Can't Be Satisfied

by Robert Gordon

  Bassist Louis Satterfield told Matt Sakakeeny, “The spirit that we came with — me, Pete, Charles Stepney — we were talking about being free and that’s what it is. Free. When you’re recording music, all you can put on a record is vibrations. How you vibrate determines how well people will receive it. They can’t see you, they don’t know nothing except how they feel when they hear it. We did not deviate too far away from the original, but we did stretch it out. You listen to it, Muddy was coming real strong. He hasn’t changed anything in how he’s singing. We called it preaching, how exuberant he was, how he could reach out and touch people. Muddy was a very witty guy. He would sit there, always positive, always dressed up. Sometimes when he would really get sharp he’d put on a blue suit and a white shirt and a red tie and red socks.”

  The photo session for After the Rain still rankles Cosey. “They sent us to Victor Screbneski, a famous photographer in Chicago known worldwide for doing fashion layouts. They wanted us to pose nude from the waist up and with creatures. Satterfield and myself refused to do it. They had some sort of liquid they wanted to smear the body with. We didn’t think that was in good taste. Muddy did it for the cover. Phillip Upchurch was into snakes, so he took a picture with a snake and used it for his own album.”

  Electric Mud is Muddy’s most polarizing record. It attracted a new audience in the hip-hop era. “To me it’s a brilliant record,” Chuck D. told me. “I’ve played it a thousand times. The voice and the character of Muddy Waters stand above the new music. Muddy’s vocals project. That’s what created a hook for me to get into it: these vocals are actually pulling the music. Electric Mud introduced me to other Muddy Waters stuff. It took me a while to warm up to traditional blues. A whole new world. But the automatic thing that struck me right away was the Electric Mud thing.”

  Fathers and Sons: “Bloomfield,” said Marshall Chess, “he was always emotionally a basket case. During Fathers and Sons, he was so scared of playing with Muddy a couple of times that he took heavy tranqs. He had a lot of soul but he was a troubled, pained person, like a lot of blues singers are. And he liked drugs and alcohol, just like them.”

  The Thursday-night show at Chicago’s Auditorium Theater drew an almost all-white audience of 2,800. Billed as the Cosmic Joy–Scout Super Jam, it blended deep hippie culture with deep blues. As fans found their seats, a lone musician plucked an African finger piano. According to Don DeMichael’s review in Rolling Stone, “His ping-a-dinging sounded like there was a little air in the radiators.” After the hippie mish-mash speech that followed (“thousands of years ago there were one people, one tongue, and three Faces. . . .”) came a group so bad (The Ace of Cups) the critic wondered if it was a put-on. (DeMichael, “Muddy Waters Week,” pp. 12–13.) Finally the Fathers and Sons band took the stage and warmed the house. Then Muddy toasted it. He was playing to a younger audience, many seeing him for the first time. “On ‘Mojo’ he put his guitar down,” said Marshall Chess, “he did a dance and he was Rudolf Nureyev for fifteen seconds. It was like he was a ballerina, lightness on his feet.”

  In their excitement, Chess overestimated the market and shipped many more records than they would sell. Crates were being returned well into the next year, and one warehouse employee grumbled, “Who put out this stiff? Who put out this fucking stiff?” (Guralnick, Home, p. 238.) It was an ignoble coda to an otherwise successful effort.

  Band Personnel: Born August 30, 1934, Luther “Snake” Johnson stopped picking cotton in rural Davidson, Georgia, when Santa Claus brought him a guitar. In Chicago, he did stints behind Howlin’ Wolf and Junior Wells before realizing his boyhood dream of backing Muddy Waters. He was in the band when Bob Margolin joined: “He used to do endless versions of Wilson Pickett’s ‘Don’t Knock My Love’ as well as soul groove originals like ‘Give Me My Check’ (a welfare song) and ‘Pull Out Your False Teeth, Baby, I Wants to Suck on Your Gums.’ ” Jimmy Lee Morris remembers, “Snake got scalded. His wife throwed some hot shit on his ass, lye, and burned him up, man. Every so often that stuff would rise up on his arms — big old water blisters, come up, go down, come up and go down.”

