Sweet Home Chicago: Muddy Waters and More

By the end of the 1930s, many blues artists were leaving the Delta and moving to Memphis, St. Louis and especially Chicago, but more importantly the blues was being broadcast to a wide audience. KFFY in Helena, Ark., became the home of the King Biscuit Time, an hour of blues music featuring Robert Lockwood Jr., Rice Miller (Sonny Boy Williamson II) and others over the years.

Lockwood, whose step-father was none other than Robert Johnson, has had a long and important career as one of the first electric blues guitarist; he was also one of the first to incorporate jazz elements into his playing. Lockwood -- sometimes known as "Robert Jr." Lockwood, to underscore his relationship to Johnson -- is still performing today, well over 80 years old, playing both acoustic 12-string Delta blues and leading an electric band. His latest album even includes a previously unrecorded Robert Johnson song, "Mr. Downchild."

Many of the Delta blues artists we know today were recorded in the field by musicologists such as the late Alan Lomax. One of these was McKinley Morganfield, whom Lomax first recorded in 1942 singing "I Be's Troubled," his first version of what became the electrified "I Can't Be Satisfied" in 1948. After hearing himself on Lomax's tape machine - "Damn, I sound good!" he is reported as saying -- Morganfield moved to Chicago and began recording under his life-long nickname, Muddy Waters, and the rest is history.

A case can be made that Waters is the single most influential popular musician of the 20th century. Muddy Waters turned rural music into urban music, and thus paved the way for its place in world music. While others such as Lockwood, Robert Nighthawk and T-Bone Walker had begun to play electric blues guitar, Waters took it a step further to create a truly electrified, not just amplified, sound. With an ever-evolving band of exceptional sidemen - including harpists Little Walter Horton and James Cotton, pianists Otis Spann and Pinetop Perkins, guitarist Jimmy Rogers, and bassist and songwriter extraordinaire Willie Dixon - Muddy Waters created the sound of Chicago Blues, and could be called the proud father of rock and roll. Consider only one track, "Rollin' Stone," recorded in 1950, whose very name resonates through the core of rock and roll history.

Other key Muddy Waters tracks include the oft-covered "Rollin' and Tumblin'," "Mannish Boy (I'm a Man)," "Hoochie Coochie," "That Same Thing," and "I Just Want To Be With You" (many of them written by Dixon). When he died in 1983, he had lived long enough to see his sound change the face of popular music around the world.

 Birth of the Blues

 Early Delta Blues

 Roots of Robert Johnson

 The Kings of the Blues

 Women, Texans and World Blues

© 2003 by Christian Kallen

Resources

Robert Lockwood Jr: Delta Crossroads

Traditional blues played on 12-string by the 85-year-old Lockwood.

Muddy Waters : His Best, 1947 to 1955

Twenty essential recordings on Chess, remastered for CD.

Willie Dixon: The Chess Box

Two CDs, 36 songs by written by Willie Dixon and performed by him and other artists. Great stuff.