McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983), better known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician who is often cited as the “father of modern Chicago blues”.
Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by age 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, emulating local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson. He was recorded in Mississippi by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. In 1943, he moved to Chicago to become a full-time, professional musician. In 1946, he recorded his first records for Columbia Records and then for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess.
In the early 1950s, Muddy Waters and his band—Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elgin Evans on drums and Otis Spann on piano—recorded several blues classics, some with bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon. These songs included “Hoochie Coochie Man”, “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “I’m Ready”. In 1958, he traveled to England, laying the foundations of the subsequent blues boom there. His performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960 was recorded and released as his first live album, At Newport 1960.
Muddy Waters’ influence was tremendous, not just on blues and rhythm and blues but on rock and roll, hard rock, folk music, jazz, and country music. His use of amplification is often cited as the link between Delta blues and rock and roll.
Muddy Waters’ grandmother, Della Grant, raised him after his mother died shortly after his birth. Grant gave him the nickname “Muddy” at an early age because he loved to play in the muddy water of nearby Deer Creek. “Waters” was added years later, as he began to play harmonica and perform locally in his early teens. The remains of the cabin on Stovall Plantation where Waters lived in his youth are now at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
He had his first introduction to music in church: “I used to belong to church. I was a good Baptist, singing in the church. So I got all of my good moaning and trembling going on for me right out of church,” he recalled. By the time, he was 17, he had purchased his first guitar. “I sold the last horse that we had. Made about fifteen dollars for him, gave my grandmother seven dollars and fifty cents, I kept seven-fifty and paid about two-fifty for that guitar. It was a Stella. The people ordered them from Sears-Roebuck in Chicago.” He started playing his songs in joints nearby his hometown, mostly in a plantation owned by Colonel William Howard Stovall.
Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by age seventeen was playing the guitar at parties, emulating local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson. He was recorded in Mississippi by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. In 1943, he moved to Chicago with the hope of becoming a full-time professional musician, eventually recording, in 1946, first for Columbia Records and then for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess.
In the early 1950s, Muddy and his band, Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elgin Evans on drums and Otis Spann on piano, recorded a series of blues classics, some with bassist/songwriter Willie Dixon, including “Hoochie Coochie Man”, “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “I’m Ready”. In 1958, Muddy headed to England, helping to lay the foundations of the subsequent blues boom there, and in 1960 performed at the Newport Jazz Festival, recorded and released as his first live album, At Newport 1960.
Muddy’s influence is tremendous, not just on blues and rhythm and blues but on rock and roll, hard rock, folk, jazz, and country; his use of amplification is often cited as the link between Delta blues and rock and roll.
Born in Rolling Fork, Miss., to sharecroppers, Waters began playing harmonica as a teen and picked up guitar after hearing the likes of Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson and Son House. He quickly developed a bottleneck style of his own, recorded first by field folklorist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. With dreams of stardom, Waters moved to Chicago’s South Side in 1943 and played at neighborhood clubs with Blue Smitty and Jimmy Rogers. At the small clubs, his acoustic guitar could not be heard, so he decided to plug it into an amp and “put a little drive in it.”
In 1947 he recorded his first records for Leonard Chess’ Chess Records (then known as Aristocrat) as a sideman for Sunnyland Slim. He recorded his own sides in ’48, which quickly became hot items and catapulted him to stardom. While on Chess throughout the ’50s he recorded songs such as Honey Bee, Got My Mojo Workin’, Rollin’ Stone, and Hoochie Coochie Man with the likes of Willie Dixon, James Cotton, Little Walter Jacobs and Jimmy Rogers. A concert at the 1960 Newport Folk Festival exposed him to a much larger and whiter audience. As a staple on the ’60s Chicago blues scene, he worked with a younger generation, such as Buddy Guy and Matt Murphy, in perpetuating the electric Chicago blues sound.
He worked with rock bands such as the Rolling Stones, and groups such as Canned Heat and Cream covered his songs. An auto accident in 1969 slowed him down a bit, but he still toured around the world and recorded on Columbia Records’ Blue Sky label. If not for the pioneering electric guitar work of Muddy “Mississippi” Waters, Chicago would probably not be known as a blues hub today.
Muddy Waters’ longtime wife, Geneva, died of cancer on March 15, 1973. Gaining custody of some of his children, he moved them into his home, eventually buying a new house in Westmont, Illinois. Years later, Muddy travelled to Florida and met his future wife, 19-year-old Marva Jean Brooks, whom he nicknamed “Sunshine”. Eric Clapton served as best man at their wedding in 1979.
His sons, Larry “Mud” Morganfield and Big Bill Morganfield, are also blues singers and musicians.
Waters died in his sleep from heart failure, at his home in Westmont, Illinois, on April 30, 1983. At his funeral at Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois, throngs of blues musicians and fans showed up to pay tribute to one of the true originals of the art form. “Muddy was a master of just the right notes,” John P. Hammond told Guitar World magazine. “It was profound guitar playing, deep and simple… more country blues transposed to the electric guitar, the kind of playing that enhanced the lyrics, gave profundity to the words themselves.
Written by Dianne Washington