  When Luther Johnson moved to guitar, Lawrence “Sonny” Wimberley assumed the bass. Drummer S. P. Leary (born June 6, 1930) returned in 1967 for his longest stint with the band. An old-school drummer, he’d backed T-Bone Walker in Texas before he was old enough to drive. He came to Chicago around 1954, later joined Jimmy Rogers, and eventually played with most of Chicago’s blues greats, including a long stint with Wolf. He’d recorded several sessions with Muddy as early as 1964 (including “The Same Thing”). S. P. could pull out his brushes, keep it firm when he played soft, letting Muddy whisper “Nineteen Years Old” and “Five Long Years.”

  Getting in Muddy’s band had always been easier than getting out; when S. P. was too drunk to play, Snake assumed the drums and Muddy picked up the slack on the guitar. When Snake stepped out on his own, S. P. Leary was thrown out the open door. Willie Smith reassumed the drummer’s chair, though slowly. First he took a single gig at the end of 1968; a tour offer followed. “We started talking about money. I was driving that cab hard, fourteen or fifteen hours a day. Muddy guaranteed me a certain amount, so I took a chance on it. But I kept my chauffeur’s license up for about five years just in case.”

  Clay left the band for good by the end of the 1960s. While there’s probably some truth to the following anecdote, I found Clay’s stories colored by his resentment or dislike of Muddy. Clay says that when the band was nearing Chicago after a tour, he phoned his girlfriend. “We’d pull up, she’d be waiting for me at Muddy’s house. Muddy would get mad every time he’d see that. I was getting my clothes out of the station wagon, next thing I know, jealous cat, Muddy whipped out his blackjack and was coming toward me. He didn’t have any girlfriends who cared anything about him, they just wanted to take and take and take.”

  Also back on the scene, not in Muddy’s band but with his encouragement, was former sideman Jimmy Rogers. “They was all worryin’ me about hittin’ the road again. Europe was somethin’ I was wantin’ to see anyway. That started me back up. I don’t mind travelin’ just as long as I got ‘my train fare home.’ ” (Brisbin, “Havin’ Fun,” p. 27.) Freddie King, who used to sneak into the Zanzibar to watch Jimmy’s fingers, brought his mentor to Shelter Records, a label run by young blues enthusiasts (including Leon Russell).

  Other Recordings: When the Chess brothers visited the Super Blues session, Esmond Edwards, who’d been producing jazz records, had rarely seen them in action. “Phil and Leonard came up there and sat around,” said Edwards, “urging them on. ‘Hey motherfucker’ this and ‘What’s wrong with you.’ It was the revelation of an entirely different studio milieu than I had been accustomed to. You don’t talk to jazz artists that way. But the guys took it. I don’t know if it was a plantation thing or what, but no one got insulted. Muddy just grinned.”

  In November of 1967, Muddy’s manager Bob Messinger put the group in the studio for a label run by Alan Douglas, who had recorded Jimi Hendrix. Contractually restricted from recording for anyone but Chess, Muddy was made producer. “Muddy was featuring Georgia Boy and he was all for recording him,” said Messinger. They recorded about twenty tracks, then spread them across two albums. Chicken Shack featured Luther Johnson, Mud in Your Ear featured Mojo Buford, though everyone — Spann, Lawhorn, Wimberley, and Clay — had his say. Muddy did not cherish the producer’s role. “It ain’t too cool for me, man, ’cause you trying to tell someone something, and maybe they’ll think your ideas is too square. I’d rather for them to have their own ideas and let someone else do that work and I’ll do my real job.” (Guralnick interview with Muddy Waters.)

  Some of the best Muddy on record from this era is on the Otis Spann album The Bottom of the Blues for ABC’s Blues Way label, also recorded in November of 1967. Muddy contributed two songs. The unlikely “Shimmy Baby” is set to S. P. Leary’s wicked marching beat, with a strong New Orleans parade feel; it sounds m
uch more like Spann’s swinging knee than Muddy’s foot tapping. “I haven’t been writing much,” Muddy told Guralnick, hastening to add, “All Otis’s stuff, I wrote it also.” Spann would soon part company with Muddy. The album’s other outstanding track is also claimed by Muddy and is much more likely by him. A deep blues number, “Looks Like Twins” features his slide guitar; it’s about lovers staying together because they look so much alike, making it a mate to Muddy’s “Kinfolks Blues,” a contemporaneous recording wherein Muddy breaks off an incestuous relationship because of the gossip.

  Muddy accompanied Otis Spann at a memorial concert for Dr. Martin Luther King, assassinated in Memphis in April of 1968. With little to interfere — Willie Dixon is the only other musician — the affinity that made these two call each other “brother” is easily heard. They can be heard on the Live the Life album, which also includes intimate live recordings of Muddy leading his full band.

