Muddy Waters - biography and creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Today we will tell you who Muddy Waters is. His biography will be discussed in detail below. Without this man's declaiming powerful vocals, as well as his piercing guitar parts, perhaps Chicago would not have become such a musical city.

Early years

Our today's hero played unique blues. Muddy Waters had great vocals. The future musician was born in 1915, April 4, in a town called Rolling Fork. From his youth he began to learn to play the harmonica. In addition, he became interested in the guitar. It happened under the influence of the music of Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, and Sun House. The latter was the idol of our hero and a mighty bluesman. Our hero learned the battle neck guitar style without outside help. He put on the middle finger a broken bottle neck in a special way and learned to ride it with a ringing sound along the guitar strings. It was a fairly common technique among the street guitarists of the town in which our hero grew up.

Debut

In 1941, a musicologist-folklorist named Alan Lomax, on behalf of the Library of Congress, wandered aroundMississippi. His task was to find especially talented musicians. When he saw how Muddy Waters plays, he realized that he had stumbled upon an extraordinary talent. Using portable recording equipment, Lomax preserved for the Library of Congress a unique rendition of our blues hero called I Be's Troubled. Subsequently, this composition became the first bestseller of the musician. A few years later, our hero re-recorded this work at a studio called Chess Records and named it I Can't Be Satisfied.

Chicago

Muddy Waters in 1942 was already famous for his masterful performance of various blues in the Mississippi Delta, but he dreamed of becoming a star. So I went to Chicago. He worked, sang at the same time, and also played in clubs. There the musician met Big Bill Broonzy. Our hero quickly bought an electric guitar and started playing some unusually sharp, even slightly ferocious, folk blues. Framed in an electric guitar hard rhythm, it left a deep impression. In South Chicago, his skill was quickly noticed.

Studio

Muddy Waters performed in clubs with Blue Smitty - guitarist, as well as pianists Eddie Boy and Sunnyland Slim. The latter happened to play a significant role in the creative life of our hero. The pianist invited Waters in 1947 to accompany a session at the Aristocrat recording studio. The project was produced by Johnson Machine Gun. On the eve of the concert, our hero had a problem. The recording was supposed to take place on his working day, and at that time heInstalled roller blinds. However, our hero realized that a golden opportunity was eluding him. Therefore, he was forced to lie to the leader that his cousin was killed and he needed to leave work for a while.

Creativity

Muddy Waters performed several of his compositions after the end of Sannyland's performance. These were raw things. They differed significantly from the compositions that our hero subsequently recorded at the Columbia studio. However, these works could no longer be called simple.

Our hero created a group, she was so frantic and explosive during performances that she received the nickname Headhunter, which means "Headhunters" in translation. The team could come to a bar in which some team played, asked to listen, after receiving permission to perform. Then they "tear off the heads" of their competitors with their unique performance style.

Lester Melrose is a producer who at the time owned one of the local recording studios. He became confused in 1946 when he accompanied Waters. In small clubs, our hero's guitar could not be heard well, so he decided to connect it to an amplifier and amplify the sound.

Polish settlers, who were brothers Phil and Leonard Chess, acquired a record company called "Aristocrat" on shares. It happened in 1947. They did not really understand the harsh and even rough music that Muddy Waters created. His albums appeared under the Aristocrat brand, as the brothers saw something in the soundclose to the residents of the Chicago ghetto. Few liked the first singles. The second record, I Can't Be Satified, can be considered an exception, since its entire circulation was sold out in a day. A blues track called I Can't Be Satisfied became a local sensation thanks to Big Crawford and Waters' raucous growls. Subsequently, even the artist himself spent a lot of effort and time to acquire this record.

With the seeming lack of success of the first works of our hero, the Chess brothers changed the name of the company to Chess Records and risked betting on electric blues. Calculating them eventually worked.

Next, let's look at the studio albums that our hero worked on. In 1958 he recorded The Best of Muddy Waters. In 1960, 2 albums were released at once. They were called Brass and the Blues and Muddy Waters Sings Big Bill Broonzy. In 1961, the album They Call Me Muddy Waters appeared. In 1964, the Folk Singer album was released. Together with Little W alter and Bo Diddley, our hero released Super Blues in 1967.