Can't Be Satisfied (36 page)

Sammy Lawhorn, who worked in a photography store when he wasn’t traveling, had a talent for coaxing his dates to pose nude. In addition to his road shots of the band and their famous
friends (a collection long since lost to poverty), he amassed a collection of his conquests, supine. “He was a camera bug,” said Pee Wee. “He’d have your picture, you
wouldn’t even know it. He’d snap pictures of everybody. He’d show his naked ladies pictures in the hotel room.” He also made movies, and he bought a voice-activated tape
recorder, which he kept hidden under his bed.

Pee Wee had his own habits. “He used to antagonize other people,” said Paul. “Pee Wee stepped on my mike cord in the middle of my solo, unplugging it. And when you’re
playing blues, if you want to fuck somebody up during the solo, you turn over too fast, short step ’em. He’d cut out my spot so there was nowhere I could go but follow him. Another
thing, he’d learn my solos, play what I’m about to play, force me to jump to another place.” At Symphony Hall in Newark, New Jersey, Paul and Pee Wee, who usually caroused
together, drew guns and were circling each other when Muddy defused the situation: “First motherfucker that hits a lick is fired.”

The band traveled down the East Coast to Washington, D.C. Alan Lomax, in 1968, was asked by the organizers of the Poor People’s March on Washington to book “culturally relevant
entertainment.” Among those he hired was Muddy Waters. “He immediately agreed to come,” Lomax writes in
The Land Where the Blues Began
. He quotes Muddy: “Sure
we’ll help out. We’ll just drive on down overnight and get to town the morning of the concert.” On the designated morning, Lomax spied a Cadillac parked in the shade, feet poking
out the open windows. “Muddy was snoozing at the wheel. He looked up with that sleepy, crooked grin of his. ‘Hi, Lo,’ he said and we laughed.”

Later that summer and back up the coast at the Newport Folk Festival, Muddy sat in for an ailing Son House and, as a tribute to his mentor, performed the celebrated “Walkin’
Blues,” a song that ran
from House to Robert Johnson and Muddy. Bonnie Raitt brought it to a popular audience.

When the band flew to the Montreal World’s Fair for a short set, the landing gear failed. In Boston, Paul Oscher and John Lee Hooker, shopping in Lord & Taylor, were trailed by store
dicks, suspicious of a black man and white man together. In Austin, Muddy heard Johnny Winter opening the show and walked out front for a closer listen. “It was thrilling to me to meet him,
he was one of the first bluesmen I heard on record,” said Johnny Winter. “I was playing slide, had a National backstage, and he said he’d had one. I’d already learned most
all of his licks.”

Spann was on wife three, or three thousand three. Or three million three. His alcoholism was raging. “One time we were on the side of the highway in the desert, and I was helping
Spann’s Lucille get back into the van,” said Oscher. “Spann was drunk. He lowered his head and looked through the top of his eyes, said, ‘You fucking with my wife.’
This came out of nowhere. His eyes were rolling out the side of his head. He looked so mean, so dangerous, terrible.” Muddy’s Lucille remembered a California trip when Spann brought his
girlfriend; the two ladies skipped a gig and went out on the town. “When we got back she didn’t have a chance to take her clothes off and Spann came home and he pitched a move and when
she woke up she had a black eye. Spann talking about how she must have walked into the door.”

Perhaps it was inevitable that with the explosion of interest in Muddy would come an explosion of his band. James Cotton had recently signed with manager Albert Grossman. That got Spann’s
attention, or his wife Lucille’s anyway. After seventeen years of sitting quietly and taking it all in, Spann, in 1969, stepped out on his own — or as Lucille Spann’s accompanist.
Lucille had sat in on some of Spann’s sessions, heard her voice on record, and wanted more of that. With Muddy, Spann had the best of both worlds — regular gigs through his boss and the
opportunity to open many of the shows and to record numerous solo albums, establishing his own name. Muddy even shared billing (“Muddy Waters featuring Otis Spann” was typical). But
Muddy wasn’t ready to take Lucille — an unimpressive vocalist — into his band.

