Muddy Waters was interviewed countless times in his long career, often by people who had little knowledge of his life or his music. Pete Welding was a different case. He owned Testament Records, a Chicago Blues label that recorded many of Muddy’s contemporaries and friends. In this brief but illuminating interview, Welding knows the likely …
When the audience for Chicago blues shifted in the 1960’s from working class black to college age white, a good bit of strange and sometimes wonderful music resulted. Electric Mud certainly makes the first category. The second? Well… Leonard and Phil Chess had already tried to market Muddy Waters to suit the folk craze and …
When stars start to dim, producers tend to flail about, and strange music can result. By 1975, as Muddy’s sales figures were in decline, he became the first customer for Levon Helms’ Woodstock studio. Backed up by members of his own band, together with Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Paul Butterfield, and some accomplished studio musicians, …
This clip is an hour long, so get some popcorn beforehand. I feel sorry for Muddy for several reasons here. One because he looks so tired– this was taped in the late 70s, near the end of his life– and two, because WTTW (the Chicago Public Television station which presented “Soundstage”) felt that they had …
Muddy Waters‘ gravestone is in the Restvale cemetery in Alsip, Illinois, a small suburb just south of Chicago. (I believe there are more dead residents than live ones, based on the number of cemeteries in that town). I happened to be there last year for a gravestone ceremony for Joe and Charlie McCoy, early jug …
Two versions of the same song, recorded in the same city- Chicago- many years apart. Muddy’s 1947 recording, with Ernest “Big” Crawford on stand-up bass, established him as a blues star and altered forever Leonard Chess’ ideas about music. The Stones’ 1964 version, recorded at Chess Studio, went nowhere commercially, but reworked and re-imagined the …
East Portland Blog readers may have already been exposed to Complete, but if not, watch this 2008 video of the band playing their own composition “Hoogie Boogie Land”: This seems pretty shitty at first, right? Guy can’t sing, death metal “no established beat” drumming but in a wimpy hard rock format. Maybe these guys don’t …
Here’s a gem of an understated “Mojo” from 1963. Any videos of Sonny Boy Williamson II are scarce indeed, since he died in the summer of 1965. That’s the American Folk Blues Tour again, with Otis Spann, Matt Murphy, Willie Dixon, and Bill Stepney (very rare to see him) on the drums. Locale? Britain or …
This just in from the great John Siscoe: “The two guys dancing offstage, and Muddy’s ballroom duet with James Cotton during the encore are highlights, but the whole thing is a wonder and a joy.” ********************************************************************** East Portland Blog confesses to the following: “I had heard Muddy’s version of “Got My Mojo Working” and countless …
Muddy wasn’t a big man, but he had a natural stage presence and an unforgettable voice. he also had the knack of conveying the impression that however much he was giving you he always had something in reserve. This 1971 clip of Mannish Boy shows a Muddy no longer young and still recovering for a …
This Rollin’ Stone clip is extraordinary for several reasons. It gives us a Muddy Waters on film that’s as young as he’ll ever be, dressed to the nines, performing one of his signature tunes before a completely new audience, mostly young and largely white. It’s a warm summer afternoon fifty years ago. As yet there …