  East Coast and Beyond: While on the East Coast, the band was treated to one of the highlights of Muddy’s relationship with manager Bob Messinger. “I negotiated a deal with Guild Guitars to get them all guitars, basses, amplifiers. Guild was over in Jersey City, and we drove there. We were so happy that day. Muddy got three guitars.” (Setting aside his Telecaster, Muddy picked up a Guild S-200 Thunderbird guitar, which he held during the photo session for Electric Mud — not that he played any guitar on the album.)

  At the 1969 Newport Folk Festival, Muddy shared the bill with Son House, Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachel, Jesse Fuller, Buddy Moss, Taj Mahal, and Big Mama Thornton. “Big Mama had her Cadillac in the parking lot backstage, and she cooked for the black acts and sold them soul food,” said Bob Messinger, who was managing her as well as Muddy. “She had a butane stove. I didn’t pay much attention to it because I had booked her on the job and I didn’t want to be associated with it. George Wein, who always demanded quiet backstage and decorum, never said a word.”

  In Boston, kids not old enough to drink could attend shows as long as they didn’t sit at a table. Like hawks on mice, Muddy, approaching sixty, and Spann, forty, hovered over that section. “When I was fourteen, into the Stones, a friend told me to listen to Muddy,” said Barbara “Candy” Purro. “He came to the Jazz Workshop and I went with my girlfriend. We had to sit on the side, and Muddy and Spann started talking to us. Muddy was a total gentleman. Otis drank a lot. Every time they’d come to town, they’d get us into the shows, and Muddy would always dedicate ‘Nineteen Years Old’ to me.”

  In a Boston club, Paul got impatient waiting for a patron to get off the phone. “I said, ‘Man, can you get off the phone, I got to make a phone call.’ He said something smart to me, I was drunk, and I punched him. Then Muddy took me to the side, slapped me, said, ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ It was a light slap on my cheek. I didn’t mind that Mud slapped me, I considered him a father. But what was weird, the next day he got real close in my face and said, ‘I never touched you, I never touched you.’ ”

  In Austin, Muddy heard Johnny Winter: Bill Bentley, now a Warner Brothers Records publicity executive, drove up from Houston, August 2 and 3, 1968: “This was back when nobody yet knew who Johnny was. He opened the show and smoked Muddy, blew him away. But the second night, Muddy’s band came out and nailed Winter to the ground. They pulled out all the stops: Oscher was playing on his knees, Muddy played a version of ‘Long Distance Call’ I can still hear note for note. S. P. Leary, during one of the stop-time songs, would jump up and spin around. Later in the night, after he got loaded, he jumped up and he spun and fell. I’ll never forget the look Muddy gave him.”

  Nor will Johnny Winter forget his visit from Oscher: “He came to my hotel room. Paul seemed to put on an act, like he was from the country. He asked if it was safe being that high, and we weren’t but on the twelfth floor. In Chicago, I’m sure he must have been in some elevators. We were doing an interview, and he asked me if it was safe to talk on a tape recorder. He’d done records, so I can’t believe he’d really be scared of a tape recorder. He was a nice guy, but he was funny.”

  Oscher was enjoying the road. “I’d learned these three-card monte games, now I wanted to try ’em out. So Jerry Portnoy and I go to this place where these big-time card hustlers are. We’re going back to this traveling salesman’s motel room and I tell Jerry, ‘When I put my hand on this pocket it’s the card on the right, if I put my hand on this pocket it’s the card on the left.’ So I’m fading the money and we’re beginning to gamble and I put my hand in this pocket and then Jerry goes —” Portnoy interjected: “I’m facing Paul: his right or my right?” They blew the hustle.

  “I was really into the lifestyle of the guys in the band,” Oscher continued. “People would come into the dressing room and say ‘Oh, man, that was a great show,’ and I’d say ‘Hey, you ever seen this?’ I was hustling them for like ten, twenty dollars and it was really wrong because the real hustle I had was blowing the fucking harmonica. That was the real get over.”

