Mestres do Blues - 04 - Muddy Waters - They Call Me Muddy Waters (1995)
Mestres do Blues - 04 - Muddy Waters - They Call Me Muddy Waters (1995)
01 Gypsy Woman 2:36 02 I Can't Be Satisfied 2:44 03 I Feel Like Going Home 3:10 04 Kind Hearted Woman 2:36 05 Rollin' Stone 3:08 320 06 Walking Blues 2:57 320 07 Sad Letter Blues 3:01 08 Too Young to Know 3:10 09 Still a Fool 3:14 10 They Call Me Muddy Waters 3:25 11 Standing Around Crying 3:21 12 Baby Please Don't Go 3:16 13 I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man 2:50 14 Mannish Boy 2:56
I remember seeing Muddy Waters for the first time when I was seventeen. He was part of the concert movie, The Last Waltz, staged by The Band. He was a dignified, older black gentleman, looking for all the world like a minister who'd wandered onto the wrong stage, surrounded by a bunch of scraggily-looking white kids, and singing the most amazing Blues song I'd ever heard.
Not only was it the first time I'd heard Muddy Waters sing, it was the first time I'd heard the song "Mannish Boy." By that time in the movie, we'd already seen a good many of popular music's elite come on stage and strut their stuff, and all this guy had too do was stand still, open his mouth, and start singing to blow them all away.
He just planted himself there on the stage and you knew that he was rock solid. His music came from somewhere that none of these others had tapped into and probably never would. Oh Clapton, Butterfield, Al Kooper, and Robbie Robertson can all technically pull off the Blues, and some even have enough soul that they occasionally catch a glimpse of the real thing, but they never matched the experience of living the Blues that Muddy Waters could bring to a song.
For months after seeing him sing that song, I was hearing that driving beat in my head and that voice singing out. The only thing I came across that was equal to the power of that voice was upon hearing a black gospel group later in the year who declaimed their music in the same way. The only difference being that while they were singing about God and being saved, Muddy Waters was singing about more profane maters, stuff that happened here on earth and not in some tentative hereafter. ---Richard Marcus, blogcritics.org