Muddy accepted Spann’s departure as he’d accepted all his other sidemen’s departures. “If you lose just an ordinary sideman you can pick them up
anytime, but a real good man like Little Walter, Jimmy, and Otis, them was excellent men. It goes hard, man, but you have to get you another man, you just keep trying.”

Muddy called on Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins. Pine was from the Honey Plantation outside Belzoni, Spann’s hometown, not far from Rolling Fork. He was a man of Muddy’s age
and time, and shared Muddy’s quiet reserve. The two had a quick affinity and developed a lasting affection. Pine had played with Robert Nighthawk, the King Biscuit Boys, Ike Turner, and Earl
Hooker. “Pinetop,” said Muddy, “he come from the part of the country that really know what he’s doing with the blues.”

Pinetop was in fourth grade when farmwork claimed him: “I made a tractor do everything but talk.” He left home at seventeen, earning his nickname for his popular treatment of Pinetop
Smith’s “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie.” He played a more gutbucket style than Spann, fewer notes, fewer fills, but he understood Muddy’s sound and easily fit in. “I
liked Spann’s piano, but I played different,” Pinetop said. “I played more of a bluesy type than Spann did. Spann put some jazz in his blues. I played more like Muddy’s
cousin, Eddie Boyd. I taught myself off records, Memphis Slim, them old piano players, then added to it. Yeah, hard and loud, beat it to pieces.”

Crowds on the road were good, and so was the pay — as high as $3,500 for a one-hour set. (And even then Muddy still hustled small change selling mojos — tiny textile
sacks with a dried pea in them — to these young fans.) Stage restrictions loosened in 1969, while loose hair tightened. The natural came in, the process out. Muddy adapted to their fashion,
dispensing with uniforms. He still favored a sports jacket and usually a tie, but he let his band unwind.

In the college town of Ann Arbor, Muddy and Wolf shared the bill at one of the larger blues festivals. The old rivalry seemed at rest, and the two were photographed together, laughing and
drinking beer. Then Wolf took the stage — on a motorcycle. He played a fiery
set, ignoring the stagehands and running past his time well into Muddy’s. But thirty
minutes on stage was just right for Muddy. He attacked the crowd with “Hoochie Coochie Man,” and punch to punch, in a third the time, cut Wolf at his own game.

On the way to a show in Detroit, 1969, Muddy began bleeding from his nose. It kept up for a week, until blood came out of his eyes. Smoking, soul food, drinking, the wear and tear of the road
— his blood pressure was out of control. “I used to be a good liquor drinker,” said Muddy, “but when the doctor told me to come off the liquor, I said this is it, no more
whiskey.” He took up champagne. Clubs were told to have Piper-Heidsieck on hand, chilled, which Muddy could purchase as need be. “He was a champagne man, bought a whole truckload, put
it down in his basement,” said Pinetop. “Look like he was selling it.” Muddy began to carry a penknife to whittle down the champagne corks so he could keep his bubbly fresh. His
preferred pregig routine was to sleep three or four hours, then wake to a bottle of champagne. “Champagne for breakfast, champagne for lunch, champagne for dinner,” Muddy told a
reporter, “and champagne before bed.”

On one October 1969 stretch, they’d been “up through Maine, up into Canada, back to New York,” according to Muddy. “We ain’t slept nothing but in the car.
That’s a grind.” A Saturday-night gig in Covington, Tennessee was their last, and the home bed was nearly palpable. They had paid for hotel rooms, could have slept there, then pulled
home refreshed. But sleeping in Covington would have meant unloading and reloading the equipment one more time.

John Warren, part-time driver, was especially anxious to see his wife. “Don’t worry fellas,” he said, sliding behind the station wagon’s steering wheel on the last day of
his life, “you’re in good hands with Allstate.” He had Pee Wee next to him in the front seat, Muddy behind him, and Pinetop behind Pee Wee. Bo and the others followed in the
yellowbird Jeep van Bo picked up when the Volkswagen van wore out.

