The man who started it all. Muddy lived and sharecropped in the Mississippi Delta for 26 years before Alan Lomax music folklorist searching out and recording folk music for the Library of Congress found him while looking for blues legend Robert Johnson in the year of 1941. Lomax soon learned that Johnson had died 3 years previously. Lucky for him and us he found and recorded Waters.
Waters listened to the records he made for a year before deciding to leave the delta behind him and move north to Chicago in 1943. There on the streets of Chicago he left the acoustic guitar and picked up an electric guitar plugging it into a valve amplifier. This gave his playing a whole new edge building upon what Robert Johnson, Son House and Charlie Patton had done. The electric sound pierced through the streets like no acoustic guitar could. The amp gave his notes a dirty distorted tone that added more texture and color to the music.
He played at house parties, then small bars before recording for columbia which took him nowhere. Waters took a job as a truck driver by day and singing and playing blues by night. In 1947 Waters had met Little Walter Jacobs busking on the street and taken him under his wing and what a great partnership they forged, Muddy Waters singing and playing guitar, Walter playing blues harp. From then on it was the sound of Muddy Waters. The pair were soon joined by Jimmy Rogers who played a vary different style of guitar than Waters and thus gave birth to Muddy Waters first band, The Headhunters.
Waters was consistently trying to convince the owners of the Independent Chicago record label Artistocrat Records to record him. Waters finally gathered the attention of half the owners of the label; Leonard and Phil Chess. They allowed him to record with studio musicians. Several of his first singles did not sell well, but Waters prevailed and in 1949 found a hit with I Can't Be Satisfied, a reworking of an earlier song he recorded for Lomax called I Be's Troubled. It sold well and the Chicago Blues was born.
A string of records and hits followed I Can't Be Satisfied. The Chess Brothers started to trust Waters and saw his success finally letting him bring Little Walter to record with him. One of these first recordings was Louisiana Blues. Soon more members of his band started coming into record with Waters until the Chicago Blues matured. Now the face of music was changing. The first signs of Rock 'N Roll were starting to emerge. The blues instead of being a man and a guitar, was giving way to ensembles or bands. One of Muddy Waters first full bands consisted of Muddy Waters singing and playing guitar, Little Walter on blues harp, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Otis Spann on piano, Willie Dixon on Bass and Fred Below on drums. This group of musicians would go on to record many a songs written by Willie Dixon for Muddy Waters.
TO BE CONTINUED...
