Can't Be Satisfied (33 page)

Muddy’s return to his early style was probably, in part, a direct nod to Welding. Welding’s record label, Testament, was responsible for
Down on Stovall’s Plantation,
an LP of most of the Fisk–Library of Congress recordings, reminding fans and newcomers alike of the depth of Muddy’s blues. The release was set in motion a couple years earlier in
Chicago, when Welding played Muddy three of the Stovall tracks from a blues compilation. “Muddy asked, ‘Where is the rest of them?’ ” said Welding. “He told me he had
done a whole bunch of those for Mr. Lomax on two separate occasions. Muddy didn’t bullshit, so I believed what he said. We sent to the Library of Congress and requested a copy. A few weeks
later we received them and had a listening party. Muddy said, ‘We got to get this stuff out.’ He thought it was wonderful. But Leonard Chess did not want to put it out. He thought the
sound was terrible, it was too old-fashioned, and besides, he had lots of other Muddy recordings that he hadn’t released.”

What Muddy had done on a summer day a quarter century earlier was now of interest well beyond his old circle of Friar’s Point and Rena Lara. People all over America and beyond were
interested in hearing what he’d done. It made his life seem very very large, and also very very small. What had happened to McKinley Morganfield? The world knew Muddy Waters, bluesman, but
what of Della’s grandson, what of “Stovall’s famous guitar picker”?

I
n the editor’s note of the first issue from late 1967, Jann Wenner wrote about his new magazine directed at the mushrooming youth market,
“The name of it is
Rolling Stone,
which comes from an old saying: ‘A rolling stone gathers no moss.’ Muddy Waters used the name for a song he wrote; the Rolling Stones
took their name from Muddy’s song, and ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ was the title of Bob Dylan’s first rock and roll record.” To the un-generation, characterized by
rebellion and rejection of their past (and expressing it across Chicago at the 1968 Democratic Convention), Muddy presented a heritage far from their suburban homes, a life of experience —
unsuburban, unmodern, unmanufactured: real. That didn’t mean they preferred buying his records over those released by the younger artists he influenced, but it meant both respect and
increased sales.

Chess Records, in high-concept mode, realized that an album cover with several of its stars’ names could move some of this new market’s disposable income from their blue-jean pockets
to the company coffers. At the start of 1967, Muddy, Bo Diddley, and Little Walter created
Super Blues,
an album that rocked up the blues and tried, unsuccessfully, to create an intimacy
between the artists. “Hey Muddy,” thuds Bo, “my baby got a mojo.” Walter rasps like he needs medical treatment. The package was successful enough to repeat half a year
later, this time replacing Walter with Wolf. Though still not a crowning musical achievement, the
Super Super Blues
album was an improvement. Putting Muddy and Wolf in the same room was
sure to create sparks, and it did: Wolf begins taunting Muddy, “I’m the king, I’m the king.”

This new recording of old material was followed by another compilation of Muddy’s old recordings.
More Real Folk Blues
focuses on Muddy’s slide
playing, and tracks such as “Sad Letter,” “Early Morning Blues,” and “Whiskey Blues” stirred not only the folk and rock fans, but Muddy himself. “One of
the few times I saw Muddy come out of himself was just after the album
More Real Folk Blues
had been released,” said writer Peter Guralnick. “A friend of mine had gotten the
record at the Harvard radio station and he interviewed Muddy and played excerpts from it on the air. This was the first Muddy had seen of the record, and it stimulated both his engagement and his
imagination. His performance at Club 47 later that night included songs and open tunings that he probably hadn’t employed in ages.”

Another fortuitous encounter came during a chilly October 1967 stint at a Montreal club. Local enthusiasts arranged to record Muddy and the band informally at their rooming house. With a kitchen
there, and a relaxed sense of familiarity, the band was at ease, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee while the recordists set up. In his liner notes to
Goin’ Way Back,
Michael
Nerenberg writes, “All eyes seemingly turned together towards the silhouette in the doorway as Muddy stepped into the room, a purple velvet house robe adding a certain majesty to his already
imposing presence. Even the slippers and hair net little diminished the dignity of his bearing.” Muddy strums a bit, is told it’s all working, answers sleepily: “Crazy.” He
slides down a string, strumming a slow rocking rhythm, playing runs and falls, working the sleep from his voice on “Gypsy Woman” like he might have on a 1930s Sunday afternoon after a
late night out. It’s an acoustic session, and Muddy’s in the mood. By the third song, “My Home Is in the Delta,” his slide is going to town and back, Sammy Lawhorn
accompanying him. Muddy addresses his final song to Lucille, who is sitting quietly while her man records; it’s “Mean Disposition.”

Later that year, Muddy recorded two studio sessions for Chess, producing an album’s worth of honest material, Mud playing Mud. The songs are good and so is the music, which is probably why
they were not released for four years — until Chess finally decided that an unmediated Mud might be better than a manufactured Mud.

In February of 1968, Muddy landed in New York City short a harmonica player. Guitarist Luther “Georgia Boy” / “(Creepin’) Snake” Johnson, who’d recently
joined, reminded him about the white guy they’d met a couple tours back; he’d come to the Apollo’s backstage with a friend of the band, all jive and attitude, talking Harlem soul
stew. His name was Paul Oscher and he’d managed to emulate Walter’s amplified tone without benefit of an amp. Hearing the kid’s big fat sound, Snake had whooped,
“Motherfucker’s got a tone.”

