Muddy Waters - Happy Birthday Muddy Waters - Classic Blues Videos

Hours of Live Video in Celebration of his Birth

 

In celebration of a Blues icon, master and legend.  It doesn't matter what race or culture your from, your level education or what country you live in around the world; if your a fan of the Blues than you know about Muddy Waters.  Waters' heart and sincerity in his voice, guitar playing and the songs he wrote resonated with people from all backgrounds in a profound way.  Muddy Waters has had an enormous influence on American popular music as well as music all around the world and impacted artists from pretty much every genre of music that exists.  Just a few of the musicians and bands that cite him as an influence include Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Chuck D, Common, The Rolling Stones, Cream, Canned Heat, Bob Dylan, The Allman Brothers, ?uestlove, AC/DC, The Beatles and so many others.  Some of the awards Waters has received along the way include eight Grammy Awards, six Blues Music Awards, was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, The U.S Postal Service issued a stamp in his honor in 1994 and was ranked #17 in Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

The life of Muddy Waters will long be remembered and celebrated and his music will be enjoyed for many generations to come.

Also check out the Muddy Waters Blues Summit in Chicago in 1974.  Features Muddy along with Dr. John, Michael Bloomfield, Koko Taylor, Junior Wells, Willie Dixon, Johnny Winter and many more of his friends.

 

Artist BIO:

"I been in the blues all my life. I'm still delivering 'cause I got a long memory"

"I was always singing the way I felt, and maybe I didn't exactly know it, but I just didn't like the way things were down there-in Mississippi."

"I went to school, but they didn't give you too much schooling because just as soon as you was big enough, you get to working in the fields. I guess I was a big boy for my age."

McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983), known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the Father of modern Chicago blues. Blues musicians Big Bill Morganfield and Larry "Mud Morganfield" Williams are his sons. A major inspiration for the British blues explosion in the 1960s, Muddy was ranked #17 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

His grandmother Della Grant raised him after his mother died shortly after his birth. His fondness for playing in mud earned him the nickname "Muddy" at an early age. He then changed it to "Muddy Water" and finally "Muddy Waters". He started out on harmonica but by age seventeen he was playing the guitar at parties emulating two blues artists who were extremely popular in the south, Son House and Robert Johnson. "His thick heavy voice, the dark coloration of his tone and his firm, almost solid, personality were all clearly derived from House," wrote music critic Peter Guralnick in Feel Like Going Home, "but the embellishments which he added, the imaginative slide technique and more agile rhythms, were closer to Johnson."

In 1940, Muddy moved to Chicago for the first time. He played with Silas Green  a year later, and then returned to Mississippi. In the early part of the decade he ran a juke joint, complete with gambling, moonshine and a jukebox; he also performed music there himself. In the summer of 1941 Alan Lomax went to Stovall, Mississippi, on behalf of the Library of Congress to record various country blues musicians. "He brought his stuff down and recorded me right in my house," Muddy recalled in Rolling Stone, "and when he played back the first song I sounded just like anybody's records. Man, you don't know how I felt that Saturday afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice. Later on he sent me two copies of the pressing and a check for twenty bucks, and I carried that record up to the corner and put it on the jukebox. Just played it and played it and said, 'I can do it, I can do it.'" Lomax came back in July 1942 to record Muddy again. Both sessions were eventually released as Down On Stovall's Plantation on the Testament label.

In 1943, Muddy headed back to Chicago with the hope of becoming a full-time professional musician. He lived with a relative for a short period while driving a truck and working in a factory by day and performing at night. Big Bill Broonzy, one of the leading bluesmen in Chicago at the time, helped Muddy break into the very competitive market by allowing him to open for his shows in the rowdy clubs. In 1945, Muddy's uncle Joe Grant gave him his first electric guitar which enabled him to be heard above the noisy crowds.

Muddy, along with his former harmonica player Little Walter Jacobs and recent southern transplant Howlin' Wolf, reigned over the early 1950s Chicago blues scene, his band becoming a proving ground for some of the city's best blues talent. While Little Walter continued a collaborative relationship long after he left Muddy's band in 1952, appearing on most of Muddy's classic recordings throughout the 1950s, Muddy developed a long-running, generally good-natured rivalry with Wolf. The success of Muddy's ensemble paved the way for others in his group to break away and enjoy their own solo careers. His 1958 tour of England marked possibly the first time amplified, modern urban blues was heard there, although on his first tour he was the only one amplified. His backing was provided by Englishman Chris Barber's trad jazz group.

The Rolling Stones named themselves after his 1950 song "Rollin' Stone", (also known as "Catfish Blues", which Jimi Hendrix covered as well). Hendrix recalled "the first guitar player I was aware of was Muddy Waters. I first heard him as a little boy and it scared me to death". Cream covered "Rollin' and Tumblin'" on their 1966 debut album Fresh Cream, as Eric Clapton was a big fan of Muddy Waters when he was growing up, and his music influenced Clapton's music career. The song was also covered by Canned Heat at the legendary Monterey Pop Festival and later adapted by Bob Dylan on the album Modern Times. One of Led Zeppelin's biggest hits, "Whole Lotta Love", is lyrically based upon the Muddy Waters hit "You Need Love", written by Willie Dixon. Dixon wrote some of Muddy Waters' most famous songs, including "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (a big radio hit for Etta James, as well as the 1970s rock band Foghat), "Hoochie Coochie Man", which The Allman Brothers Band famously covered, and "I'm Ready", which was covered by Humble Pie. In 1993, Paul Rodgers released the album Muddy Water Blues: A Tribute to Muddy Waters, on which he covered a number of Muddy Waters songs, including "Louisiana Blues", "Rollin' Stone", "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "I'm Ready" (among others) in collaboration with a number of famous guitarists such as Brian May and Jeff Beck.  Angus Young of the rock group AC/DC has cited Muddy Waters as one of his influences. The song title "You Shook Me All Night Long" came from lyrics of the Muddy Waters song "You Shook Me", written by Willie Dixon and J. B. Lenoir. Earl Hooker first recorded it as an instrumental which was then overdubbed with vocals by Muddy Waters in 1962. Led Zeppelin also covered this song on their debut album Led Zeppelin.  Muddy Waters' songs have been featured in long-time fan's Martin Scorsese's movies, including The Color of Money, Casino and Goodfellas. Muddy Waters' 1970s recording of his mid-'50s hit "Mannish Boy" (a.k.a. "I'm A Man") was used in Goodfellas and the hit film Risky Business, and also features in the rockumentary The Last Waltz.  In 2008, Jeffrey Wright portrayed Muddy in the biopic Cadillac Records, a film about the rise and fall of Chess Records and the lives of its recording artists. A second 2008 film about Leonard Chess and Chess Records, Who Do You Love, also covers Muddy's time at Chess Records.

Wikipedia contributors. "Muddy Waters." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 19 Mar. 2011. Web. 4 Apr. 2011

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