Muddy Waters

Muddy Waters at Newport 1960 Chess 75 Series edition

At Newport 1960 is a live album by Muddy Waters recorded during his performance at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 3, 1960. Born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi in 1915, McKinley Morganfield became known to one and all as Muddy Waters when he was old enough to toddle into the dirty creek behind his back porch. In August 1941, Waters recorded his first song for famed field ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, but just two years later Waters was joining the hundreds of thousands of Black people leaving the brutality and horror of the South for the industrialized cities of the North.

Listening to At Newport 1960, it seems almost unthinkable that anyone would be anything less than blown away by the sound of the blues exploding so impressively. Alongside Waters' monumental vocals and guitar playing are Pat Hare (guitar), Andrew Stevens (bass), Francis Clay (drums), James Cotton on harmonica and Otis Spann on piano. The rhythm section is a tight as you'd imagine but the piano playing of blues legend Spann and Cotton's harmonica light up so many of the tracks.

There are three monster hits that have become part of the Blues pantheon here, given all the life and energy that the prowling majesty of Waters can muster. "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man", "Baby, Please Don't Go' and "Got My Mojo Working" have been covered and imitated by a host of white rock and blues bands, but nothing comes even remotely close to matching the swagger of Waters and the musicality of his band. In their hands they are fundamental cornerstones of the blues canon, with Waters at his imperious best — a brooding master of the carnal.