Customer Reviews

Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

...

Such was the power of Muddy Waters, the rollin' stone from Rolling Fork, Mississippi, whose stark, raw songs transformed popular culture. Robert Gordon, who comes from Memphis, an hour or two north of where Waters grew up, has written the first extended biography that captures the elusive character of this hugely influential man. Waters' life was changed when self-aggrandising musicologist Alan Lomax drove up the dirt road, parked outside the shack in the middle of cotton fields, and asked for a guitar player he'd heard about. (Lomax leaves his black assistant out of his biography; Gordon restores his place in history.) Waters - already nearly 30, but still ploughing fields - sang some tunes for Lomax, and hearing his voice on an acetate showed him the possibilities that lay beyond the wide, wide horizon of the Delta.

Muddy Waters was illiterate, so Gordon - author of It Came From Memphis, a splendid social and musical history which manages to leave out Elvis - had to reconstruct his life story from interviews with his band members (many just before they died), the Chess family, and his children, legitimate and illegitimate. There are many of the latter; Muddy didn't go far without a "road wife": "[he] went through several wives, and always had women on the side, and women on the other side too." Gordon doesn't shy from the irresponsible, self-absorbed side of Muddy, a man who'd cheat on his wife without conscience, but support a musician in trouble just as casually. This is often a dark story, full of guns, violence, hard liquor and loose living. Success brought fame but not wealth to Muddy, thanks to his umbilical, exploitative relationship with Chess Records, a continuation of the "furnish" support he got from his cotton farmer back in the Delta.

This is the work of a Southern storyteller, it's like sitting back on the porch listening to tales tall and true. Gordon evocatively describes the various scenes of Muddy's life: the cotton economy, the early electric blues of Chicago, the endless road trips, the magic of the Chess studios, and the highs and lows of a career that generated more respect than cash. In Chicago, Muddy's "South Side house stayed rocking. Phones ringing, meats frying, and greens boiling, the TV broadcasting a baseball game, a shoot-'em-up. Muddy, in black T-shirt and black boxers. And always there was music." In the basement, his ever-changing band practiced chords that never changed, but changed the world. Wasn't that a man. A full-grown man.

Mmephis writer Robert Gordon has written a gem of blues biography of the legendary Muddy Waters tracing his background in the delta through his emergence as the King of the Chicago blues scene in the fifties to the up and down fortunes of his career as musical tastes shifted and as his music reached new audiences until his death almost two decades ago. Gordon intergates materials from the interviews that Muddy did for various specialist publications (like DownBeat, Living Blues) with his own interviews and other material from Muddy's relatives, bandmembers, managers and others for a book that is one of the better recent musical biographies I have read.
Muddy and his music is brought to life. Unlike the other Muddy biography, Gordon provides some blood and flesh to Muddy as opposed to rendering him simply as some legendary icon and also brings the music to life along with some thoughtful commentary on the music.
Anyone seriously into blues will need to have this. This books sets a high standard for biographies on Little Walter and Elmore james that are scheduled to be issued in the upcoming months

Muddy Waters is arguably the most influential guitarist of all time. He influenced many guitarists, ranging from Keith Richards to BB King to Eric Clapton. He started out with a makeshift guitar made from a box and listening to country blues greats such as Son House and the legendary Robert Johnson. A sharecropper in the Mississippi Delta, Muddy's life operated on the schedule of King Cotton until a fateful day in 1941 that changed everything. Muddy Waters (then Muddy Water) was discovered.

After establishing a name for himself in the South by way of house parties and juke joints, Muddy headed north to Chicago. Once there, Muddy worked many short-lived jobs by day and hit the clubs at night. He eventually hooked up with Leonard Chess, owner of the prominent blues label Chess Records. At the Chess studios Muddy brought his electric blues to the world with records like Hoochie Coochie Man, Rollin' and Tumblin' and I Just Wanna Make Love to You. His music was reminiscent of the country blues with his bottleneck slide while he wove an urbanely electrified flair. The Delta was always in Muddy, and he never forgot where he came from.

Robert Gordon, acclaimed blues musicologist, brings all the pieces of research about Muddy together in a fascinating chronology. The book leans more toward textbook style than to narrative due to the multitude of sources Gordon used, but his asides add an insight that few textbooks are able to render. His most prominent sources come from the oral histories of Muddy's friends, family, and associates. I recommend this book to all lovers of things Muddy and all music lovers. Every guitarist or blues connoisseur should have this book in his or her collection.

