Can't Be Satisfied (48 page)

On July 29, 1942, Alan Lomax conducted the Family Report interview with Muddy and his family at their cabin on Stovall. In his journals, Lomax noted both the records in
Muddy’s collection and Muddy’s repertoire. They follow as he listed them.

M
UDDY’S
R
ECORD
C
OLLECTION

M
UDDY’S
R
EPERTOIRE

E
SSENTIAL
M
UDDY
W
ATERS
R
ECORDINGS

To gain a deeper feel for Muddy, I researched many filmed performances and interviews. A documentary was a natural result and, with Morgan Neville, I made
Muddy Waters Can’t Be
Satisfied.
This video features the best performances by Muddy and interviews with many of the people featured in this book. It’s an excellent companion piece and, following its TV
broadcast, the tape will be available through Wellspring Video (www.wellspringvideo.com).

M
UDDY’S
B
ILLBOARD
R&B C
HART
H
ITS

(According to
Joel Whitburn’s Top R&B Singles,
1942–1955,
www.recordresearch.com.)

B
UYING
M
UDDY
W
ATERS

Through the prime of his career, Muddy’s music came out on singles, two songs at a time. In 1958, his first album,
The Best of Muddy Waters,
was compiled from these singles, and
it remains one of his strongest releases. Since then, Muddy’s hits and most famous recordings have been packaged and repackaged, and most any way you mix them up, they’re great
listening.

Under the direction of Andy McKaie at Universal/MCA Records, Chess has enjoyed a revitalization befitting its original accomplishment. Currently, the Muddy compilations available through MCA are
His Best:
1947–1955,
His Best:
1956–1964,
Rolling Stone: The Golden Anniversary Collection
(a two-CD set that focuses on his Aristocrat and
Chess recordings through 1952), and
The Millennium Collection: Twentieth-Century Masters
(a career overview). Any of these is a good place to start.
Muddy Waters: The Chess Box
is
a three-CD set that spans his Chess career and includes some obscure tracks and remixes.
Trouble No More
focuses on Muddy’s latter 1950s releases, a period that mixes some of his
best with some of his worst recordings.

When I compiled my companion CD to this book,
Can’t Be Satisfied,
I assumed all those hit tracks would be easily accessible and I focused on the rest of Muddy’s catalog. I
drew from non-Chess as well as Chess recordings, establishing Muddy’s versatility within the deep blues form. It shines a light into dark corners, and hopefully the deal being negotiated for
its release will have been consummated and you’ll have no trouble finding it.

Muddy’s first recordings, done for the Library of Congress, are available on MCA’s
The Complete Plantation Recordings.
This release features not only the acoustic versions
of some songs he later electrified, but it also contains the interviews Muddy and Son Sims did with John Work and Alan Lomax. The tracks where Muddy plays solo give a sense of the foundation upon
which electric blues and rock and roll are built; the group tracks are in the string-band tradition, earlier and more ragtimey sounding. Though not the place to start listening to Muddy, this
music is easily accessible and enjoyable even to the neophyte ear. The interviews are intimate and thrilling. The title, by the way, is a misnomer; there is another disc of
recordings from 1942 on file at the Library of Congress (AFS 4770), about which a staff engineer informed me, “Broken but . . . repair appears very good, as if the grooves were lined up with
the aid of a microscope.”

In Chicago, before recording for Leonard Chess’s Aristocrat label, Muddy recorded the one-off “Mean Red Spider” and three tracks for Columbia. The only release I know of
“Mean Red Spider” is on the imported Document CD
Muddy Waters: Complete Recordings
1941–1946.
That CD contains all the music, but not the interviews, from
The Complete Plantation Recordings,
as well as some bonus tracks. The three Columbia recordings Muddy did in 1948 have been released on the Testament Records LP
Chicago Blues: The
Beginning,
and on various Sony Legacy compilations, none of which is currently in print.

All of Muddy’s first recordings for Leonard Chess on the Aristocrat label are available on a great two-CD set titled
The Aristocrat of the Blues.
It gives a real sense of the
Chicago music scene in the late 1940s. This includes issued and unissued material, blues and jazz, Muddy as sideman and Muddy as leader. His tracks are excellent and, against the fabric of what
others were doing, it’s easy to hear why “I Can’t Be Satisfied” and “I Feel Like Going Home” were so exciting when they came out.

Muddy Waters Sings Big Bill Broonzy
(1958) was Muddy’s first album conceived of as an album. Big Bill’s style was more subdued than Muddy’s, and this album is
appropriately less intense. My favorite track, “I Feel So Good,” gets a much more exciting treatment on Muddy’s next album,
Muddy Waters at Newport
(1960). This is the
release that introduced Muddy to pop culture and it remains a favorite of many of the people I interviewed. Most of Muddy’s set was filmed that day, and someone really should marry the images
to the audio and release a DVD or videotape of the set. Seeing Muddy dance across the stage during “Mojo” is one of the most exciting stage moments I’ve ever witnessed.
There’s a British CD,
Good-bye Newport Blues,
that combines
Newport
with several other great live tracks from later in Muddy’s career.

The
Folk Singer
(1964) album is as intimate sounding as you could ask for, but the performance seems removed, as if the players were concentrating on the intimacy and not the music.
It’s never much moved me. (This album is available on a CD conveniently coupled with another of my least favorites, the
Big Bill
album.)

In 1966 and 1967, Chess compiled more of Muddy’s early recordings, initiating their
Real Folk Blues
series with Muddy, and then following up with another round,
More Real Folk
Blues.
Both are excellent, though I prefer the latter; it favors more of Muddy’s great slide material. Sandwiched between was the album
Muddy, Brass, & the Blues,
to be
avoided. (Some of these tracks can be heard without horns — on the
Chess Box
and on
One More Mile
— and are so much more listenable as a result.) The
Super
Blues
album also came out in 1967, Muddy in the studio with Bo Diddley and Little Walter. A better idea than a record, its follow-up,
Super Super Blues
(which replaced Walter with
Howlin’ Wolf), comes nearer to fulfilling the potential, but these kinds of records are hard to pull off.

I came to a new appreciation of
Electric Mud
(1968) after rapper Chuck D. told me how the sounds of it first attracted him. There are great sounds on this psychedelic
blues album and on its sequel,
After the Rain
(1969), but they can also be grating experiences. These musicians set out to push the envelope, and they succeeded mightily.
Don’t fear them, don’t scorn them, but try to borrow someone else’s copy before you buy your own.

The
Fathers and Sons
(1969) record is among the better of Muddy’s latter Chess recordings. It combines good studio performances with live recordings. He’s ably backed by
younger, sympathetic musicians, and his songs, all remakes of earlier versions, are rendered honestly. It’s true that the remakes lack the strength of the originals, but sometimes one hears a
song anew when it’s done differently. For the CD, the original tape was remastered, and three previously unreleased studio performances were added. Some of the original tracks were compiled
with some of Wolf’s from his
London Sessions
and are available on the misleadingly titled
Muddy and the Wolf.

Three records came out in 1971.
They Call Me Muddy Waters,
all good blues, is built from recordings that had been previously shelved.
McKinley Morganfield AKA Muddy Waters,
no
longer in print, was a repackaging of several previous
Best of
s. Muddy’s
Live (At Mr. Kelly’s)
is a fine, often overlooked record. His first post-car-wreck recording,
this album announced his return to form, to unadulterated blues form.