Andrew Hornung looks back on the music of blues artist Mudd Waters, who died last week City blues rooted in the Delta sour

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MUDDY Waters' greatness is a paradoxical thing. Here was a musician of restricted range who for the most part stuck to a narrow slice of southern blues -the blues of the Mississipi Delta and was part of its northern transformation into a hardedged electric Chicago blues.

When folklorist Alan Lomax first met McKinley Morganfield (Waters' real name) on Stovall's plantation in 1941, the 26 year old farm labourer played at least three songs: "Country Blues", 'I Be's Troubled" and 'Burr Clover Blues"

Excited, Lomax asked Morganfield whether the "Country blues" tune was used for any other blues he knew. "Well, answered the singer, "this song came from the cotton field and the boy went and put the record out, Robert Johnson, he put out 'Walking Blues'." before yoy heard it on record?" tune asked Lomax. "Yes, sir," answered Waters, "I learned it from Son House. " Lomax had never heard of Eddie "Son" House who lived nearby, who had taught Johnson and Waters and played with Charlie Patton.

Lineage

This then was the lineage of the great Delta bluesmen:

Patton, House, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, with Muddy extending that tradition into the post-war electric period.

Unlike the other great formative influence on the Chicago blues scene of the late forties, Elmore James, Muddy stuck to that down home style energised now by the use of electric guitar, amplified harmonica, and often a driving piano. To these were added a second 'guitar, bass and drums.

The tunes and lyrics often followed the pattern of the Delta blues with its frequent use of bottleneck, but the feel was totally different from that provided by the Son Sims group with which he had recorded for Lomax (guitars, fiddle and mandolin).

Expand

Muddy's repertoire did not expand qualitatively in Chicago, although a long line of prowess songs (I'm Ready, Hoochie Coochie Man, I'm a Man, etc) added to the songs of love, loneliness, infidelity and hardship. In fact, there was a narrowing in his output: country dance numbers and religious songs were dropped.

Gradually - with the help of sidesmen like Little Walter (on harmonica), Jimmy Rogers (guitar) and Otis Spann (piano) - a distinctive, deeply rooted, brooding, sometimes gloomy sometimes raw and bullish city sound was distilled that seemed somehow also to retain the essence of the Delta sound.

Muddy's move to the North in 1943 meant more hardship. He worked as a truck driver: 'It was pretty ruggish, man". . The blues had been starved by the rationing of shelle endie per blee Chicago recording, Big Bill Broonzy, Big Maceo Merriweather, Tampa Red and others huddled together on the decaying South Side looking for recording or performing dates.

Muddy's first chance came in 1945 or '46 when he recorded "Mean Red Spider" for the 20th 'entury label. A while la ecorded - this time und lame Muddy Waters Columbia but the emained unissued for de t was not until he star ecord for the Aristocrat wned by the Chess bi ind later called Chess Muddy found any success That earlier period ha lominated instrumental he piano as much as guiti rest known guitarists, F and Tampa Red, played variety of blues with iazz-inflected urban f often in a comic idiom. iter he ler the.

for sides ¡cades. ted to . label, rothers that d been lly by ar. The roonzy a wide a light eel f World divided "race" • music o black s in the ‹ townfeel of ties and a mood to get and its t Coast r, it was ›pealing of their ew suits DATE CO service and war production meant that the Chicago ghettoes bustled with tens of thousands of blacks - mainly men - from Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and l'ennesee.

Rather than patiently suffering the humiliation of "country folk" jokes, they asserted their roots with a fierce pride however much they hated the South.

Brasher

The music of Muddy, Elmore James and Howlin' Wolf was their music. And it was this white. There were European tours (Britain in 1958) and college campus gigs, jazz festivals and shows; almost all were white audiences introduced to Muddy Waters through the Beatles and Rolling Stones (who took their name from a Muddy Waters track). Later Muddy was able to command the kind of fees that took his band out of the ghetto dives and country jukes for good.

"I don't hardly play for a black audience any more," he told writer Peter Guralnick. 'Now and then I have a booking in the black. But not too often. It's not that I don't want to play for my peoples. I love to play for my peoples, man, but I just been busy.

There were times when Muddy was less busy, when his records were not selling well. Once in the sixties and again in the seventies he was "relaunched" with a different sound - more psychedelic, more in the Jimi Hendrix vein - but it didn't last and didn't go down well. Again he returned to the Muddy Waters sound, sad or declamatory, the electr Delta sound.

In the last few years he mac several more albums - mo produced by Johnny Winter• which are very close to the spir of the early fifties Water Walters-Rogers-Spann soun often reworking favourite son like "King Bee" and "I' Ready"

In the later years he playı less guitar, giving his sidesm! more opportunity, but his voi lost none of the deep, resona authority of the earlier years.

It was never the anguishi sound of Robert Johnson wi its complex, jagged guitar wor Muddy's voice was alwa darker, and more magister and his guitar work simpler a: more insistent.

If Muddy rarely strayed fr his roots and developed litt he was the greatest exponent that brand of blues that lift white rock out of the fran rockabilly clatter into the age hard rock. Black music a popular white music will foret be in Muddy's debt.

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