The Blues — Muddy Waters

Published Sept 15, 2017

Muddy Waters, originally known as McKinley Morganfield, was an American blues musician known as “the father of modern Chicago blues” who lived 1913- 1983. He grew up in Mississippi and by the age of 17 was playing both the guitar and the harmonica. The blues idols that he emulated were Son House and Robert Johnson. In 1943, when he was 30, he moved to Chicago to become a full time musician. In the early 1950’s. Muddy Waters and his band recorded several blues classics. The songs I am going to touch on are “Hooche Coochie Man” and “I Just Want to Make Love to You”.

In “Hoochie Coochie Man”, Muddy Waters plays his ensemble of instraments in a segmentation. During each break of the instraments he enters in a brief segment of lyrics. The sentences are usually broken up into tow parts. The lyrics follow the story of the Hoochi Coochie Man beginign with when he was born his mother said he was going to be a son of a gun. This song gives me the vibe of being in a bar with a live band where the lighting is a dim orangey, brown and the community is good.

In “I Just Want to Make Love to You” the combination of iunstraments an lyrics is much smooth as opposed to “Hoochie Coochie Man”. There are very clear element of the harmonic as he has a long sementation after the first verse of just instraments. The lyrics follow a repetative susesion of the phrase “I don’t want” unill he finally reaches the title line of “I just want to make love to you”. His lyrical style is very choppy in the way the lyrics flow, which is a characteristc element of the blues.