Reviewed by Candace K

Robert Gordon has the subject of a lifetime in telling the tale of an illiterate sharecropper born McKinley Morganfield. Morganfield's story starts with him working sun to sun in the Mississippi cotton fields and playing fish fries with an acoustic box. It eventually ends with Muddy Waters fully electrified on international stages and at the White House (where, according to Calvin Jones, they didn't get paid a dime and were feted with hot dogs). In between are tales of car wrecks, knife fights, dumbheaded attempts at "updating" his rural sound, royalty ripoffs, hired musicians, fired musicians, and rehired musicians.

Waters is definitely a problematic individual - fiercely protective of those who cut the trail in front of him (ie Son House), loyal to the paternalistic systems of Stovall and Chess, yet also rampantly adulterous and unable to protect some of his children from the ravages of heroin and street life.

In the best of the oral blues tradition, Gordon has used the words of those who lived and played with Waters, including Marshall Chess, James Cotton, Willie Smith, and Jimmy Rogers, to flesh out the portrait. Their stories are the best part of the book. Everyone in the band drank heavily, everyone carried knives and guns, everybody had a pretty girl waiting on them in the next town. The reminiscences of harpist Paul Oscher are particularly amusing, while the perspective of Muddy's granddaughter Cookie reveals there were definitely two men wearing the same shoes - the decent provider and family man Morganfield and the stage persona and adulterer Muddy Waters.

In the end, Gordon succeeds, although the topic is so rich it's almost like shooting fish in a barrel..., "Can't be Satisfied" does a fine job of recreating the life and times of Muddy Waters.

From the first line to the last, Robert Gordon transports you back in time....to the birth of a legend, a culture and a way of life.
This book is absolute excellence. I very highly recommend it to the deep blues fan as well as the novice.

Gordon did his homework in writing this book, and I was glad to see that he tried to grasp Muddy as a man, not just as a music icon or a stereotypical rags-to-riches story. I feel as though I was given a full look at Muddy Waters, warts and all.

The one problem I have with the book is the writing style. The endless grand similes were brutal; I found myself wincing at some of them. I suppose the self-indulgent, flowery style fits the idea of writing about an artistic subject, but the similes seemed like a crutch. "Show, don't tell" is one of a writer's best adages. Grand similes, to me, scream "shortcut." Like a rusty dagger thrust between two ribs, then twisted so that the oxidized edge of the blade could be felt grabbing flesh and grinding against moist bone, it bugged me.

That one criticism aside, I, as an amateur historian, author, and blues musician, applaud Mr. Gordon's efforts and highly recommend that you read this book to understand one of the key people in American music.

A very nice book, written with obvious care. Nice and informative, great pictures and a great and extensive note section in the back (don't skip over that). A great story of a man that introduced so many and so much into his music. Read it and listen.

"Can't Be Satisfied" is a great book about one of the greatest blues men who ever lived. Author Robert Gordon lays out in brilliant and well-researched detail the life and times of Muddy Waters, from his early days on the Stovall, MS plantation and his first "recording session" for Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress, to his rise as the progenator of Chicago blues, to his final days and passing in 1983 and how his life shaped those of virtually everyone close to him. Gordon, in rare interviews with Waters' family members, friends and close associates, also lets the reader into the life of a blues man of Waters' stature at that time: constant touring, heavy drinking and smoking, womanizing, the out-of-wedlock children that he fathered, and how it all affected him personally, professionally and financially. In short, this book honestly tells the story of Muddy Waters the Chicago Blues icon, the player, the man, the human being.

This is a must-read for any blues fan.

Combining life history with a social history of Chicago's blues scene of the late 1940s through early 80s, Gordon's book is a highly readable and carefully documented biography. He uses a great variety of published and unpublished sources as well as his own interviews with Muddy's family members, friends, and fellow musicians to provide an excellent understanding of Muddy Waters' contributions to Chicago's blues scene. Because this is a biography, the focus is necessarily on Waters' influences on other musicians. These contributions are important as the guitarist, singer, and songwriter had a huge impact on the music. Gordon demonstrates how some of the major influence that Muddy Waters had on the blues was through an indirect route -- via England. He vividly demonstrates how the music of Muddy Waters was a major inspiration for the British Blues-Rock music of the 1960s, showing, in turn, how this affected Muddy Waters' own career. This is an important part of the story, and its emphasis is very relevant to Muddy Waters' life history. However, I would have liked a bit more discussion of Muddy Waters' relationship to other blues players throughout his career. This information can be gleaned out of a reading of other blues musicians' biographies, so it's not necessarily a major problem with this fine book. In fact, the way this book sparks the reader's curiousity about other Chicago players may be another strength to this well-told story.

Simply a Must Have for ANY music fan..I don't care if your into hiphop, heavy metal or dancehall, Muddy Waters is the father of all these music styles..it all started with electric blues. Fascinating story.