Chicago blues artist. The best-known transitional Mississippi Delta to Chicago bluesman,
Muddy Waters was influenced by Son House and the recordings of Robert Johnson.
While in his teens, he played with local string bands at house parties and country
breakdowns. In the eady 1940s, he ran his own juke joint in Mississippi and in 1941 he
was field recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax. Moving to Chicago in 1943, he worked
widi other Delta musicians at rent parties and small taverns, where transplanted
Soudierners with a taste for downhome music supported Southern-born blues musicians.
After an abortive test recording for Columbia Records in 1946, Waters began a
productive thirty-year collaboration with Chess records. Initially recorded in a more-orless solo format, Waters put together outstanding bands known for their “head hunting,”
or job-stealing, ability. Litde Walter Jacobs, Jimmie Rodgers, Walter Horton, Junior
Wells, James Cotton, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, and coundess others worked with, and
were influenced by, Muddy Waters.
While his regional edinic deep-blues style never appealed to die majority of African
American record consumers, Southern Blacks and city folks widi Southern roots
supported his music. Through the 1960s and 1970s, however, his African American
audience waned and he worked more and more for a revival audience. From down-home
Delta folk artist, to Chicago edinic star, to international superstar, Waters changed his
music very litde. A distinctive if limited instrumentalist, he was a great vocalist and a
superb bandleader who recognized talent in others and had the strengdi to mold it into his
own sound. His overall aesthetic remained keyed to the African American oral tradition,
and his music has a timeless quality fiieled by his personal charisma, the strengdi of his
supporting musicians, and the quality of the Chess studios, which captured and polished
the blues tradidon at its best.
Barry Lee Pearson
References
Rooney, James. 1971. Bossmen: BillMonroe and Muddy Waters. New York: Da Capo.
Palmer, Robert. 1982. Deep Blues. New York: Viking Penguin