Muddy Waters: Can't Be Satisfied by Robert Gordon

Muddy Waters is, in many ways, the archetypal bluesman. He was raised as a sharecropper in the Mississippi Delta, where he learned to play an acoustic guitar. He went to Chicago in 1943, and the band he assembled established the electric blues sound. Over the next three and a half-decades, his band became a springboard for many of his sidemen, launching a prominent school of blues performers.

Early Years

Muddy Waters was born McKinley A. Morganfield on April 4, 1913 at a small enclave in Issaquena County, Mississippi known as Jug's Corner. The nearest town on the map, where the family went for commerce and mail, was in neighboring Sharkey county, a small place called Rolling Fork that was on the train tracks. Muddy usually cited Rolling Fork as his home. The area, near the Mississippi River, was wet, and his grandmother nicknamed him because of the mud puddles in which he played.

Muddy's mother died when he was very young, and her mother raised him. She moved north to the Stovall Plantation outside of Clarksdale before Muddy was three years old. He stayed there, for the most part, until he was thirty years old. Muddy had cousins in the area, including Eddie Boyd, who would later have hits in Chicago.

Around five years old, Muddy started playing music on a harmonica. He beat on a kerosene can, then squeezed an old accordion around his grandmother's house, and fooled with the limited sounds of a jew's harp. The guitar was popular, and he bought his first around 1930. Muddy always had a strong voice, and a regional string band, the Son Sims Four, enlisted him as a vocalist. Sims, a multi-instrumentalist, gave Muddy some guitar instruction. However, seeing Son House perform set a fire under Muddy. House played with a bottleneck slide, and Muddy began learning the style.

From an early age, Muddy hustled to earn extra money. Sharecroppers earned a subsistence wage at best (though conditions at Stovall were better than on many other farms), and Muddy collected bottles for the bootlegger as a kid; later he ran his own whiskey, trapped furs, and when he learned to make music, he performed for tips and hosted house parties. Another sideline indicates Muddy's willingness to embrace technology. At a time when horses were as fast as cars, and as dependable, Muddy bought a 1934 V8 Ford. He earned extra money driving neighbors to and from towns, but more than anything, the car's importance is indicative of a mind open to change. In a few years, he would effect a musical revolution.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/a...ers_m.html
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...If you're on the West Coast, this episode airs tonight (2/4) at 9pm on PBS.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

Exceptionally good episode.

Based on a clip used in the show (after the classic albums)...



...Hard Again might have to be one of the albums that goes on my Muddy Waters To Get list.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431