“Country Boy” “Don’t say I don’t love you because I won’t never treat you right You know I’m a country boy I just love to stay out all night” —Muddy Waters “At night,” Muddy Waters says, “in the country, you’d be surprised how that music carries. The sound be empty out there. You could hear my guitar way before you get to the house, & you could hear the peoples hollerin’ & screamin’. “The peoples lived scattered way apart,” Muddy remembers. “Our little house was way back in the country. We had one house close to us, & then the next one would’ve been a mile. If you got sick, you could holler & wouldn’t nobody hear you. We had our own horses, mules, cows, goats, & chickens, & I watered ’em from the time I was a kid. Had to pump the water, & that pump would put blisters in my hand. Even for one cow, you gotta pump a lotta water. She’d take two draws out of one of those big tubs, swallow twice, & that’d be it. When I got big enough to crawl around, I would play in the mud & try to eat it. My grandma started that Muddy thing, & after we were up there near Clarksdale, the kids started the Waters. “When I was around 3 years old, I was already beatin’ on bucket tops & tin cans. Anything with a sound I would try to play it. I’d take my stick & beat on the ground tryin’ to get a new sound & be hummin’ my little baby song along with it. My first instrument, which a lady give me, was an old squeeze box, old accordian. I must’ve been I never did learn to play anything on it, & one of the older boys pulled it apart. The next thing I had in my hand was a jew’s harp. I learned pretty good on that thing, & then when I was about 7, I started playing with what they called the French harp at home, the harmonica. That’s when they started in with the Waters, & that was even what my family started to call me: ‘Go on, ol’ Muddy Waters.’ I didn’t like that. It made me mad, but that’s the way it goes on me, you know. “Now when I was 9, I was gettin’ a sound out of the French harp. When I was 13, I was very, very good. I was playin’ it with my friend Scott at fish fries, picnics, & things. I should have never given it up! But then when I was 17, I put the harp down & switched to the guitar. The first one I got, I sold the last horse we had. Made about 15 dollars for him, gave my grandmother 7 dollars & 50 cents. I kept $7.50 & paid about $2.50 for that guitar. It was a Stella. The peoples ordered them from Sears & Roebuck in Chicago. I got about 3 guitars from Sears & Roebuck before I came up this way. But it was so long before I even made a dollar! Coming up through my childhood life, I tried to stay with the music, but we didn’t get no pay for it— 50 cents, 75 cents. You couldn’t stay there with it if you ain’t got it deep down in your soul.” Asked about church, Muddy says: “Can’t you hear it in my voice? I’d go every Sunday. Plenty of people would stay up all night & listen to the blues & go home, get all ready, & go to church. Back then there was just 3 things I wanted to be— a heck of a preacher, a heck of a ball player, or a heck of a musician. I always felt like I could beat plowin’ mules, choppin’ cotton, & drawin’ water. I did all that, & I never did like none of it. Sometimes they’d want us to work Saturday, but they’d look for me, & I’d be gone, playin’ in some little town or in some juke joint. “I had bad schooling,” Muddy says, “went to about the 2nd or 3rd grade, & what I learned to do, I was doing that really wrong.” About his unique sense of time, Muddy says: “I’m a delay singer. I don’t sing on the beat. I sing behind it, & people have to delay to play with me. They got to hang around, wait, see what’s gonna happen next. “My blues sounds so simple,” Muddy concludes, “so easy to do, but it’s not. They say my blues is the hardest blues in the world to play.” —New Orleans December 12, 1995

“Rollin’ Stone” “Well, my mother told my father just before I was born: ‘I got a boychild comin’, gonna be a, he gonna be a rollin’ stone’” —Muddy Waters

“Natural From Our Hearts” for Bill Lynn & Michael Voelker Late in 1948 Muddy Waters formed his first band with Jimmy Rogers of Ruleville, Mississippi on 2nd guitar & Little Walter of Marksville, Louisiana by way of New Orleans & Helena, Arkansas, on harmonica— This holy trinity came together in Chicago & burned up the world together until Little Walter left the band in 1952. “We'd do a lot of rehearsin’ durin’ that time,” Jimmy Rogers told Robert Palmer, “The three of us. And Walter wanted to learn. His ears were open, but he just didn’t have nobody to sit down & really teach him. He was mostly playing between Rice Miller & that saxophone sound of Louis Jordan; after he came with us we developed him mostly into a harder sound.” 2 And Muddy says, “He was a good boy but he had that bad, mean temper, that kind of thing, like ‘You don’t mess with me too much.’ Then, when we got it together, I found out I was the only somebody that could do anything with him when he really got out of hand. He began acting like I was his daddy. And when we was sitting around the house playing together, or on the bandstand, that’s when he worked out all that stuff that he did on our records later on, all them tricks with harps & so on. He was a man that was always thinking of something. His mind just kept going, learning more & more & more. But we was all into it. We all wanted to work, & we learned how to play up tight with one another. We would rehearse & rehearse. It was hard work, man. Hard work. But we had 3 naturals—me, Little Walter, & Jimmy. Natural from our hearts.” —Detroit March 22, 1982/ New Orleans November 26, 1995

“Train Fare Home” for the Frantic One—Ernie Durham “We was down around Monroe & Shreveport, Louisiana,” Muddy Waters recalls. “Had a little tour down there with a disc jockey, called him the Groovy Boy. ‘Juke’ had just come out & we went in this club one night & the people were playing that record. Every time the jukebox would ring, ’Juke,’ ‘Juke,’ ‘Juke.’ Little Walter couldn’t stand that jive. The next day he grab a train, pssssssshhhhh, back to Chicago. “When me & Jimmy got back, Walter asked me, ‘Wh-wh- where my money?’—like for the rest of the tour? I said, ‘I thought you brought it wit-cha. . .’ Yeah, mother fucker, I thought you brought it wit-cha! —Detroit March 22, 1982