Read Can't Be Satisfied Online
Authors: Robert Gordon
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Jerry Portnoy: Portnoy got to know Muddy through Paul. “He was living in Muddy’s basement and sometimes we’d go
upstairs to see Muddy and Muddy would be in his doo rag and watching the Cubs game in the afternoon, drinking champagne. ‘Well, boys, you want a little taste?’ He was drinking
champagne. Piper-Heidsieck. I learned from Muddy Waters, my wine expert.”
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“You don’t know how happy I am”: Litke, “TV Tribute,” p. 15.
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He played Montreux: The 1974 Montreux set is available on the videotape
Messin’ with the Blues.
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“It should have been just another show”: Margolin, “Can’t Be Satisfied.”
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“I got my favorite blues singer”: Jones, “Superstar.”
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“I’ll have to tell the truth, you’re from down in that way”: McKee and Chisenhall interview with Muddy
Waters.
Muddy charmed Margaret McKee. “Just thank God I’m living. I’m fifty-eight years old, an old man. Cute, too.” On the tape, he said “cute, too,” in a
practiced way; this line has worked before. And he delivers it with a pause, after which, sure enough, she giggles like a little girl.
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had recently sued Arc Music: Howlin’ Wolf’s lawsuit in Blues News,
Living Blues,
summer 1974.
Wolf’s suit was settled — after his death on January 10, 1976 — for an undisclosed amount. Toward the end of his career, Wolf, despite growing kidney problems — his
touring schedule was built around cities with dialysis facilities — was not retiring. “It wasn’t unusual to see Wolf take one tune and play it for a half hour, maybe longer, and
only remember two or three stanzas of the song,” said Bob Koester. “We didn’t mind, you know.” Reviewing a Wolf gig at the Chicago Amphitheater, Dick Shurman wrote in
Living Blues,
“Wolf summoned all his energy to stalk around, clown with the mike, and sing and play harp forcefully. His was the night’s most gutbucket set, and the audience
returned the enthusiasm to show that down-home blues still hits hard in ’75.” (Shurman, “Howlin’ Wolf.”)
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Mandingo:
The internationally known film composer Maurice Jarre, who had scored
Lawrence of Arabia
and
Doctor
Zhivago,
requested Muddy’s contribution to the scoring of the James Mason film
Mandingo,
directed by Richard Fleischer. The job involved singing their words, accompanied by
banjo, ukulele, and washboard, in synchronization with images on the screen. Muddy practiced his reading on his wife’s lists at the grocery store; it required all his effort and he could not
simultaneously comprehend the words. As much as he tried to familiarize himself with the material, he could not get comfortable in the movie situation — keeping his eyes on the paper, on the
screen, and on the other players. “They worked with him a little bit,” said Cameron. “It wasn’t cut and dry like you’d have to sync to a commercial, there was some
space for timing errors or phrasings. I think they probably had a lot more material that they could have used, but it was very hard for him to do things in sync with the film.”
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Bottom Line. Bob Dylan: Al Perry was backstage with Muddy. “Victoria was in heaven, saying, ‘It’s like old times,
Bob’s living in my apartment, sleeping on the floor.’ ” She and Bob got up and played. Oscher was on the gig — playing piano — because Pine had broken his wrist. After
the show, Oscher and Jerry Portnoy accompanied Dylan and his entourage to Victoria Spivey’s house. “He asked me if I wanted to go on his Rolling Thunder thing,” said Oscher,
“so I gave him my number. But my phone was disconnected two days later.”
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“tired of being sold to everybody”: Murray,
Shots,
p. 191.
All Platinum held a sale at the 320 E. Twenty-first Chess building, though tens of thousands of albums were left afterward. They hired day workers, gave them chainsaws, and the contents of the
building and warehouse were destroyed.
14: H
ARD
A
GAIN
1976–1983
Hard Again:
Johnny Winter gave his engineer a crash course in blues sounds. “I spent almost twenty-four hours playing him blues records and telling him what I
liked. It was real important we got the right sound.” Bob Margolin brought a
portable cassette player to the sessions and some homemade tapes of Muddy’s original
recordings. “They were mostly recorded from bootleg albums because Chess did not have official releases on the market.”
“We didn’t practice,” said Muddy. “We just got in there and we’d run over a song and put it down. We caught it.” (Obrecht, “Bluesman.”) Said
Willie Smith, “Wasn’t like it would take a whole year to figure out. Figure out a pattern, work on it a little, and take it. Once you’ve been playing with a band long enough to
know what each other are going to do, hell, you just do it. The Chesses, they was slave-driving in the studio, cussing one another to get you pissed off enough so you could put all you had into it.
