Muddy Waters- The London Muddy Waters Sessions

Originally posted to Instagram on June 29, 2020.

Closing out the month of June with a record one of my good friends gave me- Muddy Waters, ‘The London Sessions’.

In the 50s and early 60s, Chicago-based Chess Records was at the top of its game. Some of the biggest stars of the blues and early rock and roll were on their label, and they were turning out hit after hit after hit. By the late 60s and early 70s, though, the epicenter of pop music had shifted to England, where a new generation of rock musicians were heavily inspired by the earlier Chess Records stars. One of the producers at Chess had a brilliant idea- what if Chess brought some of their older stars to England, where they could record with some of the younger musicians they had inspired?

The second artist they sent over was Muddy Waters, for an album featuring Rory Gallagher, Steve Winwood, Mitch Mitchell, and a whole host of others for an album that goes back and forth between Muddy’s two main styles: Chicago electric blues, with rocking electric guitar and a horn section, and country blues, with slide guitar and harmonica.

The first track, “Blind Man Blues,” is a fantastic duet between Waters and Rosetta Hightower, a former American girl-group singer who had moved to England to be a backing singer for rock groups, and the only way this album could have been any better is if it had featured her on more songs. Another standout track is the Willie Dixon-penned “Young Fashioned Ways” a fun take on Waters’ newfound status as an elder statesman of the blues. “I may be getting older,” he sings, “but I’ve got young-fashioned ways.” Those ways would take him the rest of the way through a long and legendary career, backed up and supported by the younger artists for whom he was a hero.