The Untold Truth Of Muddy Waters

Both blues and rock and roll owe a huge debt to Muddy Waters and he pioneered electric guitar work and songwriting. This is the

untold

truth

of Muddy Waters. The father of the Chicago Blues, as documented in Robert Gordon's Can't Be Satisfied, the life and times of Muddy.

waters

muddy

waters

the early years are shrouded in mystery much of the waters created themselves were sketchy in details and interviews cited the year of his birth as 1915. He also told people that he was born in Rolling Fork in the county of Sharkey Mississippi was actually born

muddy

waters mckinley morganfield on April 4, 1913 in Issaquena County northwest of Rolling Fork in a small community called Jugs Corner, although Rolling Fork was and is a small town, it was still a metropolis compared to a rural bend in the road like Jug's Corner.

Water's father was Ollie Morgenfield. A kind, portly man who made his living as a mule skinner, hauling lumber across the state to the sawmill in Vicksburg Morganfield, he was also a talented musician known for livening up Saturday fish fries by singing and playing guitar. . He was 21 years old, a father, and had recently separated from his wife when he met Muddy Water's mother, Berta Grant, in the summer of 1912. Although the couple did not marry, their only son would take his father's last name, according to Gordon. , practically nothing is known about Berta Grant, there are no records of her birth or death.

She died shortly after giving birth to Mckinley. The circumstances of her death are unknown. Young Mckinley Morganfield would grow up under the care of his grandmother. Dela Grant, 32 years old. Dela Grant struggled to raise her son and grandson on a poplar plantation. Life was sharecropping on a plantation. At the beginning of the 20th century it was just a step above slavery in exchange for a small plot of land and a meager home, a sharecropper was expected to work in the cotton fields from dawn to dusk, the landowner took half from the sharecropper's harvest and deducted his expenses for seed tools and livestock from what was left of the plantations operated as privately owned towns, often with their own money valid only in the farm owner's store, ultimately Ultimately, conditions on a plantation depended on the character of the owner Some were good Some were bad None were particularly fair It was an especially hard life for a single woman raising two young children, according to biographer Robert Gordon della Grant had packed up her children. and had moved 80 miles north to the Stouffville Plantation near Clarksdale Mississippi in 1920.

Stovall's owner, Colonel Howard Stovall III, had a reputation for benevolence and generosity, yet life remained hard for dela Grant. Little Mckinley Morgenfield's love of splashing around in the murky and often dangerous waters around his grandmother's house earned him his childhood nickname. Mudly, stomping around in the dirty water of the delta was one of the few pleasures for a growing child. On a plantation, able-bodied children were required to work after only three years of formal education. Muddy was forced to resign and go to work in the fields to help support his family. A little 10-year-old boy was working, you know, even though work dominated. water life on stovall plantation discovered the joy of music at an early age dela Grant made sure the young muddy attended church every Sunday worship was a refuge for Stouffville sharecroppers and services were lively and filled with song in the church pews of Stovall Waters discovered the power of rhythm and melody, however, it was music with a clearly different intention that really triggered murky waters, waters of the soul, he told Robert Palmer, author of deep blues, the lady who lived across the street from us had a phonograph when I was a little kid, she used to let us go there all the time and play it at night in debt, exposed to recordings of blues artists like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Tampa Red and Memphis Mini Waters would develop a musical vocabulary and sophistication beyond that of other rural musicians by the time the murky waters disappeared.

A teenager music had become an all-consuming passion when his grandmother bought his own phonograph and he searched for every penny he could find to buy records from his favorite blues artist as detailed and he couldn't be satisfied the waters poured over him. Blind Lemon recordings Jefferson Charlie Patton and Sun House at 14 Waters experienced the blues epiphany when he saw Sun House play at a music venue outside Clarksdale House. Waters' skill with a bottleneck slide inspired Waters to trade his harmonica for a guitar after some informal lessons. Waters finally bought his first guitar at 17. Waters was named after Robert Palmer.

I sold the last horse we had made about 15 for him. I gave my grandmother seven dollars and fifty cents. I kept 750 and paid about 250 for that guitar shortly after I bought the first guitar from him. Muddy Waters started playing everything. late night jukes in Clarksdale earned up to 2.50 a night. Waters quickly saved enough money to buy a new guitar. A model 14 that he ordered from the Sears and Roebuck catalog from an early age. Muddy Waters knew he was destined to live beyond Stovall Plantation. He still lacked money for concerts. It's not stable, and Waters supplemented his 50-cent-an-hour income from sharecropping with a series of odd and sometimes illegal jobs, as detailed, and cannot be satisfied.

Waters earned extra money as a fur trapper selling raccoon and rabbit pelts throughout his life. During his childhood, Waters made money scrubbing bottles and selling them to moonshine shops. As a young adult, he learned to make and sell whiskey himself, an activity to which the owners of Stovall turned a blind eye in the summer of 1941. Muddy Waters He heard a rumor around Stovall that a white man was searching for him in the water's mind. That could mean only one thing. The authorities were following him for whiskey smuggling. However, Alan Lomax was not a tax agent, he was a 26-year-old ethnomusicologist.

