597 Muddy Waters - Folk Singer (1964)

 597 Muddy Waters - Folk Singer (1964)

Studio Album - Blues


About the Act:

Muddy Waters was "The father of modern Chicago blues". That was not his given name, which was the much more prosaic McKinley Morganfield. He was born in Mississippi, and died in Illinois, after a career of 41 years starting in 1941. He sang blues and played blues guitar and was responsible for writing blues classics like I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man and Got My Mojo Working.

About the Album:

This was his fourth studio album, and his only all-acoustic album. The band were Muddy and Buddy Guy on acoustic guitars. Willie Dixon on acoustic bass, and Clifton James on drums.

My History with this Album:

None

Review:

Don't be fooled by the name, this is not a folk album, even by American standards, it is a front-and-centre blues album. Apparently this is an unusual album for Muddy, as it is all-acoustic, what became known later as an "unplugged" album. Stylistically, it's very traditional blues, like Robert Johnson and several others. 

So, if you are reading these reviews sequentially, this comes just after my review of an SRV album. I am actually writing them back-to-back as I have listen to both before I have had a chance to write. I would like to say that hearing this album did not in any way affect my opinion of that SRV album, although it would be easy to think that it had.

Because this album is absolutely dripping in the blues "feel" that is the heart an centre of blues. I find it hard to put into words, but it is the feeling that the music is welling up from the soul of the musicians, it's all about the subtlety of expression through the singing and the playing. Honestly, this is an incredible album from that point of view. It made me feel like I was on a Mississippi porch, and my dog had died and my woman had left me and... well, you know. As blues often is, the focus is on the guitars. Sometimes there is some slide, which I tend to enjoy. Having said that, the bass and drums are also really good. The singing is really, really good, and fits really well, again with emotion and feel.

The production sound is amazing, too, really deep and wide and warm. I may have been listening to a remastered version, but apparently the original was praised for this too. The warmth of the production really adds to the feeling of intimacy in the album, which in turn enhances the emotional impact. I think this is even more striking, because the style is so Mississippi Blues, and most of the recordings of that are from quite a bit earlier (up to 20 years), and so we are used to the sound quality being less. All-in-all this is an amazing album, I loved it to bits. There is a but.

But, one thing I think is an issue, which is something that is endemic to older music, but especially blues. It is quite chauvinistic at times, and "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" would probably not get past modern sensibilities on age-appropriate relationships.

Despite that, I loved it. I really loved it. The sound, the pathos, the craft. This is everything a blues album should be.

9/10


Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4bi0CKFKviadIaSlkakfN7

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9_hWbwwLULYAqNNNMBiZZ28nT2znI6fP

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_Singer_(album)



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