  Muddy went from the East Coast to a string of University of California dates, then way east for an October / November European tour — billed as “The Story of Soul” — stopping in England for Jazz Expo ’68 and the BBC’s “Jazz at the Maltings,” then heading to Paris, and eventually landing at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. (Paul McCartney hung out with the band at Aynsley Dunbar’s club, where Muddy’s group was sitting in. “We hung out, drank,” said Oscher. “Not really anything.”) In Germany Paul asked for written directions to an electronics store. Walking around Berlin, he’d hold out his paper and ask for help, until someone said, “Do you know what this note says?” Paul wagged his head. “It says, ‘Send this boy to a barbershop, he needs a haircut.’ ” Coming back, at U.S. Customs, Snake nudged Paul, said, “Hold this for me, will you?” and handed him his radio. Later Oscher watched with surprise as Snake retrieved the .32 snub-nose he’d taped inside.

  “Snake was dangerous,” said Oscher. “I saw him pull a gun on a bus driver right on Forty-third Street. Snake had a five dollar bill and he wanted to board, it was like two in the morning, me and Snake. And the bus driver said you gotta have exact change. Snake pulled a gun. ‘Drive, motherfucker.’ The bus driver hit the headlights and the police locked him up, just like that.” In New York, walking across Washington Square Park, the claustrophobia of the big city overwhelmed Snake and he broke it open with a taste of the frontier, whipping out his pistol and shooting at S. P.’s feet. “Dance, motherfucker.” But Snake’s danger also had a charm. His pickup lines in bars were infamous. He’d say, “Could I kiss you right there?” and he’d touch the pretty girl’s toe, then “Could I kiss you right here?” and touch her knee, and work his way up to her wicked midnight.

  198 “open tunings that he probably hadn’t employed in ages”: Muddy had stopped traveling with two guitars, and when he played slide, instead of retuning to Spanish, he played in the standard tuning in which he picked; the effect was still powerful, but less gut-wrenching.

  199 short a harmonica player: Birmingham Jones played harmonica for Muddy immediately before Paul. (See “Birmingham Jones, an Introduction” by Len Kunstadt.)

  201 The Blackstone Rangers: The Rangers were formed earlier in the decade in response to The Woodlawn Organization’s two attempts to upgrade the neighborhood; see Lemann, Promised Land. The Civil Rights Bill had passed on July 3, 1964, but the lack of actual change brought riots back to the West Side.

  202 “The last time I seen Little Walter”: O’Neal, “Blue Smitty” part 2.

  Willie Smith, however, remembers Walter getting it together not long before he died. “Walter was at the Red Onion, I was with Muddy and we were talking about how strong Walter was and how he was getting back to his normal self. Muddy said he was fixing to have Walter back in the band. And that was the last time I saw him.”

  202 “We were still hangin’ out together”: O’Neal, “Junior Wells,” p. 20.

  203 Geneva remained the backbone: Once, on Geneva’s
birthday, everyone in the family — along with those in the house and some from outside the house — was sitting around the kitchen with guitars and harmonicas. “Muddy believed birthdays were the most special day of the year, because that’s your day,” said Cookie. On Geneva’s day, she asked, “Old man, you gonna sing me a song?” And Muddy began “Rock Me.” Cotton accompanied on harmonica. (“I realized what a powerful voice Muddy had,” said Paul. “That whole house shook. It made me understand how Son House and those guys working without microphones could be heard.”)

  204 “They’d argue about the women”: One night, Muddy’s two ladies ran into each other. “Muddy was playing at Pepper’s,” said Lucille. “I was mad at him and left. Muddy told me, ‘You stay off Lake Park.’ I said I’m going where I want to go. And I came walking down there and it was in the summertime, me and my girlfriend. Geneva was on the corner and Dennis was with her, and Dennis say, ‘Momma, there’s that bitch that goes with daddy.’ And she popped me upside my head and we got to fighting and afterwards I went back to the club and told Muddy, ‘You had better go see about your wife, I just whipped her ass.’ ”

  Lucille and Muddy also fought. “He hit me once,” Lucille continued. “I was supposed to have been there at my house, but me and my girlfriend had went out and I was coming in at five o’clock in the morning and he was sitting outside the house in his car. He was calling me and I kept on walking like I didn’t hear him. He went to slap me and I ducked and he hit my head. His hand swole up. So the next day he had a little miniature baseball bat, said, ‘I’m going to beat your ass with this bat, I gotta make a living with these hands.’ But he was just playing.”

  204 “blinking blinking jiving jiving shit”: According to Stanley Booth.

  206 “A lot of people go in for [the effects]”: “Muddy: The Man Who Urbanised the Blues.”