Audio CD review:
Muddy Waters - The Real Folk Blues/More Real Folk Blues

Muddy Waters - The Real Folk Blues/More Real Folk Blues

Band: Muddy Waters Title: The Real Folk Blues/More Real Folk Blues Rating: Release Date: 12 March, 2002 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Mannish Boy 2: Screamin' and Cryin' 3: Just to Be With You 4: Walking Thru the Park 5: Walkin' Blues 6: Canary Bird 7: The Same Thing 8: Gypsy Woman 9: Rollin' and Tumblin', Part One 10: Forty Days and Forty Nights 11: Little Geneva 12: You Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had 13: Sad Letter Blues 14: You're Gonna Need My Help I Said 15: Sittin' Here and Drinkin' (Whiskey Blues) 16: Down South Blues 17: Train Fare Home Blues 18: Kind Hearted Woman 19: Appealing Blues (Hello Little Girl) 20: Early Morning Blues 21: Too Young to Know 22: She's Alright 23: Landlady 24: Honey Bee

Editoral Review So Muddy Waters it became, a moniker that both epitomized his Delta roots and the troubled moral climate of his age. McKinley Morganfield was hardly the name for a blues giant, let alone one whose influence spread far beyond boundaries of age, geography, and genre. Deconstruct Waters's music--the Son House-inspired slide work; a jazzman's innate phrasing and sense of timing; a voice that was weary, wise, and dignified all at once--and it won't come close to the mere sum of its parts. Better to listen as this collection (whose original 1966-67 albums sought to cash in on a waning folk movement) bounces from "Mannish Boy" (his potent response to Chess Records labelmate Bo Diddley's copping his style for "I'm a Man") across 15 years of his history with Chess and his deep Delta roots, including early, stripped-down reworkings of Robert Johnson ("Walkin' Blues," "Kind Hearted Woman") and the roots classic "Rollin' and Tumblin'" to the smoky jazz-blues of "The Same Thing," Willie Dixon's 1964 reworking of his classic, "Spoonful. " The material from the '40s often features Waters accompanied only by Ernest "Big" Crawford on bass, music as elementally pure as Waters ever recorded. It's arguably the only collection of the Real Folk Blues series (which also includes titles by John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, and Sonny Boy Williamson) that really lives up to its "folk blues" billing. More than a mere greatest-hits introduction, the albums compiled here often capture the rare, naked essence of Waters' soulful muse. --Jerry McCulley .. You can see a complete list of all Muddy Waters discography, or go back to the Muddy Waters tabs