Review: 'Muddy Waters At Newport 1960' (Chess Acoustic Sounds Series)

The Newport Jazz Festival had always had a somewhat rocky history. A lot of (racist) locals didn't want a jazz fest in their neighborhood. This sometimes made it difficult to find a venue. Certain musicians took issue with the choice of performers, feeling that there should be more of a focus on artistry than luring in punters with popular entertainers, some of whom didn't even play jazz. Nevertheless, the NJF went down without too much incident from 1954 through 1959, and provided the music world with such transcendent events as Dizzy Gillespie's 1957 appearance and the classic 1959 concert film Jazz on a Summer's Day.

Review: Muddy Waters's 'Muddy, Brass & Blues' (Chess Acoustic Sounds Edition)

With his third proper album, Muddy Waters shifted into very different territory, which was signaled to anyone who bothered to look at the record's title. Waters fattened his usual arrangement with a beefy horn section for Muddy, Brass & Blues. The prominent brass and woodwinds, plus the way producers George Barge and Ralph Bass pumped Willie Smith's drums and Calvin James's electric bass up in the mix, give the record a soul flavor, though the songs stick close to the blues formula. 

Review: 'The Real Folk Blues' by Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf (Chess Acoustic Sounds Edition)

In the early sixties, Chess kept its crosshairs on the emerging folkie scene, hoping it might be a market for the label's blues artists who boasted the kind of "authenticity" that was grade-A currency to the coffee house set. If Muddy Waters's Folk Singer was a testing of waters, then those waters must have been warm and inviting enough for Chess to launch its Real Folk Blues series. Muddy, always the first name in blues, was to get the series rolling in 1965, with a second installment, devoted to Howlin' Wolf, following that same year.

Review: 'Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings'

In my recent review of Chess's reissue of Muddy Waters's Folk Singer, I noted how the label consciously intended to appeal to the new movement of young folkies that emerged in the early sixties and how that album was a pure blues document regardless of its title. That was not to say that there is no relationship between the blues and folk music. It's just that Waters helped remake the blues into a thoroughly urban form that didn't plainly connect to the blues' rural roots. 

Review: Muddy Waters's 'Folk Singer' (Chess Acoustic Sounds Edition)

The most profound impact Muddy Waters would have on pop was just around the corner when he recorded his second album in the autumn of 1963. Since The Rolling Stones had yet to make Waters a household name in households that didn't include a blues devotee, the folks at Chess needed to think up another scheme to provide their most mature African-American artist with the cross-over appeal to reach the young white market. 

Review: 'Chuck Berry: An American Life'

I don't envy RJ Smith, who took on a very tricky project when he decided to write Chuck Berry's autobiography in the current era. How do you write about a black man who faced racism his whole life--even after he became celebrated by all races as the man who invented rock and roll--a guy who created a metric ton of amazing music and inspired a gigaton more, a creep who did some truly horrible things, leaving a lot of fans confused about how to regard his life, work, and death?

Review: 'Confessin' the Blues'

In the sixties, The Rolling Stones slid the world a welter of great singles and LPs, but the most profound thing they delivered was an awareness of the blues that spread like a sweet, sweet virus. After hearing the Stones’ sometimes weedy, sometimes powerful remakes, white kids who’d never before heard the names Muddy, Howlin’, or Slim suddenly got hip to what had already been happening in the music world for some twenty years.

Psychobabble's 100 Favorite Songs of the Fifties!

Attention, attention: Psychobabble is having a hop tonight, and you and yours are invited. So grease up your D.A. and pull on your boogie shoes. Those soles are gonna get a real work out because we’ve lined up the hottest rockers, hippest jazzbos, and wailingest blues bruisers to make you flip your lid. Get ready to jive and jump to… 

100. “Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere)” by Bill Haley & His Comets

The party starts now, so let’s get this shack together, Daddy-O! Nail down the furniture, snap the lock off the liquor cabinet, and for christ’s sake, dim, dim those damn lights… I want some atmosphere. Bill Haley eases us in with one of his smoothest unions of rock and swing, but don’t worry, things are about to get crazy, man, crazy.

99. “Rockin’ Bones” by Ronnie Dawson

Review: Bo Diddley's 'Diddley Daddy: The Collection'

For those who don’t know, an anthology of 52 classics from Bo Diddley may seem like an overdose of “shave-and-a-haircut” beats. Devotees of the Boss Man know he was a lot more eclectic than that. Yes, there are plenty of chances to get hypnotized by Bo’s trademark rhythm (and hear him sing his own praises by name), but he also bashes out some hard Chicago-style blues on “I’m a Man” (proving that white Rockers didn’t have a monopoly on ripping off Muddy Waters), blasts off some fast boogie on “Diddley Daddy”, and lays down a heavy Rock & Roll riff on “Roadrunner”. Elsewhere, Bo knows John Lee Hooker-style blues (“She’s Fine, She’s Mine”), surfy instrumentals (“Aztec”), hilarious novelties (“Say Man”) doo-wop (“I’m Sorry”), Latin swirl (“Dearest Darling”), Buddy Holly-esque pop (“Crackin' Up”), folk standards (“Sixteen Tons”), and proto-psychedelia (the disorienting “Down Home Special”). Indeed, the breadth of artists who’ve covered songs on Diddley Daddy: The Collection speaks to its eclectic nature:  The Rolling Stones, Captain Beefheart, The Who, The Velvet Underground, The Pretty Things, New York Dolls, The Kinks, Elvis Presley, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and on and on. One thing all these tracks have in common is eerie, celestial production, and of course, Bo’s unfathomably mesmeric soul. A consistently transfixing listening experience.

 

Review: 'Muddy Waters / The Rolling Stones / Checkerboard Lounge / Live 1981'

In late autumn of 1981, The Rolling Stones were clomping across the States with a bombastic arena act that put paid to the grubby blues rockers they’d once been for good. During their stop in Chicago, Mick, Keith, Ronnie, and Stu popped in to Buddy Guy’s Checkerboard Lounge to catch the man who’d given them that first spark way, way back in 1962. At 66 (and just two years before cancer spirited him away), Muddy Waters retained the vitality of a man younger than half that age. Even confined on his stool, he exuded fire. Powerful as he’d ever been in voice, Muddy’s guitar work was sublime, slipping on his slide to build from liquid ripples to a psychotic torrent on “Country Boy”. When it came time for their respective solos, his supporting guitarists could only seem meek in comparison. Here was an imposing man, seemingly in command of the very elements, a man who could invoke the biggest Rock & Roll band in the universe with an offhand shout of “C’mere, son!” With that, the Stones and their entourage (wives and girlfriends, Ian McLagan, Bobby Keys) shamble in, taking the table at the front of the room. Jagger barely has the chance to shimmy off his overcoat when Muddy is calling him to the stage. This Lucifer, this lithe sex god is no more imposing than anyone else in the room in the presence of the man who bestowed electricity on the blues like Prometheus handed humankind fire.