29. Muddy Waters - Muddy Waters at Newport (1960)




















Track Listing

1. I Got My Brand on You
2. (I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man
3. Baby Please Don't Go
4. Soon Forgotten
5. Tiger in Your Tank
6. I Feel So Good
7. I've Got My Mojo Working
8. I've Got My Mojo Working, Pt. 2
9. Goodbye Newport Blues

Review

This is a pretty amazing album, the blues played with a rawness and an infectious energy that will make you tap your feet the whole way through the album. Again, an album that benefits from being live and therefore capturing a particular moment in time. Live albums when they are good, are in my opinion better than studio ones, particularly because the talent needed to create this level of perfection in one take as well as the extra rawness given to the sound because there is no studio wizardry involved -- or at least not as much as studio albums -- give you a much better notion of what the artist is all about.

I can tell you that I would have given my right arm to have been at this concert, because not only is the music amazing, but the crowd goes wild frequently adding to the toe tapping exhiliration of the whole thing. The album starts slow and quickly develops into a very fast paced affair, particularly with the two-part I've Got My Mojo Working before dwindling again with the last track, making it a perfectly crafted song line up. You want to keep listening. The playing in the album is superb as well, from the guitar and piano to the harmonica.

There is no much I can say that can make this album justice, other than it was probably the most pleseant discovery since I've started writing this blog. Miriam Makeba was the other one, but this is a much more consistent album with no songs in it that can be skipped at all. It's masterpiece on top of masterpiece, I obviously have my favourite songs but I'm pretty sure they will differ with the different people who listen to it.

You can't get this album from Napster, you can't buy it from Itunes, but you can get it from Amazon, either in the US or UK.

Track Highlights

1. I've Got My Mojo Working
2. I've Got My Mojo Working pt.2
3. I Got My Brand On You
4. (I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

Muddy Waters in an unfortunate name. Couldn't he have been Clear Lake or something... I suppose Stagnant Cess Pit would be worse.

From Wikipedia:

His tours of England beginning in 1958 marked possibly the first time an amplified, hard-rocking band was heard there, although on his first tour he was the only one amplified; backing was provided by Englishman Chris Barber's trad jazz group. (One critic retreated to the restroom to write his review because he found the band so loud.) The Rolling Stones named themselves after Waters' 1950 song, "Rollin' Stone," also known as "Catfish Blues." One of Led Zeppelin's biggest hits, "Whole Lotta Love," is based upon the Muddy Waters hit, "You Need Love," which was written by Willie Dixon. Dixon wrote some of Muddy Waters' most famous songs, including "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (a big radio hit for the '70s rock band Foghat), "Hoochie Coochie Man," and "I'm Ready." Angus Young of the rock group AC/DC has cited Waters as one of his influences, as is apparent in AC/DC's cover of "Baby Please Don't Go".