Customer Reviews

Muddy Waters: The Mojo Man

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found this book hard to put down. Ms Tooze does an excellent job of portraying Muddy through a series of interviews with his bandmates. All of Muddy's former bandmates are full of praise for Muddy with the exception of the brilliant drummer Francis Clay who did not really get along very well with Muddy. What I particularly liked about the style of the book is the way Ms Tooze introduces Muddy's bandmates as they join his band. Marshall Chess chips in with quite a few interesting insights on the relationship of Muddy with Phil & Leonard Chess. I might not agree with all of Ms Tooze's reviews of Muddy's albums, but then it's simply a question of personal taste. Cheers & keep up the good work.

Toose has created a vivid and compelling read with her "Muddy Waters: Mojo Man." It is thorough, descriptive, and lively. A must as a reference. My biggest complaint is the avoidable romanticizing of the book's blues heroes. Robert Johnson's clutching his guitar in death, and threadbare editorializing of life in the Delta, working for exploitive white owners are a little much. And there are some inaccuracies. At one point Toose decribes Muddy's first electric solidbody guitar as a Les Paul Custom, new in 1954. This was indeed the first year of the Custom, but Jimmy Rogers, a sentence or two later decribes the "gold front" of the guitar. His description and the book's accompanying photos clearly show a Les Paul Standard, new in 1952.

Minor quibbling aside, I very much enjoyed the book and will recommend it to my blues friends. Muddy was the Godfather of all modern-day blues men and women and this is a welcome book to any blues library.

I have never read a book about Muddy Waters that proved to be so informative. I've been reading about Muddy for years and this book offered up new information of which I had not been aware. Ms. Tooze did a heck of a job researching this book. I beleive she had her MOJO workin'.

My wife got this book for me, as she knew my love of the blues and Muddy in particular. I am not even at page 100 yet and I was sitting down with this book earlier, popping The Chess Box of Muddy Water in, and listening to his first commercially recorded songs while reading about it - I was crying and laughing... thank you for this book!

Of all Blues biographies I've read, this is by far the best. Tooze not only writes about Muddy Waters by perpetuating the standard myths but as she goes along a history of Chicago blues unfolds with Muddy right in the middle. The author can paint the full picture of a throbbing blues scene and she brings it to life. All of this extremely well written and not your average bottom English biography of popular musicians. The only negative aspect is that eventually there are too many names being mentioned which at times gets teadious. But then again, this way she mentions everybody around, so there was no way around eventual namedropping

Throughout her biography, Tooze looks to the lives of other blues musicians to help her write. Such men as Buddy Guy, B.B. King, And Memphis Slim were mentioned as contributaries to her biography. These interviews aided her in capturing the magic of American Blues Music

i`m speechless,i was a big muddy fan for 25 year`s.now i`m a real BIG FAN,i mean,the biggest.mighty fine book,really great pictures,thank you,sandra.b tooze,bye for now,i gotta go read my bible.

Whereas it's hard to call any book that provides information on Muddy Waters could be bad, this book has 2 major problems to overcome:

1) It's obvious Ms. Tooze knows her subject, as well as lots of big words in the english language. However, her professors should have taught her when such language is appropriate. Her writing style is in stark contrast to the man she attempts to introduce us to, making reading the book a task; and

2) The editors should be chastised for their use of footnoting. Many of the other biographies I have read were footnoted in such a manner as to enable one to read two sentences without encountering yet another stop for footnote. There indeed are better ways to deal with footnotes.

The book reads about as smoothly as someone's final thesis. Ms. Tooze has taken an icon of the blues world and put his life story in a book that is almost unreadable. If you're looking for information on Muddy, it might be here but you'll fall asleep trying to find it - If you just want to see some pictures of the man then it might be worth your time.

Tooze's new biography is most useful for its ample use of primary accounts from Waters and those close to him. The book works best as a loving tribute to some of the most influential music of the twentieth century. Yet a facile prose style and a lack of contextualization make this a frustratingly one-dimensional biography. One finishes with only an impressionistic sense of this singularly important individual. Tooze pays virtually no attention to the women in Waters' life, and misinforms the reader by repeating apocryphal tall-tales. Mojo Man is a poorly written and shallow portrait of a mighty and deep historical figure.

I loved the book it almost reads itself. Good information and insight into Muddy.