. Though not the place to start listening to Muddy, this music is easily accessible and enjoyable even to the neophyte ear. The interviews are intimate and thrilling. The title, by the way, is a misnomer; there is another disc of recordings from 1942 on file at the Library of Congress (AFS 4770), about which a staff engineer informed me, “Broken but . . . repair appears very good, as if the grooves were lined up with the aid of a microscope.”
In Chicago, before recording for Leonard Chess’s Aristocrat label, Muddy recorded the one-off “Mean Red Spider” and three tracks for Columbia. The only release I know of “Mean Red Spider” is on the imported Document CD Muddy Waters: Complete Recordings 1941–1946. That CD contains all the music, but not the interviews, from The Complete Plantation Recordings, as well as some bonus tracks. The three Columbia recordings Muddy did in 1948 have been released on the Testament Records LP Chicago Blues: The Beginning, and on various Sony Legacy compilations, none of which is currently in print.
All of Muddy’s first recordings for Leonard Chess on the Aristocrat label are available on a great two-CD set titled The Aristocrat of the Blues. It gives a real sense of the Chicago music scene in the late 1940s. This includes issued and unissued material, blues and jazz, Muddy as sideman and Muddy as leader. His tracks are excellent and, against the fabric of what others were doing, it’s easy to hear why “I Can’t Be Satisfied” and “I Feel Like Going Home” were so exciting when they came out.
Muddy Waters Sings Big Bill Broonzy (1958) was Muddy’s first album conceived of as an album. Big Bill’s style was more subdued than Muddy’s, and this album is appropriately less intense. My favorite track, “I Feel So Good,” gets a much more exciting treatment on Muddy’s next album, Muddy Waters at Newport (1960). This is the release that introduced Muddy to pop culture and it remains a favorite of many of the people I interviewed. Most of Muddy’s set was filmed that day, and someone really should marry the images to the audio and release a DVD or videotape of the set. Seeing Muddy dance across the stage during “Mojo” is one of the most exciting stage moments I’ve ever witnessed. There’s a British CD, Good-bye Newport Blues, that combines Newport with several other great live tracks from later in Muddy’s career.
The Folk Singer (1964) album is as intimate sounding as you could ask for, but the performance seems removed, as if the players were concentrating on the intimacy and not the music. It’s never much moved me. (This album is available on a CD conveniently coupled with another of my least favorites, the Big Bill album.)
In 1966 and 1967, Chess compiled more of Muddy’s early recordings, initiating their Real Folk Blues series with Muddy, and then following up with another round, More Real Folk Blues. Both are excellent, though I prefer the latter; it favors more of Muddy’s great slide material. Sandwiched between was the album Muddy, Brass, & the Blues, to be avoided. (Some of these tracks can be heard without horns — on the Chess Box and on One More Mile — and are so much more listenable as a result.) The Super Blues album also came out in 1967, Muddy in the studio with Bo Diddley and Little Walter. A better idea than a record, its follow-up, Super Super Blues (which replaced Walter with Howlin’ Wolf), comes nearer to fulfilling the potential, but these kinds of records are hard to pull off.
I came to a new appreciation of Electric Mud (1968) after rapper Chuck D. told me how the sounds of it first attracted him. There are great sounds on this psychedelic blues album and on its sequel, After the Rain (1969), but they can also be grating experiences. These musicians set out to push the envelope, and they succeeded mightily. Don’t fear them, don’t scorn them, but try to borrow someone else’s copy before you buy your own.
The Fathers and Sons (1969) record is among the better of Muddy’s latter Chess recordings. It combines good studio performances with live recordings. He’s ably backed by younger, sympathetic musicians, and his songs, all remakes of earlier versions, are rendered honestly. It’s true that the remakes lack the strength of the originals, but sometimes one hears a song anew when it’s done differently. For the CD, the original tape was remastered, and three previously unreleased studio performances were added. Some of the original tracks were compiled with some of Wolf’s from his London Sessions and are available on the misleadingly titled Muddy and the Wolf.
