Album Details

• Artist: Muddy Waters
• Album: Muddy "mississippi" Waters Live
• Label: Blue Sky
• Year of Release: 1979
• Original Release: 2003
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: charlesmartel on 2012-08-04

That line spoken by Johnny Winter at the end of "Mannish Boy" just about sums this up. Muddy Waters was probably the last, and arguably greatest, of the delta blues singers. This album, recorded in 1977 and 1978 in Cary, Illinois and in Detroit, sees Muddy Waters at the tail of his prime. By the time this was recorded he was already 65 and five years later he would be dead. Since his death, no one remains to provide that link between the world of modern music and the pre-war Mississippi delta blues of the sharecroppers. This album has been reissued by Epic as a legacy edition in 2003 and contains an additional CD of eleven tracks recorded at the same time.

There truly is nothing else like this around. Muddy Waters had collected a superb assemble of musicians for these performances and the recording really brings across the intimacy and the atmosphere of the relatively small auditoria in which the songs were performed. Rock's most famous albino, Johnny Winters, makes an appearance on a number of the tracks, both as guitarist and vocalist, and treats the event like a huge honour for himself. Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson and Bob Margolin provide additional guitars and "Pinetop" Perkins is truly amazing at times on the piano. With James Cotton on harmonica, Calvin Jones on bass and the legendary Willie "Big Eyes" Smith on drums, this was the line up Muddy Waters took to the stage those nights.

Just what is so special about this is hard to convey. Try listening to the guitar solos on "Streamline Woman" which sound more like an extended jam. Blues guitar this may be, but therein lies the root of a lot of the music of the sixties, seventies and beyond. Muddy swaggers and struts his way across the stage, bringing his full personality and presence to the recordings. So great is the impact that if you close your eyes you can imagine yourself there, just to the right of the stage, watching the performance unfold before you.

There is something both incredibly simple and incredibly complex about the blues on display here. Much of it is the standard 12-bar blues riff and three line verses which is so familiar. Using a standard tuned guitar, the riff to "Mannish Boy" for instance, is

e|-------------------------------------x-|

B|-------------------------------------x-|

G|--------------7------------5-h-6---x-|

D|--------7---------7-----------------x-|

A|--------0---------0-----------------x-|

E|-------------------------------------x-|

Rearrage those chords and stick within the twelve bar framework and you have the basis for virtually every song on the album. And the lyrics, well you can almost make them up as you go along -

"Baby please don't go/Baby please don't go/Don't go to New Orleans ‘cos I love you so"

This is so simple anyone could do it, right? Well, not quite. This music wasn't written down and it wasn't scripted. The whole album was pretty much improvised. Everyone knew what the framework was, how many bars they had to improvise in, and so they went about it. Cotton stepped forward with his harmonica on "Baby Please Don't Go" only to be followed by Guitar Junior getting in on the act, before they both go together. This is music played for the sheer joy of it by people who knew what they were doing. Just listen to "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" and you will hear how someone can be so closely attuned to his musical instrument and play without a second though the most complex patters imaginable.

Running throughout the music is a latent sexual tension which the slow burning nature of the electric blues merely serves to emphasise. Muddy Waters can still, even at his age then, sing about 19 year old girls and going down to Kansas to pick up some women and then additional thoughts of his own in the banter between the tracks. Quite frankly you have to listen to this to get the sense of what is going on here. It is one of the few double CD albums which I can listen to the whole way through at one sitting without getting bored or wanting to change styles. And that has got to be one of the best recommendations I can give to anyone wanting to check this out.

User Reviews and Comments