With Johnny Winter, it was like day and night.”
As the sessions wound down, and the feeling had lasted for so long and translated so well to magnetic tape, both Bob and Johnny wanted to test the waters of the way-old school: acoustic guitars.
Mud sat between them — three across on stools — and they knocked out his 1941 songs again: “I Feel Like Going Home” and “I Can’t Be Satisfied.” At the
start of the 1970s, Muddy said in an interview, “I try to play straight as I can so the band can follow, but songs like ‘I Can’t Be Satisfied,’ I don’t think nobody
never been able to half follow that but Spann. That’s why I don’t ever try to play it since I got a band.” (Guralnick interview with Muddy Waters.) But he’s singing that
sucker now, boy, the lead licks on an acoustic National steel guitar, Son Sims rising from his grave to shuck corn, the tractor engine revving. Johnny and Bob began discussing another take. Muddy
was finished. “He didn’t want a bunch of extra songs floating around,” said Johnny. “The Chess people had put out so much of his extra stuff on albums, and he wanted to get
paid for everything he did.”
The sessions jolted Johnny Winter, made him reconsider the direction of his life. “Working with Muddy made me realize that blues was what I wanted to do. Rock and roll was okay, but blues
was my first love. I might not make as much money as a rock and roll player, but blues made me happier.” Johnny brought the
Hard Again
band to Westport to back him on his own album,
Nothing but the Blues.
Muddy stopped by to lay down lead vocals on a bouncing version of “Walking thru the Park.”
Last Waltz:
As
The Last Waltz
approached, unbeknownst to Muddy, his role was jeopardized. “It was mind-blowing,” Levon Helm said. “That was just
bullshit.” In his autobiography,
This Wheel’s on Fire,
he expounded:
Two days before the show, our studio manager tried to talk to me. He was one of the boys on the other side of the desk. I could tell from the awful look on his face that
there was some problem, and he’d been
delegated
to deal with me. . . . This flunky said, “Um, we’ve
all
discussed it, and we’re thinking about, ah,
maybe, you know, taking Muddy off the show.” I just looked at him. “Anyway, we were hoping maybe you could talk to Muddy for us.”
There was silence for an awful thirty seconds. I was trying to get a grip before I answered, before I lost control. We were all under tremendous pressure because of this movie. The whole
damn thing had been hijacked to the
nth
degree. I had to clear my throat before I could speak. “Not only will I
talk
to Muddy,” I managed, as I began to get worked
up, “but I will
also take Muddy back to New York, and we will do the goddamn
Last Waltz
in New York. Him and me. That’s right.” Now I was
getting going. “Yes, I’ll talk to Muddy, you no-good, low-grade sumbitch! Now get the hell out of my sight, before I have some of these here Arkansas boys stomp you to death!”
(Helm with Davis,
This Wheel’s on Fire,
p. 261)
The Band rented the Miyako Hotel, near the Winterland venue, for its guests and held a rehearsal there the day before the show. Dr. John noted: “I really wish they had filmed during Muddy
Waters’s rehearsal, and I just wish somebody had filmed the guitar players in the room watching Muddy, with their jaws hanging open while this guy is playing ‘Nine Below Zero.’ .
. . There were so many great guitar players there — Robbie Robertson, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Stephen Stills — and the looks on the faces of those guys was worth the price
of admission for me!” (Skelly, “Muddy Waters.”)
The Last Waltz
had, as showbiz events are wont to do, become something larger than itself, including a feature film to be directed by Martin Scorsese. “Joni Mitchell introduced
herself to Muddy and he definitely hit on her without knowing she was famous, which made her laugh,” said Margolin. “She was heartbreakingly beautiful and attractive. In the dressing
room, Pinetop told me, ‘I hear one of the Beatles is here,’ but didn’t realize that he was sitting next to Ringo. Kinky Friedman assured Muddy that ‘Jews love the
blues.’ He was wearing a white satin smoking jacket with blue Jewish stars on it and embroidered scenes of the Crucifixion. Muddy just smiled at another weirdo talking nonsense.”
Though it seems intentional, the intensity with which Muddy was filmed was a matter of circumstance. “I noticed that they didn’t seem to be shooting Muddy,” Helm wrote.
“Later we realized that because of some fuck-up, all but one camera had been turned off. We almost missed his entire segment. As he was walking offstage, I stood up to applaud, and Muddy
grabbed my head in his big hands and kissed my forehead! What a feeling!” (Helm with Davis,
This Wheel’s on Fire,
p. 264.)