“Willie [Smith] said it was around six o’clock at night,” said Oscher. “I thought it was real early in the morning.” According to the
police
report, it was a bright, clear and dry 11
A.M.
on October 27. The band was on Highway Forty-five, a two-lane road, not far from Champaign-Urbana and going north when a young
couple — he was twenty-three and she was eighteen — coming the opposite way veered off the road, then overcompensated and nearly went off the other side. Muddy’s brand-new Chevy
station wagon had skidded sixty-three feet when the careening Pontiac struck it head-on.

“All you heard was a big loud noise, and then Bo shouted out, ‘Lord have mercy!’ ” Paul remembered. “Then all that debris started coming over our van.” Bo
veered to the right of the accident, and the van halted in a field. His passengers, unhurt, ran to the scene. “We had to pull Muddy out of the wreckage,” Oscher continued. “Warren
was dead. The bone was coming out of his leg, the steering wheel was pressed up against his chest, and Pee Wee was smashed up against the windshield. Me and Sammy pulled Pinetop and Muddy out of
the back and laid them on the grass. They were both conscious. Muddy was saying, ‘I’m broken up real bad.’ And I remember Muddy saying to Bo, ‘Is my face messed up?’
”

“That steering wheel knocked the breath out of Warren,” said Pinetop. “I was in the hospital, these knees was all messed up. My head knocked on the ceiling. Brand-new car, man.
Guy that hit us, he was driving sixty, seventy miles an hour, head-on collision. I couldn’t see the girl in the front seat, she must have been going down on him.”

Pinetop, fifty-six, and Pee Wee, thirty-three, were released two days later. John Warren, thirty-eight, was dead at the scene, as were the young lovers from the other car. Muddy, fifty-six, was
taken to Carle Hospital in Urbana. Three ribs and his pelvis were broken, his hip shattered, his back sprained. Immediate surgery lasted three hours. Doctors told him he’d have to stay there
for several weeks. “I ain’t dying,” he told a reporter, “but I ain’t feeling so good.” His hands were numb, he was unable to roll over in the bed, unable to feed
himself. Muddy would remain hospitalized nearly three months.

“When Muddy had his accident, Bo was our rock,” said Cookie. “He made sure that we got back and forth to see Muddy often. He
was a very good friend to
Muddy.” Bo’s shuttle service was also a screen, keeping certain parties from meeting in the hallway. “When he had that accident, I was pregnant with our third child,” said
Lucille. “I went to the hospital twice to see him.”

“Muddy had the shorts — he was living week to week,” said Messinger. “He asked us to get some money from Chess. I had never met either of the Chess brothers. I talked to
Willie Dixon and Willie ran the ball. We arranged ten thousand dollars. Muddy’s wife picked up the money and delivered it.” There was a new family in the Chess big house, but the bills
were still being paid.

M
uddy stepped out of the hospital and into the 1970s on January 8. He moved slow, walking with a cane. His sides were sore, his knees weak, his hip
held together with steel. He watched a scar form over his left eye. His left hand, on which the guitar made more demands, had suffered the greater injuries. “If I could get out and go around
it would be okay,” he said, “but sunup and sundown, sunup and sundown here in the house.” But the swelling in his hands was diminishing, the numbness beginning to dissipate.

The hospital bills had all been paid by Chess Records. Muddy had no insurance, no safety money in the bank, just two decades of a working relationship with Len, Phil, and Marshall. Now Leonard
was dead, Phil was gone, and Marshall had a few months left at the company; he departed in mid-1970 to start a record label for the Rolling Stones. (On his first visit to the band’s rehearsal
hall, he noticed a poster on the wall — from the
Electric Mud
album.)

Recuperating at home in February, Muddy enjoyed a Grammy Award nomination (Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording) for the
Sail On
album — containing material from as early as the
1940s. (Don’t tell Muddy Waters
his
music don’t last.) And if he listened at all to pop radio, he would have noticed something familiar in one of the contemporary hits. It was
not a blues song per se, though some lyrics had been copped directly from his “You Need Love,” especially the new song’s catchphrase, “way down inside.” Muddy may have
heard Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” like the English initially heard his 1958 tour: screaming and howling. But without him, it would not have come to be.