Muddy Waters transformed the soul of the rural South into the sound of the city, electrifying the blues at a pivotal point in the early postwar period. His recorded legacy, particularly the wealth of sides he cut from 1951-1960, is one of the great musical treasures of this century. Aside from Robert Johnson, no single figure is more important to the history and development of the blues than Waters. Above all others, it was he who linked the country blues of his native Mississippi Delta with the urban blues that were born in Chicago.

Waters bought his first electric guitar in 1944 and revolutionized the blues with the recordings he began making for Chess Records in 1948. His amplified combo consisted of himself on slide guitar and vocals, a second guitarist, bass, drums, piano and harmonica. The Muddy Waters Blues Band bore all the earmarks - in terms of size, volume and attitude - of the great rock and roll bands that would follow in its wake.

Muddy Waters @ Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
www.rockhall.com/induct/watemudd.html

Muddy Waters was the patriarch of post-World War II Chicago blues. A master artist who played slashing slide guitar and sang with the tough, sinewy view of a man who had seen his share of good and evil in life, Waters was also a compelling songwriter and song interpreter, a powerful stage performer and recording artist, and a superb bandleader.

Muddy Waters @ Blue Flame Cafe
www.blueflamecafe.com/Muddy_Waters.html

A postwar Chicago blues scene without the magnificent contributions of Muddy Waters is absolutely unimaginable. From the late '40s on, he eloquently defined the city's aggressive, swaggering, Delta-rooted sound with his declamatory vocals and piercing slide guitar attack. When he passed away in 1983, the Windy City would never quite recover.

...When labelmate Bo Diddley borrowed Waters's swaggering beat for his strutting "I'm a Man" in 1955, Muddy turned around and did him tit for tat by reworking the tune ever so slightly as "Mannish Boy" and enjoying his own hit...

...By the time "Whole Lotta Love" appeared on Led Zeppelin II in late 1969, Muddy Waters' "You Need Love" prototype had been revamped considerably. It was built around a push-pull heavy metal riff from Jimmy Page, had an almost experimental instrumental break of ghostly drums, wails, and white noise, and ended with dramatically pausing and elongated vocal phrases from Plant before lurching back into the central riff. However, it still recognizably was based on the song Muddy Waters recorded in 1962. The surprise was that it took so long for Willie Dixon and his publishers to catch the resemblance.

It wasn't until the 1980s that Dixon became aware of the similarity between the Waters track and the Zeppelin one; in his autobiography, I Am the Blues, he says it was his daughter that brought the issue to his attention. A suit was filed against Led Zeppelin in 1985, resulting in an out-of-court settlement in 1987...

Muddy Waters @ All-Music Guide
www.allmusic.com/cg/x.dll?p=amg&sql=B108085

Muddy Waters: Born McKingley Morganfield (Rolling Form, Mississippi), the most influential Chicago bluesman modernized the Mississippi Delta blues by adding an electric guitar, developing the now-ubiquitous ensemble-driven Chicago style, revolutionizing the music's sound. The son of a sharecropper, Waters played harmonica and sang at family gatherings, finally taking up the guitar as a teenager (folklorists Alan Lomax and John Work made field recordings of him during the early '40s while Waters was working on a southern plantation).

Moved to Chicago during the '40s to find a better life (and to become a professional musician). There, he met Big Bill Broonzy and Sunnyland Slim, and begin recording what is almost a canon of modern blues: "Rollin' Stone," "I Can't Be Satisfied," "I Feel Like Going Home," "Got My Mojo Working," "Mannish Boy," and "Hoochie Coochie Man."

Musicians from Chuck Berry to Mick Jagger (whose band was named after a Water's record) were influenced by Waters, and large number of blues musicians -- many famous in their own right -- paid their dues in Waters' band: Little Walter, Big Walter Horton, Jimmy Rogers, James Cotton, Junior Wells, and A.C. Reed are among them. Heck, Led Zepplin's biggest hit ("Whole Lotta Love" is a reworking of a Willie Dixon-written Muddy Waters song.

Muddy Waters @ Centerstage
centerstage.net/chicago/music/whoswho/MuddyWaters.html

Related Artists:

Buddy Guy
www.GuitarSite.com/newsletters/990517/10.shtml

Bo Diddley
www.GuitarSite.com/BoDiddley.htm

BB King
www.GuitarSite.com/newsletters/990517/9.shtml
www.GuitarSite.com/bands2.htm#BBKing

Rolling Stones
www.GuitarSite.com/stones.htm

Eric Clapton
www.GuitarSite.com/clapton.htm

Led Zepellin
www.GuitarSite.com/LedZep.htm