I found Muddy Waters so intriguing in our class lecture that I had to look up more about him. When he was a young man, living and working on Stovall Plantation, there were a number of folklorists who were traveling through the South collecting folk songs. As Miller pointed out in his book Segregating Sound, many folk songs were connected to labor, such as railroad workers and miners. But for others, such as Muddy Waters, music was an escape from the drudgery of working. Poor Muddy hated farming, and he finally “escaped” from life at Stovall to pursue his career as a blues musician. I listened to some of his recordings, and compared earlier and later versions of two of them. The first was I Be’s Troubled, which is the one we listened to in class. I wanted to hear it again, and then compare it to a later version of the same song performed by Muddy. The early one showed a picture of a young Muddy sitting on a porch with his guitar. He has a “closed in” expression, and looks wary as he is approached by Alan Lomax, who was collecting folk songs. In this early version of the song, Muddy’s voice sounds a little hesitant and serious. You can sense tension in it, and it’s somewhat subdued, as though he was singing to himself. Even his guitar playing sounded subdued. At this time he must have really been searching for where he was going with his music in a crazy Jim Crow south. In the later (1976) version, Muddy sounded more confident, polished, and “solid,” There is more bounce and freedom to the playing and the singing, and more elaboration on the guitar. He seems to know what he’s about now.

Next I listened to an early version of Baby Please Don’t Go, another great song of his. In this version, he has several band members playing with him, and the playing is slower, less bouncy, more laid-back (or perhaps more tentative?). Then I watched a very fun later version, in which he brings Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on stage with him to join in on Baby Please Don’t Go. There is such a sense of comfort and belonging and comraderie between these musicians. Muddy seems to be where he was going with his music. His voice is smooth and polished, and the playing is more energetic. The whole performance was so authentic and you wanted it to go on and on. What a fascinating thing it is to be able to listen to the early and later versions of songs, and see and hear the progression and development in Muddy’s sound.