Thursday, April 30, 2009

Got My Mojo Workin’…

.. but it just don’t work on you…today in rock history, in 1983, McKinley Morganfield "Muddy Waters" dies of a heart attack at the age of sixty-eight in Chicago. Morganfield is buried at the Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois. The epitaph on the burial marker reads: "McKinley Morganfield, 1915 - 1983, The Mojo is Gone The Master Has Won."
Well, I would submit the Mojo is still workin’ – Muddy lives on in his excellent recordings and the homage that other blues players pay him every time they play one of his tunes. The other day I got a recording of one of his classics – “Breakin’ It Up & Breakin’ It Down,” an recording of him on tour in 1978-79 with James Cotton and Johnny Winter. This is, IMHO, one of the best blues albums of all time, and it showed Muddy in fine form, on the comeback trail after recording his seminal album, 1977’s “Hard Again.” It was also the inspiration for Johnny to take up the blues full time and leave that rock and roll behind. So let’s celebrate Muddy’s life, and check out a tune from Muddy from a live date back in '71. Thanks to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muddy_Waters and www.rockhall.com/notes/today-in-rock/ for the info, and let’s play a slow blues, shall we?

1 comment:

Who Am Us Anyway? said...

My wife used to have a $3 ticket stub from an early 70s Muddy show, but ... I lost it. Or rather as they say in Spanish, it lost itself to me, se me olvido, dang it.