Review: Muddy Waters - Sings "Big Bill" (1960)
Tracks: 1) Tell Me Baby; 2) Southbound Train; 3) When I Get To Thinking; 4) Just A Dream (On My Mind); 5) Double Trouble; 6) I Feel So Good; 7) I Done Got Wise; 8) Mopper’s Blues; 9) Lonesome Road Blues; 10) Hey, Hey.
REVIEW
From 1947 to 1959, Muddy Waters had altogether recorded more than 40 singles for the Chess label — including, by my approximate calculations, about 70-80% of his «golden» repertoire that helped establish a new electric blues language and laid down the foundation for just about the entire rhythm’n’blues scene across the Atlantic. And through all of that time, his label did not offer him a chance to put out even one proper LP — with the belated exception of The Best Of Muddy Waters, a rather randomly assembled compilation released in April 1958. Admittedly, this was typical of Chess and Checker records; all of their blues artists, including Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson II, etc., had to wait for almost a decade before getting the LP treatment — and, in fact, their rock’n’rolling brethren, such as Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, got an easier break, starting out later yet releasing their first LPs earlier: the chronological distance between Chuck’s first single (‘Maybellene’) and first LP (After School Session), for instance, is just two years. Ah well, as usual, «cheap lightweight entertainment» gets the upper hand on «serious traditional art»...
Technically, this is just a disclaimer that Muddy’s musical career by no means starts here — it’s just that much, if not most of it, falls on the pre-LP age, which, in turn, falls outside the scope of these reviews. Nevertheless, Muddy continued to be a significant presence in the musical world in the Sixties as well, and much of what he did even at the time when his classic style fell out of vogue deserves to be appreciated; leaving him out of that decade’s musical history would be worse than a crime, it would be a mistake (pardon me for my Talleyranding). Anyway, if you are here to learn about why you should listen to Muddy Waters, the best solution is to simply do it (His Best 1947 To 1956 is a good introduction and a required minimum) without asking. Assuming we’re all on the same page here, let us now check out the circumstances under which Muddy was finally allowed to record a proper LP.
The circumstances in question were rather sad: Big Bill Broonzy, one of the most famous and hard-working country-blues, folk-blues, and urban blues performers of the first half of the 20th century, and also one of Muddy’s principal mentors and sources of inspiration, had died in August 1958, and Muddy presumably felt obliged to pay his teacher a suitable tribute, which would have hardly fit on the two sides of a measly single. Considering that Big Bill recorded more than 300 (!!) songs over his three decades of activity — most of which were carbon copies of just a small handful of templates, of course — making the actual selection was probably a painful activity, yet somehow Muddy settled on ten numbers, some of which were well-known classics of the blues genre (‘I Feel So Good’, ‘Hey Hey’, ‘Just A Dream’), others less distinguished, but on the whole, representing most of those of Big Bill’s templates which could be easily recast in the Chicago-style 12-bar electric blues mold. (Particularly folksy, «jiggy» stuff, such as ‘John Henry’, did not agree with Muddy’s persona and was wisely left outside the scope of the album).
However, one thing Muddy never did in his life was try to impersonate somebody else. His musical personality, though certainly influenced by Big Bill as well as lots of other old country blues performers, was uniquely his own, and the only way he could cover other people’s material was by adapting it to (or, as today’s worl might have formulated it, «appropriating it for») the Muddy Waters sound. As a result, these ten songs are virtually undistinguishable from the regular, «classic» Waters material — vocally and instrumentally, they all sound as if they could have been written by Willie Dixon or any of Muddy’s other songwriters for him in the late Fifties. Worse, few of them have the kind of special distinctive vocal or lyrical hooks that make Muddy’s classic singles stand out from each other. Mostly, it all just feels like a single jam session where the guys got together, quickly recorded some takes without a lot of creative thinking, and went home.
