Muddy Waters - With Little Walter: 1950-1952

When most people think about the legacy of Muddy Waters, the first songs that come to mind are probably those macho Willie Dixon-produced shouts from the mid-1950s: Hoochie Coochie Man, Mannish Boy, I'm Ready, I Just Want to Make Love to You, Got My Mojo Working, etc.   But as far as I am concerned, the pinnacle of Muddy Waters' recorded output unquestionably lies here, in the records that he made with Little Walter in the early 50s before Willie Dixon entered the picture.  This is Muddy Waters playing his own music his own way in a manner that helped mold the evolution of Chicago and Mississippi blues in the 1950s and beyond.   It just doesn't get any better than this.  If I could only own one blues collection, I would choose this one.   I can't begin to describe here how much satisfaction and inspiration these recordings have given me over so many years.

I took these recordings from two sources:  The first 22 tracks come from the 2-CD set, The Anniversary Collection, released on Chess (MCA) in 2000.  The final 3 tracks come from the Hip-O-Select collection "Hoochie Coochie Man."  Together they present all of Muddy Water's recordings from June, 1950 to the end of1952.   The first session here marks the time when Leonard Chess finally honored Muddy's wish to allow him to record with Little Walter, and the result marked a milestone in recorded blues history.  (Parkway records had already recorded the two together in 1951, but Muddy Waters was essentially confined to guitar accompaniments for contractual reasons.)  Little Walter is co-featured on almost all of these tracks, although many believe that it is actually a teenage Junior Wells who takes care of the mean harp work on the last four tracks.  Jimmy Rogers is also present on many songs in this collection.

There are no weak tracks here (IMO), and the number of masterpieces is mind boggling:  Long Distance Call, Honey Bee, Louisiana Blues, She Moves Me, Still a Fool, Too Young to Know, Standing Around Crying, Iodine in My Coffee to name a handful.   I will stop here at the risk of sounding too fanatical.  When it comes to Muddy Waters, I am indeed a fanatic, and these recordings are IT for me.