Muddy Waters Folk Singer

Description

The album is a testament to the ongoing prescience of the record industry. The very same month Folk Singer was released, the Rolling Stones released their debut album. Not only are the Stones named for a Waters’ song, but that debut featured the Waters’ tune “I Just Want to Make Love to You.” So just as the British Invasion was about to blast open rock and pop, powered by electric blues artists like Waters, Leonard and Phil Chess, the owners of Chess Records, were worried about folk. Suffice it to say, in hindsight they missed quite an opportunity and completely misread the future of music (although imagine the past 45 years of pop if Joan Baez had been calling the shots, as the Chess brothers predicted).

Folk Singer featured not just Waters himself, but Willie Dixon on upright bass and Buddy Guy on guitar. Dixon was a blues legend, writing tons of famous blues tunes, including the aforementioned “I Just Want to Make Love to You.” He also played with every blues great. Not only was Dixon the soul of the blues, he was its heartbeat. Blues legend Guy was just 28 years-old, a virtual unknown at the time. This was a killer band.

As good as the band was, the album stands the test of time because of how Waters and Dixon approached the album concept. Dixon was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and like Waters, grew up playing acoustic blues. Much of this Delta music was never recorded and the recordings that were made were of rough quality. Alan Lomax, who captured many of these performances for the Library of Congressincluding a young Waterswas working in the field using the equipment of the time, which, unfortunately, wasn’t great.

And so Waters and Dixon re-created that kind of country blues sound, using contemporary recording techniques and adding drums (the sublime drums of Clifton James, to be exact). The result brilliantly bridged Delta blues and Chicago electric blues, creating something timeless that still stands up today. – Albumism