Muddy Woters

On April 21, 1988, two significant events occured in the Cradle of the Blues, Clarksdale, Missisippi. One was ZZ Top's dedication of a guitar made from a board from Muddy Waters' home to the Delta Blues Museum. Of equal significance were the incredible performances turned in by the "original" Muddy Waters Blues Band at John Mohead's Cotton Exchange Club. No overblown concert to mark the event, rather two authentic juke-joint shows by a special group of players, the likes of which invented the genre.
This two-CD set was distilled from those historic performances. Be warned! You'll hear crowd noise, clinking glasses, missed notes and feedback. You'll hear tade-ins and fade-outs, mainly because the original recording devices were not always operating at the right time…

This is easily a "super super blues bust." Power trios, of course, were hip in the late '60s – even at down-home Chess Studios, where ad hoc "supergroups" were assembled for 1967's Super Blues and its sequel, Super Super Blues Band. (No one ever accused Chess Records of being subtle.) The band on Super Super Blues Band included two-thirds of the original Super Blues headliners – Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley – with Howlin' Wolf replacing Little Walter to round out the trio. Unlike Walter, who was willing to cede the spotlight to Diddley and Waters on Super Blues, Wolf adamantly refuses to back down from his rivals, resulting in a flood of contentious studio banter that turns out to be more entertaining than the otherwise unmemorable music from this stylistic train wreck.

This 1981 recording found Waters being produced by rocker Johnny Winter, who had brought Muddy back to form on the Hard Again album. Winter was smart enough to surround the great one with musicians who knew his music intimately…

I'm With Her is the name of a supergroup formed by three stars of Americana music - Texan Sarah Jarosz who plays banjo, mandolin and guitar, Bostonian guitarist Aoife O'Donovan, formerly of the band Crooked Still, and Californian violinist Sara Watkins from Nickel Creek. An unplanned performance together at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2014 went so well that they decided to go on tour across North America and around the world. They released a single 'Crossing Muddy Waters/Be My Husband' in 2015 but did not get together for a debut album until 2017 when they worked with English producer Ethan Johns on 'See You Around', which was released in 2018.

For the middle album of his Johnny Winter-produced, late-'70s musical trilogy, blues giant Muddy Waters brought a new spirit to some familiar material. Starting with members of Waters' touring band – pianist Pinetop Perkins, bassist Bob Margolin, and drummer Willie "Big Eyes" Smith – Winter added underrated guitarist (and longtime Waters foil) Jimmy Rogers and extraordinary harp player Big Walter Horton to the mix.