Grant is said to have given young Morganfield the nickname "Muddy" because he liked to play in the mud as a boy, and the name stuck, with "Water" and "Waters" being tacked on a few years later. As Muddy became more deeply immersed in the blues, he took up the harmonica; he was performing locally at parties and fish fries by the age of 13, sometimes with guitarist Scott Bohanner, who lived and worked in Stovall. In his early teens, Muddy was introduced to the sound of contemporary Delta blues artists, such as Son House , Robert Johnson , and Charley Patton ; their music inspired Waters to switch instruments, and he bought a guitar when he was 17, learning to play in the bottleneck style.
Within a few years, he was performing on his own and with a local string band, the Son Simms Four ; he also opened a juke joint on the Stovall grounds, where fellow sharecroppers could listen to music, enjoy a drink or a snack, and gamble. Waters became a fixture in Mississippi, performing with the likes of Big Joe Williams and Robert Nighthawk , and in the late summer of , musical archivists Alan Lomax and John Work III arrived in Mississippi with a portable recording rig, eager to document local blues talent for the Library of Congress it's said they were hoping to locate Robert Johnson , only to learn he had died three years earlier.
In July , Lomax returned to record more material with Waters ; these early sessions with Lomax were collected on the album Down On Stovall's Plantation in , and a reissue of the material, The Complete Plantation Recordings , won a Grammy award. In , Waters decided to pull up stakes and relocate to Chicago, Illinois in hopes of making a living off his music.
He moved to St. Louis for a spell in , but didn't care for it. Waters drove a truck and worked at a paper plant by day, and at night struggled to make a name for himself, playing house parties and any bar that would have him. Big Bill Broonzy reached out to Waters and helped him land better gigs; Muddy had recently switched to electric guitar to be better heard in noisy clubs, which added a new power to his cutting slide work.
By , Waters had come to the attention of Okeh Records, who took him into the studio to record but chose not to release the results. A session that same year for 20th Century Records resulted in just one tune being issued as the B-side of a James "Sweet Lucy" Carter release, but Waters fared better with Aristocrat Records, a Chicago-based label founded by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess.
Initially, the Chess Brothers recorded Waters with trusted local musicians including Earnest "Big" Crawford and Alex Atkins , but for his live work, Waters had recruited a band which included Little Walter on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, and Baby Face Leroy Foster on drums later replaced by Elgin Evans , and in person, Waters and his group earned their reputation as the most powerful blues band in town, with Waters ' passionate vocals and guitar matched by the force of his combo.
By the early '50s, the Chess Brothers who had changed the name of their label from Aristocrat to Chess Records in began using Waters ' stage band in the studio, and Little Walter in particular became a favorite with blues fans and a superb foil for Waters.
Otis Spann joined Waters ' group on piano in , and he would become the anchor for the band well into the '60s, after Little Walter and Jimmy Rogers had left to pursue solo careers. By the end of the '50s, while Waters was still making fine music, his career was going into a slump. Instead, The Mud offered Buddy a sandwich and asked him to be a part of the blues that they had invented.
And here we are in the 21st century still trying to figure out how such a simple art form could be so complicated and subtle. He made three chords sound deep, and they are. Muddy opened for ZZ Top on their tour, the band having long discussed Waters being their musical hero and biggest influence.
It was humble beginnings for what really is an offering to the Delta Blues Museum. The guitar can be a focal point for modern blues musicians to pay homage to the museum, which has been doing a fine job of preserving this art form we now know as American music.
Once in the s, House of Blues leased the original log cabin that Mud called home before his trip to Chicago. In the decade before that, a tornado blew the roof off of the house. Today, the Delta Blues Museum has created a special wing of the museum strictly for Muddy memorabilia, including not only his original log cabin, but Muddywood as well.
One possible upside to the Lake Park Ave. The landmarks commission would have to approve any demolition. He turned down an invitation from Robert Nighthawk to take him to Chicago in the late s… imagine how different the world might be had he not!
In , Mud moved to Saint Louis. Three years after his return, he would finally have what he needed to become one of the greats, thanks in part to a chance recording session that would change his life….
A real leader. I can actually close my eyes and remember that. I guess that having the women right in the studio stimulated them. Years later, when I was traveling with the Rolling Stones, I would see Mick projecting that same kind of sexuality as Muddy, and I started to put it all together.
I packed up records for them in boxes. They were big blues fans. We were all amazed, including Muddy; a whole new market had developed. As far as business and royalties, well…it was different then with artists. I think that in the end, Muddy had managers and lawyers who integrated him into the record business as it is in the Eighties. Those were the three. They got royalties that were, I guess, as good as any at that time. I think one of the reasons for his success was that his music was really him.
Mick Jagger We admired Muddy Waters and his music very much, and we played a lot of his songs in imitation of him. He encouraged us a lot before we met him —— when we just listened to his records, we were encouraged.
After we met him, when we came to the States in , he encouraged us. When Muddy Waters came to England in , he shocked the English public by coming out and playing electric guitars and electric basses and electric harmonicas. Instead of one sultry Negro man playing the blues —— which is what those English people paid for —— he came out with the band and made a deafening noise.
And they all walked out and asked for their money back. This was a famous tour. We had a lot of people down there. It was a very enjoyable evening, a very happy occasion, and we remember it with great joy. Keith Richards In England, we had no idea what was going on. We just got a few records here and there. But when I eventually got to hear Muddy Waters, in about or , it all fell into place for me. He was the thing I was looking for, the thing that pulled it all in for me. He made it all explainable.
He was like the code book. I was incredibly inspired by him as a musician. When I met him, I was even more inspired by him as a person. He was more than a guitar player, more than a singer, more than a writer. It was all him. That was my cue to get out of New York. I ended up in Chicago, studying painting, and I remember being in a dormitory on the South Side when somebody first played me Muddy Waters.
There was an immediate attraction. There was just something about the name Muddy Waters. And that picture on the first album; the whole look of the Chess label.
All of a sudden, a funky old station wagon and a funky old Cadillac come driving up, and out steps Muddy Waters. Later, I took them over to their hotel, and it was a sad, sad story. It was far on the other end of town in the red-light district, just one step up from being a flophouse. And here were these men I worshiped, checking in. You always read about it, but I mean, to see it so vividly — to see the plaster falling off the walls and the creaky old beds in this flea-bitten hotel, and here were these heroic men, these great, great artists.
You know, people talk about T. But for me, Muddy Waters and his peers and the great black jazz artists are the true poets of America. They sacrificed everything for their music, and they always kept their style and their dignity in times when it was very hard to do. They were kind of reserved on the first night, and Muddy let the band do most of the work.
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