Which still leaves us with two positive aspects. First, Muddy Waters Sings «Big Bill» is simply a cool 30-minute long example of how nice, tight, and passionate the Muddy Waters band sounded around late 1959. You can never do wrong with Otis Spann on the piano; and even if Muddy’s most legendary collaborators — Jimmy Rogers on lead guitar and Little Walter on harmonica — were no longer with him at the time, their actual replacements — Pat Hare on lead and James Cotton on harp — were every bit as good. It should be noted that the album was recorded in stereo, and Muddy made good use of that by often making his instrumentalists solo at the same time in different channels — listen, for instance, how on ‘Double Trouble’ Cotton soars with his harmonica in one speaker while Spann shows off his virtuoso runs in the other one; and then, later on, in ‘Baby I Done Got Wise’ the same interplay is going on between the harp and the guitar.
It’s such a fine-sounding group sound, altogether, that I can even excuse the band for losing what made the original ‘Hey Hey’ so unforgettable — its famous sliding «zoop» as part of the riff (which Eric Clapton would later revive as part of his Unplugged program). This is an exclusively acoustic technique, and the effect could only be vaguely hinted at in this electric recording, but the song still sounds every bit as enjoyable as everything else on here, just because Muddy’s band is such a joy to listen to. When the piano, the guitar, the harp, and even the rhythm section all take the tune in different directions, yet still feel tightly coordinated, who could truly complain? Maybe the guys aren’t creating anything seminal here, but they are still having a mighty good time.
The other interesting thing is, of course, to be able to compare how Big Bill’s originals contrast with being recast in Muddy’s style. As a singer, Bill had a rather ordinary, «neighborly» voice — expressive and versatile, but soft and friendly, not in the slightest way «invasive» or «intrusive»; the original version of ‘Just A Dream’, for instance, comes across as something that could have been played for entertainment in a dining room and nobody would have paid the lyrics or the vibe the slightest attention — just a bit of guitar, piano, and singing that’s good for one’s digestion. Muddy’s version, on the other hand, is impossible to ignore from the very first seconds — Otis’ and James’ opening chords ring out and blast away with frenetic urgency; and Muddy’s much lower, much more aggressive and hyperactive delivery of the verses adds an emotional strain that can only be subtly felt, not directly experienced in Bill’s performances. You do know for sure that Big Bill’s feeling of deep dissatisfaction with life in 1939 must have been far more genuine than Muddy Waters’ feeling in 1960 — but Big Bill implies that feeling, whereas Muddy just lays it out for you in the open. Who’s the greater artist in between the two? Not a question that can be easily answered.
When the vibe is optimistic rather than sad, Muddy is in an even more winning position, because few people in the world could sing more convincingly about being satisfied (rather than dissatisfied) than Mr. McKinley. The unquestionable highlight of the record is his version of ‘I Feel So Good’ — Big Bill’s recording from 1941 (cut just five days before Pearl Harbor, no less!!) is a classic in its own right, but he could never sound as proud, wholesome, and convincing as Muddy when delivering the "I feel so good, I feel like ballin’ the jack" punchline. This version is lining up quite well next to ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’, ‘I’m Ready’, ‘Mannish Boy’, and all those other self-gigantizing anthems that had so convincingly made a Greek titan out of the little black dude over the previous ten years — turning what used to be a bit of downhome friendly jive into a sprawling epic.
On the whole, the importance of a record like this can perhaps be best understood if we think about it this way. It is easy to understand the idea of «blues music taken up to the next level» by comparing an album like Muddy Waters Sings «Big Bill» to the actual singles released by Big Bill. But could we, even in theory, imagine an album of blues music taken up to yet another level by listening to an LP called Mr. So-And-So Sings Muddy Waters? I don’t think so. In terms of production quality and virtuoso playing, this album could certainly be transcended; in terms of the overall vibe, going higher than this is just unthinkable. This is not to say that other artists could not successfully cover Muddy Waters — from the Stones to Jimi Hendrix, many did — but the best of those reinventions usually went beyond the blues as such, and veered off into completely different musical territory, whereas Muddy is really quite strictly following the conventions of the genre; all he does is take most of them to their natural limits, just standing there and ballin’ the jack like there was no tomorrow. And in some sense, there would be no tomorrow for classic electric blues.
Only Solitaire Reviews: Muddy Waters