Electric Mud

Muddy Waters | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 19, 1996)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Chess
• ASIN: B000002OCP
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,269 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #50 in Music > Blues > Slide Guitar
  • #80 in Music > Blues > Chicago Blues
  • #90 in Music > Blues > Traditional Blues

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This is the infamous "somebody-put-something-in-the-Waters" LP from 1968. A relative hit for Chess, it features the exalted bluesman bellowing over psychedelicized arrangements that owe more to Steppenwolf than Willie Dixon. Waters himself complained that the drums were too busy and the lead guitar sounded like a cat's meow. Not a bad critique. --Steven Stolder

Product Description

Limited Edition Japanese pressing of this album comes housed in a miniature LP sleeve. 2007. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Criminally Underrated, April 27, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Electric Mud (Audio CD)

While I prefer the younger, funkier Muddy Waters with his moaning voice in full swing, this album is by no means the abomination that it has been lambasted as for so many years. In fact, I prefer it to the much-hyped "Fathers and Sons" Waters-partial Butterfield Band team-up of several years later.

Is it experimental? Sure, there's plenty of 60's fuzz, reverb/echo and effects going on here.
Is it still blues? Absolutely, blues is not defined as an idiom by the way one amplifies guitars or filters vocals.
Is it good? Yes, in fact it apporaches greatness at several points in the album, particularly when compared to the "classic" albums of rock psychedelia of its era.

If you enjoy Muddy Waters with his bands and dislike late 60's rock and roll, you will not like this album. Unfortunately, most of the blues critics of the time fell into this catagory and hence this album's ridiculous reputation. If you can see beyond the rigid catagorization of musical artists, this album is for you.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Switched-on Mud, September 18, 2004

By 

Michael Jones (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Electric Mud (Audio CD)

According to the liner notes of the four-disc Led Zeppelin boxed set, bassist John Paul Jones came up with the basic riff for Zep's song "Black Dog" after being inspired by the album Electric Mud. This definitely piqued my curiosity, so I decided to hunt down the much-maligned Muddy Waters' album-a recording that has been decried by blues purists since its release over thirty years ago-to check out what Electric Mud was all about.
I admit, I also was kind of taken aback on first listen. This thing is pretty far removed from Muddy's rollicking Mississippi Delta-meets-the-Windy City output from the 1940s-50s. It also isn't like latter albums from Muddy's canon, such as the Johnny Winter-produced Hard Again (a classic, by the way, with some of the best musicianship ever put down on wax. Buy it.)
In actuality, this isn't even a "Blues" album, per se. The "Blues" merely serves as the framework for this weird dayglo fantasy where some pretty talented musicians let their "freak flags fly."
But, I still like Electric Mud because it grooves hard. In fact, what truly anchors the whole record--and what makes it work ultimately--is the rhythm section backing Muddy. From the opening break of "I Just Want To..." to the last bar of "The Same Thing," Morris Jennings (drums) and Louis Satterfield (bass) lock in the groove so tight that even the sometimes gruesomely off-key, fuzzed-out warbling of electric guitars over the top can't derail the freight train. (Just try not nodding your head to the beat on "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man" or "Mannish Boy.")
That said, even the guitar work is somewhat impressive at times, if for no other reason than its mix of gritty soulfulness and wild psychedelia. (Check out the Stones' "Let's Spend..." or "Herbert Harper's Free Press News" for examples.)
What's more, I disagree with the criticisms that Muddy sounds kind of lost in the midst of the wah-wah guitars and other psychedelic trappings. In fact, there's even a quote from blues legend Buddy Guy in the liner notes that asserts, "Muddy can't feel this psychedelic stuff at all..." To me, Muddy sounds as forceful as on any of his other records. He also sounds like he's having a ball. (Just listen to him vamping and clapping along during "Let's Spend..." if you disagree.)
So, if you're looking for something closer to Highway 61, this ain't it. This isn't even South Michigan Avenue. This is more like some spaceship landing at the imaginary crossroads of Carnaby and Haight streets: Some spaced-out, alien version of Muddy Waters struts out with patchouli oil in hand ready to funkify and "turn-on" the hippy kids to the fact that Muddy and his contemporaries had, for all intents and purposes, invented the music that groups like Cream and the Yardbirds were peddling at the time...
Take it for what it is: A funky little time capsule from 1968. And just enjoy it.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unfairly Maligned By Blues "Purists", December 28, 2001

By 

Fred Rafael Rednor (D.C.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Electric Mud (Audio CD)

For some people this album just does not work, but for me it's an unappreciated classic. Frankly, it is neither a blues nor a rock album - it's more like a "psychadelic soul blues" record. The purists hate it (and claim that Muddy did, too) but if you can manage to listen to the story that the American Routes radio program did on this record, you will get a better appreciation for it. The musicians backing Muddy on these sessions are the same guys who played with Chicago soul artists like Curtis Mayfield and also on some Motown records - they were simply the best session musicians working on urban black music at the time.
I think you will also get a better appreciation for it if you listen with an open mind and recognize that it's going to be a different experience than say "Muddy Waters, The Real Folk Blues". Consider it to be more closely related to things like the Jimi Hendrix song "Red House". Really, there's only one bad cut: Muddy's version of the Stones' "Let's Spend The Night Together".

By the way, I saw Muddy play a number of times in the '60s and on several occasions he performed a portion of his set in the style of Electric Mud.