Three records came out in 1971. They Call Me Muddy Waters, all good blues, is built from recordings that had been previously shelved. McKinley Morganfield AKA Muddy Waters, no longer in print, was a repackaging of several previous Best ofs. Muddy’s Live (At Mr. Kelly’s) is a fine, often overlooked record. His first post-car-wreck recording, this album announced his return to form, to unadulterated blues form.
The London Sessions, in the years prior to Muddy’s comeback recordings, consistently proved a good entry into blues for the basic rock and roll fan. Recorded with British rock musicians, it brings a modern sensibility to Muddy’s blues, updating his updated blues. (Of Chess’s London Sessions series, the one that works best is Howlin’ Wolf’s.) Outtakes of Muddy’s and Wolf’s London recordings were issued on an LP titled London Revisited, without the horn overdubs that get in the way of the earlier release; Muddy’s four songs are quite good.
I’ve never much liked Can’t Get No Grinding, though it’s often praised. I can’t get past the electric piano, which dominates the mix. Unk in Funk is not a bad record, but neither is it memorable. Muddy’s last record for Chess, the Woodstock Album, is a decent parting statement. With Levon Helm and Henry Glover producing, the sound achieves a modern, rooted groove. There’s enough studio banter on the record that you can pick up the fun they had making it. For those trying to ease into blues, this is not a bad place to make the tentative first step. (But really, does easing in work? When the water feels a bit cold, don’t you adjust faster by diving in headfirst? Go on, pick up a Best of.) If you are a completist, or are writing a book about Muddy, shop for the out-of-print, nine-CD box set from Charly Records in England, which includes everything Muddy did for Aristocrat and Chess through 1967.
As my text makes clear, I’m a fan of Muddy’s CBS / Sony recordings, especially Hard Again. For the popular music fan unfamiliar with traditional blues, this is the perfect transitional record. It plays like rock and roll, but sounds like blues. I’m Ready, the follow-up, lacks the punch of Hard Again but is a more intricate, complex recording. King Bee and Muddy “Mississippi” Waters Live round out the Sony material and probably are best left for completists; you can sample tracks from them on the Sony compilations Blues Sky and King of the Electric Blues.
Some of the best Muddy is heard on Otis Spann recordings. Live the Life (Hightone, www.hightone.com) compiles several different live dates recorded by Pete Welding in the 1960s, with Otis and Muddy taking turns leading; hard-hitting and deep. Three Spann albums from the 1960s are worth seeking out: Half Ain’t Been Told (Decca / Black Cat) was recorded during the 1964 European Blues and Gospel Train tour. Muddy lets Otis lead, adding gorgeous slide guitar. A couple tracks from that session were included on the 1960s compilation Raw Blues (London Records). The Bottom of the Blues is a studio album, Muddy and his band backing Otis. Great stuff, it features a couple tracks written by Muddy not heard anywhere else; “Looks Like Twins” makes this album worth seeking out.
Before Leonard Chess would accept Muddy’s band, they made a few recordings in various phases of formation
. The earliest, with Walter singing lead, came during a Sunnyland Slim session that also included Muddy, Baby Face Leroy, and Floyd Jones. These two tracks are on a Dutch Sunnyland Slim Compilation, The Devil Is a Busy Man (Official), and also, though I have not seen it, a Nighthawk LP. The band got together behind Jimmy Rogers, delivering a more formed sound for his first rendering of “Ludella”; this appears on a 1992 Biograph CD of Regal recordings — Memphis Minnie: Early Rhythm and Blues, 1949. On The Blues World of Little Walter (Delmark, www. delmark.com), there’s the entire 1950 renegade “Rollin’ and Tumblin’ ” session. Jimmy showed up for some of these tracks, which best represent the earliest Muddy band sound. Lastly, though Muddy’s not on it, there’s good Jimmy Rogers with Sunnyland Slim doing an early “That’s All Right” on the Delmark CD Sunnyland Slim House Rent Party.