Muddy Waters - Real Folk Blues / More Real Folk Blues

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Free Music Notes for Real Folk Blues / More Real Folk Blues

Free Music Review: Classic Muddy Waters
Hit: 5 Stars

These albums were initially released in an attempt to reach the white audience enamored by the burgeoning folk scene. But don't be fooled. This is a collection of Water's Chess singles dating all the way back to his first Aristocrat single, 1947's "Gypsy Woman."

Nearly half of these songs feature Waters on guitar with only Ernest "Big" Crawford backing him up on bass. The rest of the tracks have Waters playing with a small combo featuring piano (Otis Spann), harmonica (Little Walter, Junior Wells or James Cotton), a second guitar (including Jimmy Rogers), bass (including Willie Dixon), and drums.

Most of these are original songs, but Waters pays tribute to Robert Johnson on a pair of songs, "Kind Hearted Woman" from 1948 and "Walkin Blues" from 1950.

Crawdaddy Magazine writer Paul Williams says in the original liner notes: "...blues is happy music, an escape from sadness...when Muddy sings, you feel the blues, and you feel the joy that goes with them." That may fly in the face of everything you thought you know about the blues. But when you put this in your CD player, you'll know he's speaking the truth. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Real Folk Blues / More Real Folk Blues Poster

Better to listen as this collection (whose original 1966-67 albums sought to cash in on a waning folk movement) bounces from "Mannish Boy" (his potent response to Chess Records labelmate Bo Diddley's copping his style for "I'm a Man") across 15 years of his history with Chess and his deep Delta roots, including early, stripped-down reworkings of Robert Johnson ("Walkin' Blues," "Kind Hearted Woman") and the roots classic "Rollin' and Tumblin'" to the smoky jazz-blues of "The Same Thing," Willie Dixon's 1964 reworking of his classic, "Spoonful."

The material from the '40s often features Waters accompanied only by Ernest "Big" Crawford on bass, music as elementally pure as Waters ever recorded. It's arguably the only collection of the Real Folk Blues series (which also includes titles by John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, and Sonny Boy Williamson) that really lives up to its "folk blues" billing. More than a mere greatest-hits introduction, the albums compiled here often capture the rare, naked essence of Waters' soulful muse. --Jerry McCulley

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