Muddy Waters
Got My Mojo Working
Rare Performances 1968-1978
Yazoo 521; Video & DVD; Ordering Information

Muddy Waters learned the blues from Son House in the Mississippi Delta, and he - and his records - taught the music to artists ranging from Junior Wells to the Rolling Stones. He is the father of modern blues.

Muddy's achievement was more than an electrical amplification of the blues, though he did that too. He extended the solo player's feeling and emotion to an ensemble attack. Muddy Waters defined the electric blues band, creating a distinctly American music that dominated popular culture in the latter half of the twentieth century.

These rare performances - all electric - capture Muddy as the embers of his career glowed anew. By 1968, the folk blues had waned and the sound he popularized in the mid-1950s was returning to the fore. Over the next decade, Muddy secured his place as the godfather of rock and roll. The slide guitar technique he plays on these version of Country Boy, Honey Bee, and Long Distance Call is at once contemporary and as pure as when he learned it as a dusty child in the delta fifty years earlier. In Got My Mojo Working, Muddy works the vocals from his cavernous chest into his mouth and then shakes the words from his jowls and cheeks. His singing is as glorious as his playing.

Throughout his career, Muddy always drew exceptional sidemen. Muddy's two great pianists - Otis Spann and Pinetop Perkins - are both featured here, as are harmonica players Carey Bell, Paul Oscher, and Jerry Portnoy. Guitarists include Pee Wee Madison, Bob Margolin, and Luther Johnson, and on the skins are Muddy's last two great drummers, S.P. Leary and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith.