Muddy Waters
Live

THE REVIEW

There are two things that make me love the blues above (almost) every other musical genre.

The first is the simplicity of the form. Anyone, in just a few minutes, is able to learn and make their own the classic 12 bars, and thus find themselves holding the key to access 99% of typically blues songs.

The second is the inclusive participation. I think that, precisely because blues is simple, immediate, and direct music, and therefore accessible to everyone both in terms of technique and feeling, everyone can feel involved and engaged.

For instance, my partner, who at first found blues music incredibly monotonous and devoid of any interest, then changed her mind, to the point of constantly taking the initiative and dragging me to any concert where there is the slightest hint of blues, even better if in unlikely circumstances. As I see it, we reached this point because years ago I involved her in my passion for playing the guitar and the first thing I taught her was the blues shuffle (simple, immediate, and direct music); and then because, after a John Lee Hooker collection (the incredibly monotonous and devoid of any interest one), I had her listen to a couple of live albums, one was B.B. King's «Live at The Regal», the other was a live, without further indications, of Muddy Waters, both marked by incredible audience participation.

In this case too, since there’s already a record of B.B. King's live, I'll try to write something about Muddy Waters's, with great pleasure, because it's absolutely one of the live albums I like the most, regardless of genre, even more than «Live at The Regal».

What do I love so much about this album?

In short, the electrifying energy that runs through it from start to finish, without any drop in tension.

There's so much energy on stage, where Muddy Waters is accompanied alternately by Johnny Winter, Bob Margolin, and Luther Johnson on guitar, Charles Calmese and Calvin Jones on bass, Willie Smith on drums, Pinetop Perkins on piano, and James Cotton on harmonica: essentially, it’s the same ensemble that recorded «Hard Again» in 1977, in my opinion, the most powerful album recorded by Muddy Waters, to be clear, the one opened by «Mannish Boy».

«Mannish Boy» also opens the live and makes it clear right away that this man on stage, positioned in front of the microphone with a guitar strapped on, is the greatest man on the face of the earth and that no one should try to get in his way: one of the most – the most anything you can think of – ever conceived songs, along with Bo Diddley’s «I’m a Man» and Willie Dixon’s «Hoochie Coochie Man», and if I were ever asked 5 songs to define what blues is, for me all three would be on the list. Following, six pieces including originals and remakes, until the closure with the reprise of the classic «Baby Please Don’t Go» and the almost ten minutes of «Deep Down in Florida», also taken from «Hard Again» and twice the length of the studio version, testifying that everyone on stage had too much energy to think of getting down and ending the concert.

The musicians on stage were charged, those below the stage were charged beyond belief.

Here’s what, perhaps even more than the magnificent music played by Muddy Waters and the group accompanying him, makes me love this album so much, feeling how excited, wild, the audience is, the shout, the roar with which they respond to every call of Muddy Waters, turning that evening into an exciting call and response above and below the stage, rather than a ritual concert.

«Am I a man, Johnny?»

«YEAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!»