Audio CD review:
Muddy Waters - King Bee

Muddy Waters - King Bee

Band: Muddy Waters Title: King Bee Rating: Release Date: 18 May, 2004 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: I'm A King Bee 2: Too Young To Know 3: Mean Old Frisco Blues 4: Forever Lonely 5: I Feel Like Going Home 6: Champagne & Reefer 7: Sad Sad Day 8: (My Eyes) Keep Me In Trouble 9: Deep Down In Florida #2 10: No Escape From The Blues 11: I Won't Go On 12: Clouds In My Heart

Customer Reviews ****1/2. Muddy's final album. But you wouldn't know it Originally issued in 1981, "King Bee" was recorded at a time when Muddy Waters, then 65, was slowing down because of health problems, and his band was losing money because they were gigging less, finally causing them to quit en masse. The last of Muddy Waters' four Blue Sky albums is often considered the least as well, but you wouldn't know it listening to this superbly remastered and expanded reissue. Guitarist Bob Margolin's candid liner notes are much more brief and a lot less jolly than the warm and often humorous mini-essays he wrote for the reissues of "Hard Again" and "I'm Ready", and while his fondness for Muddy Waters is very obvious, it is equally obvious that he did not have a good time recording this album, Muddy Waters' last. Because of the tensions in the studio preceding the breakup of the Muddy Waters Band, producer and occational guitarist Johnny Winter felt the sessions had not produced enough solid material to yield an entire album, so he padded "King Bee" with outtakes from the 1977 "Hard Again" sessions (and this 2004 edition adds two more previously unreleased numbers). But there is certainly nothing wrong with the songs that did make the cut. "King Bee" is as lean and mean an album as Muddy ever made, and though the guest stars from the first two Blue Sky albums are missing, the "regular" Muddy Waters Band is every bit as competent as any all star combo. Muddy may have been ailing, but his voice is still strong and confident, and the rhythm section of Calvin "Fuzz" Jones (bass) and drummer Willie "Big Eyes" Smith is rock-solid, digging a train track groove on each and every song. Well, except the drum-less acoustic workout "I Feel Like Going Home", a wonderful re-recording of one of Muddy's earliest waxings. Muddy Waters and his killer ensemble lifts relatively lightweight numbers like "Deep Down In Florida", "My Eyes Keep Me In Trouble" and "Champagne And Reefer" high above mediocrity, and songs like "No Escape From The Blues", the swaggering "Too Young To Know" and the gritty title track pack an immense wallop. There are no weak songs here, actually. The re-recording of "Sad Sad Day" should be a blueprint for all slow blues numbers, and the two bonus tracks are by no means throwaways. Muddy recorded James Oden's "I Won't Go On" (which is suspiciously reminicent of "I Feel So Good") way back in the 50s, and here it is again, rough and tough and sung in a deep, manly baritone by Waters. And the slow grind of "Clouds In My Heart" is one of the finest songs on the album, featuring a sublime soulful lead vocal, masterful drumming, and some tremendous lead guitar playing courtesy of "Steady Rollin'" Bob Margolin. Johnny Winter plays excellent slide guitar on several songs (although that is Muddy himself wielding the bottleneck on "Sad Sad Day"), and there is not a glimmer of rock commercialism in his playing, it is pure blues. His abilities as a producer are equally fine, and while "King Bee" doesn't usually get the attention of "Hard Again" or Muddy's classic Chess sides, it should be considered a must-own for any semi-serious Muddy Waters-fan, especially in this expanded edition. 4 1/2 stars. Highly recommended. A Lion In Winter According to Bob Margolin's liner notes, the somber atmosphere of these recordings were due to a discontent between Muddy and the band over money. This CD lacks the feel-good, party-time atmosphere of the rest of Muddy's Blue Sky period. Some of the tracks are actually outtakes from 1977 sessions to complete the album. The band quit, and Muddy carried on performing live until his death in 1983. The two outtakes are excellent additions and worth upgrading this CD in your collection. But if you'd rather listen to a blues band having a great time in the studio, buy Hard Again or I'm Ready instead. They are both a better listen than King Bee. ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL AND REQUIRED, PART 3 While this did not garner the acclaim on its initial release that the other 2 CDs did, it may actually, in its remastered form, be the best of the bunch. This final document from the end of his storied career is a blend of studio tracks that were not quite finished for what would have been his third CD with Johnny Winter at the helm, plus a few additional tracks from the previous two years' sessions. Haunting in a way that Johnny Cash's last CD is, this is the sound of a man who knows he has come to the end of the crossroads, as it were. From the previous sessions you have the full band at full throttle and the intensity is devastating. From the uncompleted sessions, the songs are more introspective, more intimate, perhaps truer to his cotton field roots than he had been in a very long time, and they are positively spiritual. But what trily sets this apart are the final two bonus cuts that somehow wrap and sum up the legacy of Muddy Waters: "I Can't Go On" amd "Clouds in My Eyes" are so upsetting because these are in fact his very last songs recorded. They are his best as well. Odd that inadvertenetly he would save the very best for last, but these two songs will haunt your soul much as Cash's rendition of "Hurt" does. Columbia and Johnny Winter and the remastering team have done the world of music a very great service in preserving and restoring these tracks. Bob Margolin penned intimate and heartfelt liner notes for each of these reissues that are so to the point that they bring you inside the world that Muddy lived. For this last session, they all knew the end was near and somehow drew strength inspite of the oncoming sorrow from their leader's bravery and integrity and deep down grit. Muddy Waters was an ontological and existential hero of the first order, and his coda is as powerful a departing testament as Beethoven's last string quartet, as Tchicovsky's No 6, as Mahler's 9th. This is African American Blues-Gospel-Spiritual requiem in all its soulful acquiessence to a more pwerful Creator. Positively, this was both his most intimate and his most powerful collection of music and it will haunt you the rest of your life. . You can see a complete list of all Muddy Waters discography, or go back to the Muddy Waters tabs