So Snake called Paul, who’d recently turned eighteen, and Paul ran to the club. He played “Baby Please Don’t Go” and “Blow Wind Blow” in a stairwell and Muddy
told him, “I like the way you play, man.” Oscher recalled, “Muddy didn’t speak too much, and he often spoke with his finger to his lips, like he was reminding himself to
hush even when he was speaking. I got in this old Volkswagen van with most of the band, some of their girlfriends. They all had pints of gin. Spann says, ‘Lucille, let me see my shit,
baby.’ And she hands him his pistol. I’m thinking, ‘I’m into this shit here.’ ” Indeed, Paul was in.

Perhaps not surprisingly, most white audiences thought it natural that a white player was in the band; they’d come to Muddy through the Rolling Stones and other blues-based rock groups.
“I was really, really crazy about Paul,” said Muddy’s granddaughter Cookie. “I was just becoming a teenager when Paul came to the house. Other white guys came around and
were a little standoffish but Paul really clicked with the family. We would laugh and look at TV and Daddy would really be on Paul’s case. ‘I’m gonna fine ya, Paul, your shirt
wasn’t clean.’ ‘I’m gonna fine ya, Paul, you was late.’ I’d be like, ‘Whoa, I’m glad he’s here today, I’m out of trouble.’ Paul
would walk up and down the street and I would tell everybody, ‘Don’t mess with him, that’s my cousin, he doesn’t have good sense.’ But Paul was the only white person I
ever seen that had such a good rapport on the low South Side. We’d sit on the porch and he’d laugh at my friends or make jokes, start playing the harmonica. I would be so happy when
Paul walked in the door.”

Adult guidance had not been plentiful in Cookie’s life. She was
thirteen, pregnant with Muddy’s first great-grandchild; he was fifty-six. Muddy wasn’t
home when the doctor called with the results of her pregnancy test. According to Cookie, “Geneva went to the cabinet and poured herself a drink. She said, ‘You are lucky, Cookie,
because you slipped by.’ She assumed positive meant
positively not pregnant
.” When Muddy came home, Cookie hid. “He started searching and calling my name. It felt like
the whole house had crumbled. I left out the back door and went over to the lake — but I had a phobia about water. When I came back, Muddy looked like a monster standing on that porch. But he
was very supportive. The one requirement for me was that I stay in school through the pregnancy.”

Around Muddy, sex was everywhere. Not long after Paul arrived, he sat on Muddy’s front stoop and a woman in the building across the street waved at him. “She was eating ice cream,
she said, ‘You want some ice cream?’ ” Paul recounted; he promptly moved in with Fannie Mae and her two little kids. “I told Muddy that she had a biting pussy,” Paul
said, “that she could clench and unclench it, so about a week later she said, ‘Guess who was just on the phone with me? Your boss!’ He was trying to get her to meet him around the
corner.” Paul laughed, then added, “I mean it was no exclusive situation. She was fucking her boyfriend on Saturdays.”

Not everyone was so tolerant. Hanging with Muddy’s guitarist Pee Wee Madison in front of their building, Paul was flirting with a girl from another floor named Barbara when a guy named Roy
stepped outside and said, “This is for you, bitch,” and shot her in the head. They thought he was shooting blanks until she slowly spiraled to the ground, began convulsing. Paul looked
at Pee Wee. Pee Wee shook his head. Roy stood next to them, holding the gun. Like cartoon characters, Paul and Pee Wee zigzagged across the street. Muddy called the police, then retrieved his .38
snub-nose from the headboard of his bed, stuck it outside the waist wrap of his house robe, strolled out front where Roy was threatening witnesses, and announced, “Motherfucker don’t
scare nobody.”

“Guns were part of the scene,” said Oscher. “Muddy had a hatbox of guns, maybe six or eight, he kept in the hall closet. One was a Wyatt
Earp special, it
had a long long barrel, real old. And he had a Winchester .38. He used to carry the snub-nose .38 all the time until he switched that for a little five-shot .25.”

He wasn’t alone. Bo slept with a sawed-off shotgun next to his bed, which Paul found out when he moved into the basement after Fannie Mae froze him out. “When Bo would sleep, if he
was drinking, he would start shouting shit like, ‘Move, bitch, move, motherfucker, move, bitch.’ And I knew he had a shotgun next to him.”

Pee Wee was known to the cops. They’d slow when they saw him, and he’d raise his shirt, showing no weapons in his waistband. But he was a small guy and he kept his elbows at his
side, a pistol in the crook of his back. One New Year’s Eve, Muddy and Geneva were celebrating with Bo, Otis Spann and his girlfriend, and a few other close friends. “They were drinking
and having a good time,” said Cookie, who throughout her childhood believed Bo was Muddy’s blood brother. “In a black neighborhood on New Year’s Eve they sometimes shoot
their gun. Muddy and Bo were in the little vestibule right in the front and Muddy fired. Bo said, ‘Oh Lord, Muddy, you done shot me in the leg,’ and I remember Geneva saying they
couldn’t call the police because they didn’t want that in the paper. They took Bo in the basement and Muddy tells me to go get the pail with the water and I’m thinking,
‘When people shot you’re supposed to take people to the hospital.’ Bo was a big burly man, really, really dark, and he kept saying, ‘No, no, Muddy could get in
trouble.’ Muddy this, Muddy that. Otis Spann went to the store and got two-fifths, Old Granddaddy, 100 proof. And they put Bo in this room and fed him liquor.” A week later, Bo climbed
up the steps and returned to the world.

An undercurrent of danger ran through even the good times. The Blackstone Rangers, a “community service” group that carried weapons openly, set its territorial line at Forty-third
and Lake Park — Muddy’s block. South of Forty-third belonged to the Stones; the Devil’s Disciples — the “Ds” — had the North. “My mom’s
boyfriend was a Blackstone Ranger,” said Joseph, Muddy and Lucille’s son. “A sign on the wall would tell me what kind of area I’m going into. Wherever I go, I always look at
the graffiti.”