Waters, Muddy (redirected from Muddy Waters)

Waters, Muddy, 1915–83, African-American blues singer and guitarist, b. Rolling Fork, Miss., as McKinley Morganfield. As a teenager he began singing and playing traditional country blues on harmonica and guitar, and in 1941 he was recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. Two years later he settled in Chicago, where he switched from Delta blues to a more sophisticated urban rhythm and blues, using an electric guitar backed by other amplified instruments. He soon became known for his driving slide guitar technique and darkly expressive vocal style. From the 1950s on Waters recorded, toured, and played various music festivals. His electric blues influenced such American musicians as Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan and such British rockers as the Rolling Stones, who took their name from a Waters song, and Eric Clapton, who recorded with him.

Bibliography

See J. Rooney, Bossmen: Bill Monroe and Muddy Waters (1991); S. B. Tooze, Muddy Waters (1997); R. Gordon, Can't Be Satisfied (2002).

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Waters, Muddy

 orig. McKinley Morganfield

(born April 4, 1915, Rolling Fork, Miss., U.S.—died April 30, 1983, Westmont, Ill.) U.S. blues guitarist and singer. He grew up in the cotton country of Mississippi and taught himself harmonica as a child. He later took up guitar, eagerly absorbing the classic delta blues styles of Robert Johnson and Son House. He was first recorded in 1941 by archivist Alan Lomax (see John Lomax). In 1943 he moved to Chicago; there he broke with the country blues style by playing over a heavy dance rhythm, adopting the electric guitar and adding piano and drums while retaining a moan-and-shout vocal style and lyrics that were by turns mournful, boastful, and risqué. The result came to be known as urban blues, from which sprang in large part later forms such as rock music and soul music. A surge in interest in the roots of popular music in the early 1960s brought Waters widespread fame, and he performed internationally into the 1970s.

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Waters, Muddy (b. McKinley Morganfield) (1915–83) musician; born in Rolling Fork, Miss. One of the last of the great country blues singers and a primary innovator of modern Chicago blues, he was raised on the Stovall Plantation in Clarksdale, Miss., where he began playing harmonica and guitar while working as a sharecropper. In 1941 and 1942, he was recorded by Alan Lomax, the folklorist of the Library of Congress, and, emboldened by this experience, he moved to Chicago in 1943 seeking a career in music. Over the next several years, he gradually developed an ensemble blues style while performing in neighborhood bars in Chicago's South Side ghetto. In 1946 he recorded an unissued session for Columbia, and for the next three years he recorded in a country blues style for Aristocrat Records. In 1950 he gained his first national success with "Rolling Stone," the inaugural release of Chess Records, the rhythm-and-blues label with which his name was virtually synonymous for the next 25 years. In 1952 he made his first recordings with his six-piece combo, which pioneered the electronically-amplified Chicago blues style. Featuring Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers, and Otis Spann, this group released several rhythm-and-blues hits, including "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Got My Mojo Working," and toured extensively on the black nightclub circuit throughout the 1950s. He made the first of several annual tours of England in 1958, during which he exerted a profound influence on the early British rock scene. He appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960, and was a central figure in the folk-blues revival of the mid-1960s. By the late 1960s, his songs were widely covered in rock; several headlining bands, including the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, featured him on their tours. He was a perennial Grammy winner throughout the 1970s, and his appearance in The Band's farewell concert, filmed as The Last Waltz, was widely hailed. He was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.