The next year, between gigs in Los Angeles, Muddy, Marva, and Scott Cameron left the Hyatt Hotel in a cab to attend a matinee showing of
The Last Waltz
at a theater on Sunset Boulevard.
“That was incredible,” said Scott. “I was watching Muddy. They flashed him on that big screen up there and his chin just hit his chest. His mouth dropped. I don’t think he
could have believed how big he looked.”
I’m Ready:
“You could tell they were old friends,” said Johnny Winter about Muddy and Jimmy Rogers, “but they didn’t talk too much about
the old days. They didn’t have time to do much talking in the studio. We worked from one song to the next. Again, nobody ever did any arranging. I asked, ‘Do one of y’all want to
play the top part and another play the bottom part?’ and they laughed and said, ‘No, we just play what we feel like.’ They thought it was funny to even care.”
I’m Ready
brought a welcome boost to Jimmy Rogers’s career. Since the start of the 1970s, he had resumed gigging, putting out an album on Shelter Records with Leon Russell
and Denny Cordell. He was not at all interested in another stint with Mr. Chess, alive or dead. Initially, things had gone well. “Get a gig now, you ask the guy for five thousand dollars and
he just smiles. ‘Okay, if that’s all.’ But during that
time, if you ask them for five hundred, they’d holler.” (O’Neal and Greensmith,
“Jimmy Rogers.”)
By the latter part of the decade, however, he was gigging less. Following the recording of
I’m Ready,
he and Big Walter stayed together for a while. They played spots from Boston
to Austin and around Chicago, including the better-paying gigs on the North Side; streaking was the rage, and dancers often shed their clothes. And when
I’m Ready
was released in
early 1978, Jimmy hit the road with the recording band. The higher profile led to a new recording contract, this time with Chicago’s Delmark Records.
During a lull in April, Muddy stayed home and Pinetop, Guitar Jr., and Bob hit the road with a Washington, D.C., blues band, the Nighthawks, billing themselves as Jacks and Kings. With
Margolin’s former band mate and Spann protege Dave Maxwell, they would all guest on the Nighthawks’ next album, titled
Jacks and Kings.
The Legendary Band:
Most of the old band regrouped as The Legendary Band and promptly had a recording contract and a tour booked. They hit the road running. Willie Smith still
saw Muddy on the South Side; he bought a house a few doors down from Muddy’s. “He was living in Westmont but he still used to come over,” said Willie. “He’d sit down
and talk like we always did. The Legendary Band was traveling pretty heavy ourselves, we didn’t never really settle down.”
“I lived near Washington, D.C., then,” said Margolin, “and had started my own band. Around November, I heard that Muddy was coming to town, so I called the club and tried to
arrange to open the show. The booker knew that I had left Muddy and said he’d have to check with Muddy’s management to make sure they didn’t mind. They didn’t, and Muddy
later told me that he had been asked personally, and approved. As always, playing in front of Muddy for me was like a kid trying to make Daddy proud. I closed my set with the early Little Walter
tune ‘I Just Keep Lovin’ Her,’ and when I came back into the dressing room, Muddy leaped up, put his hands on my shoulders, and said, ‘I haven’t heard that song in
thirty years! You’re keeping the old school alive!’ It’s the most valuable compliment I’ve ever had.”
Jerry Portnoy visited Muddy in Westmont soon after The Legendary Band’s first album. When Muddy opened the door, he gave Portnoy a big hug. “Muddy already had the album and he was
proud of us. That hug, he made it right between us.”
Muddy’s Musical Secrets:
During Muddy’s comeback, educated interviewers formed lines to interview him. This resulted in detailed information about his performing
style; the following quotes are culled from Tom Wheeler’s “Waters–Winter Interview” in
Guitar Player.
“I play in mostly standard [tuning],” said Muddy,
“because it’s tough if you’re waiting in between songs to tune to G or A. And I’m too lazy to carry two or three guitars around like Johnny Winter.” Muddy favored
strings made by Gibson. “I got a heavy hand,” he said. “A lot of guys want to squeeze and bend their strings up, like B. B., so they have the strings real low. My strings are
heavy, like a .012 or a .013 for the first one [the skinniest one, nearest his toes] up to .056 for the last [the one nearest his face]. I don’t need to worry about bending, because I can
slide so high up there.” One of his tricks was to replace the
wound third string with a plain .022-gauge. Muddy used a short slide on his pinky finger because he never
needed to cover more than three strings — usually just one. Winter explained, “Sometimes I play a whole chord [covering all six strings], so the size of the slide makes a
difference.”