With a mission from the Library of Congress to document missing people, the music of the American South had heard Waters' work as good as that of the recently deceased bluesman Robert Johnson and wanted to record his music, however Waters still had his doubts about this. strange white man to establish trust, Lomax asked for some water and, to Water's amazement, shared it. from the same cup he had been drinking from in the segregated South, such an act was unthinkable as documented and he cannot be satisfied. Womack set up his portable recording equipment on the porch of the water cabin and with a toast of muddy water cleared everything up.

The traces of distrust vanished. Lomax recorded two Water songs that day. Country Blues and Ibs. The Chicago music scene was not at all what he expected, Waters told Peter Geraldnick, author of I Feel Like Going Home, Portraits and Blues and Rock and Roll. The blues was dying out, that was okay, he was a pretty tough guy shortly after he got to Chicago, Water's Uncle Joe. Brandt gave him an electric guitar to leave his mark on the big city. The murky waters needed to be heard in crowded bars and nightclubs, and the amplified instrument was just what he needed, although T-bone Walker had used an electric guitar as early as the '19s. of the 1930s through a hand-cranked distorting amplifier along with its characteristic licks transformed the instrument from a mere accompaniment to the voice of Chicago blues.

I think I'm the minion preparing Chicago for real blues, as detailed in Peter Gorelnick's Feel Like. Upon returning home, Muddy Water's electrified sound gained him a loyal following at the club and in 1945 he caught the attention of Columbia Records. He would record songs for the label, but they were never released. Water's recording fortunes soon changed when a talent scout from Aristocrat Records heard him after several unsuccessful records Waters had his first hit in 1950 with Roland Stone Aristocrat, renamed Chess Records, would become the leading purveyor of blues music just before From the release of Roland Stone Waters formed his first band in the highly competitive world of Chicago blues clubs Water's group was second to none, Warders along with guitarist Jimmy Rogers and harmonica player Little Walter, who would become successful blues soloists in their own right. own, were feared and respected on the club circuit.

Waters said and Peter Gorelnick want to go home, I would say that in '47 or '48 little walter jimmy rogers and I were going around looking for bands that were playing we called ourselves headhunters because we went in and if we had the chance we would burn them down in 1954 waters fangosas had his best year ever as a recording artist with three singles in billboard's r b top 10, including two of his biggest hits, gucci coochie man and i just want to make love to you waters had revolutionized blues music, but in 1956 the Blues sales were in rapid decline thanks in large part to the advent of rock and roll and artists like Chuck Berry whom Waters had referred to as chess records just a year earlier as was documented and cannot be satisfied, Muddy Waters soon became He found himself turning to local gigs to make ends meet, although the blues was in decline in the United States he claims that British audiences were hungry for its raw authenticity.

British jazz musician Chris Barber and his band were hooked on the Delta and Chicago blues and had managed to import real blues stars such as Sister Rosetta Tharp, Sunny Terry and Brownie McGee, for concerts in England, but they landed in waters for a show was their holy grail waiting for a rustic folk musician with an acoustic guitar. The British public was not at all prepared for the stinging electric blues of the water when it arrived in 1958, although some purists were turned off by the wild, amplified Chicago blues, others were paying careful attention among this new wave of British blues devotees.

Eric Clapton, Eric Load and Mick Jagger and many others who, inspired by muddy waters, would bring the blues back with a bang in the 1960s, as the 1960s developed, British bands like the Rolling Stones covered songs by waters that opened their music to a new generation of young fans, from animals to garden birds, British blues became the sound of rock and roll in the 1960s with strong electric guitars as a driving force, although the emergence rock music had almost ended his career. The influence of murky waters would mark its continuity. evolution I feel like I did something for the music world, however, an attempt to modernize and repackage Waters as a rock artist failed with the 1968 release of Electric Mud, the brainchild of Marshall Chess, son of the founder of Chess Records, Lina Chest, Electric Mud Place Waters and Chicago Blues.

In the midst of the heavy, psychedelic rock of the late '60s, although Electric Mud initially sold well, it was panned by critics, no one was as harsh on the experimental album as Waters himself, who said that the Electric Mud album I made that one was bad but when it first came out it started selling like crazy and then they started shipping them back they said this can't be muddy water with all this stuff going on all this wow wow and fuzz tone as detailed and I can't be satisfied, murky waters appeared in what would be his last recorded performance on November 22, 1981.

Taking the stage at Buddy Guy's checkerboard lounge, Waters joined the Rolling Stones, trading vocals with Mick Jagger on Hoochie Coochie Man. A Fragile-looking Waters, however, stood her ground with the lovable English rocker soon after. the historic performance of Waters, who suffered from hypertension for a long time, collapsed and was diagnosed with cancer. He underwent surgery to remove part of his lung, forgoing chemotherapy. Water's cancer went into remission and he recovered enough to take the stage again in the late spring of 1982. On June 30, 1982, Water surprised Eric Clapton on stage in Miami by joining him for a performance of the Water's classic Blow Wind Blow, would be his last performance upon returning home to Chicago.

Waters began coughing up blood; his cancer had returned and would worsen over the course of a year. On April 30, 1983, just over three weeks after his 70th birthday, Muddy Waters died of cardiopulmonary arrest and lung carcinoma. Check out one of our newest videos here and more grunge videos about your favorite things will be coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. and ring the bell so you don't miss a single one