Happy Birthday Muddy

Although April is a popular month for blues birthdays - including Billie Holiday, Buddy Guy, and Albert King among others - the most significant date in the month is the 4th, because that's the day that McKinley Morganfield - better known as Muddy Waters - was born. The year was 1915 and the place was Clarksdale, Mississippi.


In the opening scenes of the late great film Cadillac Records, we see McKinley/Muddy sitting in front of a tiny shack dwarfed by a vast plain, cradling his guitar, an epic scene that personifies the Delta blues journey, using Muddy's character as the narrative line. A tanklike sedan appears in the distance, moving relentlessly across the sea of mud, in fact carrying blues historian Alan Lomax. Waters is mystified by the contraption Lomax pulls out of his trunk -a 1940s era vintage reel to reel tape recorder - which Lomax powers by using his car battery, but Muddy is even more amazed to hear himself on tape. The actual meeting happened in 1941, and the recording was called "I Be's Troubled". Waters was 26 years old, driving a tractor on the plantation.


By 1943, Waters leaves for Chicago, where, after trying unsuccessfully to play acoustic guitar on the streetcorner, he discovers a new sound - electric guitar, apparently suggested and/or inspired by Muddy's future wife Geneva. His popularity begins to climb based on Chicago club dates until Waters attracts the attention of Chess Records' owner/founder Leonard Chess. Together they cut a wide swath through the music industry, quickly recording and releasing "I Can't Be Satisfied", "Honeybee", "Mannish Boy", "Hoochie Coochie Man" and others. Waters finds blues harp virtuoso Little Walter Horton playing on a streetcorner,incorporating him into the band. Their partnership propels Muddy to new heights, with more songs - "40 Days and 40 Nights", "Got My Mojo Working", and a solo hit for Little Walter called "Juke" among many others.


Unfortunately, Muddy Waters' career is more or less eclipsed by rock and roll. Leonard Chess is depicted in the film as providing royalties to Waters even when he hadn't earned any, Muddy's music is relegated to smaller venues and clubs. Little Walter ends up a heroin addict and bad drunk, dying in Geneva Waters' arms, apparently an oblique reference to the harmonica player's lifelong "crush" on his best friend's wife.


Ironically, just when the blues seems to be on life support, the English rockers - Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, John Mayall, Mick Jagger - start listening to Waters' music and recording his songs. The aging blues legend is suddenly back in vogue, no one apparently more surprised than Muddy himself as he plays for crowds of infatuated young white fans overseas. Waters' musical revival leads to sessions with younger musicians, the best product of this association being a partnership with guitarist Johnny Winter. Waters dies in his sleep on April 30, 1983.


Ordinarily, McKinley Morganfield's life would have been just another footnote in American music were it not for a series of circumstances that bridged the gaps in his career. As depicted in "Cadillac Records" , Muddy Waters becomes a mythic figure, the personification of Delta blues adapting and changing to meet the demands of the urban environment, a pioneer who blazed a new trail to preserve and invigorate a true American art form.