Muddy Springs Road, originally released in 1995 on Watermelon Records, was the album in which Omar Kent Dykes finally started putting everything together, opening up his sound with additional players, including harmonica ace Gary Primich and session drummer George Rains, while at the same time reining in his vocal excesses and writing solid, autobiographical songs like the two that lead off this album, "Muddy Springs Road" and "Black Bottom." Both songs draw on Dykes' childhood impressions growing up in McComb, MS, and both give off an ominous, swampy glow that gains emotional nuance from Dykes' gruff, raspy vocals, which sound at times like Wolfman Jack fronting a blues band – which isn't a bad thing at all.
After the Rain dates from the most controversial period in Muddy Waters' history – along with its predecessors, Electric Mud (probably the most critically despised album in Muddy's catalog) and Brass and the Blues (an effort to turn him into B.B. King), it came out of an era in which Chess Records was desperately thrashing around trying any musical gambit to boost the sales of its top blues stars. But unlike Electric Mud, in which the repertoire selected by producer Marshall Chess was mostly unsuited, and the musical settings provided by Phil Upchurch, Pete Cosey et al. were too loud and too frenetic for Muddy's style of singing, After the Rain simply let him be Muddy Waters.
Joe Bonamassa’s new CD features his incredible concert from August 31, 2014 which took place at the famous and drop-dead gorgeous Red Rocks Amphitheatre. The show is a spectacular celebration of the music of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, featuring many of the two blues legends’ greatest songs and a few Bonamassa classics.
This Muddy Waters set was recorded live in at the so-called "Jazz Jamboree" at the Palace of Culture and Sciences in Warsaw, Poland, in 1976 and has been issued many times under various titles over the years, including Floyd's Guitar Blues, Baby Please Don't Go, Hoochie Coochie Man Live!, I'm Ready Live, In Concert, and Live at Jazz Jamboree '76, among others. It's actually a pretty decent outing, and finds Waters working with what amounts to an all-star band with Bob Margolin and Luther Johnson on guitars, Pinetop Perkins on piano, Jerry Portnoy on harmonica, and a rhythm section of Calvin Jones on bass and Willie Smith on drums. It probably isn't an essential Muddy Waters purchase, but it certainly isn't a waste of money either, and dedicated fans shouldn't hesitate to pick it up under one of its various titles.