Can't Be Satisfied (62 page)

In their excitement, Chess overestimated the market and shipped many more records than they would sell. Crates were being returned well into the next year, and one warehouse employee grumbled,
“Who put out this stiff? Who put out this fucking stiff?” (Guralnick,
Home,
p. 238.) It was an ignoble coda to an otherwise successful effort.

Band Personnel:
Born August 30, 1934, Luther “Snake” Johnson stopped picking cotton in rural Davidson, Georgia, when Santa Claus brought him a guitar. In Chicago, he
did stints behind Howlin’ Wolf and Junior Wells before realizing his boyhood dream of backing Muddy Waters. He was in the band when Bob Margolin joined: “He used to do endless versions
of Wilson Pickett’s ‘Don’t Knock My Love’ as well as soul groove originals like ‘Give Me My Check’ (a welfare song) and ‘Pull Out Your False Teeth, Baby, I
Wants to Suck on Your Gums.’ ” Jimmy Lee Morris remembers, “Snake got scalded. His wife throwed some hot shit on his ass, lye, and burned him up, man. Every so often that stuff
would rise up on his arms — big old water blisters, come up, go down, come up and go down.”

When Luther Johnson moved to guitar, Lawrence “Sonny” Wimberley assumed the bass. Drummer S. P. Leary (born June 6, 1930) returned in 1967 for his longest stint with the band. An
old-school drummer, he’d backed T-Bone Walker in Texas before he was old enough to drive. He came to Chicago around 1954, later joined Jimmy Rogers, and eventually played with most of
Chicago’s blues greats, including a long stint with Wolf. He’d recorded several sessions with Muddy as early as 1964 (including “The Same Thing”). S. P. could pull out his
brushes, keep it firm when he played soft, letting Muddy whisper “Nineteen Years Old” and “Five Long Years.”

Getting in Muddy’s band had always been easier than getting out; when S. P. was too drunk to play, Snake assumed the drums and Muddy picked up the slack on the guitar. When Snake stepped
out on his own, S. P. Leary was thrown out the open door. Willie Smith reassumed the drummer’s chair, though slowly. First he took a single gig at the end of 1968; a tour offer followed.
“We started talking about money. I was driving that cab hard, fourteen or fifteen hours a day. Muddy guaranteed me a certain amount, so I took a chance on it. But I kept my chauffeur’s
license up for about five years just in case.”

Clay left the band for good by the end of the 1960s. While there’s probably some truth to the following anecdote, I found Clay’s stories colored by his resentment or dislike of
Muddy. Clay says that when the band was nearing Chicago after a tour, he phoned his girlfriend. “We’d pull up, she’d be waiting for me at Muddy’s house. Muddy would get mad
every time he’d see that. I was getting my clothes out
of the station wagon, next thing I know, jealous cat, Muddy whipped out his blackjack and was coming toward me.
He didn’t have any girlfriends who cared anything about him, they just wanted to take and take and take.”

Also back on the scene, not in Muddy’s band but with his encouragement, was former sideman Jimmy Rogers. “They was all worryin’ me about hittin’ the road again. Europe
was somethin’ I was wantin’ to see anyway. That started me back up. I don’t mind travelin’ just as long as I got ‘my train fare home.’ ” (Brisbin,
“Havin’ Fun,” p. 27.) Freddie King, who used to sneak into the Zanzibar to watch Jimmy’s fingers, brought his mentor to Shelter Records, a label run by young blues
enthusiasts (including Leon Russell).

Other Recordings:
When the Chess brothers visited the
Super Blues
session, Esmond Edwards, who’d been producing jazz records, had rarely seen them in action.
“Phil and Leonard came up there and sat around,” said Edwards, “urging them on. ‘Hey motherfucker’ this and ‘What’s wrong with you.’ It was the
revelation of an entirely different studio milieu than I had been accustomed to. You don’t talk to jazz artists that way. But the guys took it. I don’t know if it was a plantation thing
or what, but no one got insulted. Muddy just grinned.”

In November of 1967, Muddy’s manager Bob Messinger put the group in the studio for a label run by Alan Douglas, who had recorded Jimi Hendrix. Contractually restricted from recording for
anyone but Chess, Muddy was made producer. “Muddy was featuring Georgia Boy and he was all for recording him,” said Messinger. They recorded about twenty tracks, then spread them across
two albums.
Chicken Shack
featured Luther Johnson,
Mud in Your Ear
featured Mojo Buford, though everyone — Spann, Lawhorn, Wimberley, and Clay — had his say. Muddy did
not cherish the producer’s role. “It ain’t too cool for me, man, ’cause you trying to tell someone something, and maybe they’ll think your ideas is too square.
I’d rather for them to have their own ideas and let someone else do that work and I’ll do my real job.” (Guralnick interview with Muddy Waters.)

Some of the best Muddy on record from this era is on the Otis Spann album
The Bottom of the Blues
for ABC’s Blues Way label, also recorded in November of 1967. Muddy contributed
two songs. The unlikely “Shimmy Baby” is set to S. P. Leary’s wicked marching beat, with a strong New Orleans parade feel; it sounds much more like Spann’s swinging knee
than Muddy’s foot tapping. “I haven’t been writing much,” Muddy told Guralnick, hastening to add, “All Otis’s stuff, I wrote it also.” Spann would soon
part company with Muddy. The album’s other outstanding track is also claimed by Muddy and is much more likely by him. A deep blues number, “Looks Like Twins” features his slide
guitar; it’s about lovers staying together because they look so much alike, making it a mate to Muddy’s “Kinfolks Blues,” a contemporaneous recording wherein Muddy breaks
off an incestuous relationship because of the gossip.

Muddy accompanied Otis Spann at a memorial concert for Dr. Martin Luther King, assassinated in Memphis in April of 1968. With little to interfere — Willie Dixon is the only other musician
— the affinity that made these two call each other “brother” is easily heard. They can be heard on the
Live the Life
album, which also includes intimate live recordings
of Muddy leading his full band.

East Coast and Beyond:
While on the East Coast, the band was treated to one of the highlights of Muddy’s relationship with manager Bob Messinger. “I negotiated
a deal with Guild Guitars to get them all guitars, basses, amplifiers. Guild was over in Jersey City, and we drove there. We were so happy that day. Muddy got three
guitars.” (Setting aside his Telecaster, Muddy picked up a Guild S-200 Thunderbird guitar, which he held during the photo session for
Electric Mud
— not that he played any
guitar on the album.)

At the 1969 Newport Folk Festival, Muddy shared the bill with Son House, Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachel, Jesse Fuller, Buddy Moss, Taj Mahal, and Big Mama Thornton. “Big Mama had her
Cadillac in the parking lot backstage, and she cooked for the black acts and sold them soul food,” said Bob Messinger, who was managing her as well as Muddy. “She had a butane stove. I
didn’t pay much attention to it because I had booked her on the job and I didn’t want to be associated with it. George Wein, who always demanded quiet backstage and decorum, never said
a word.”

In Boston, kids not old enough to drink could attend shows as long as they didn’t sit at a table. Like hawks on mice, Muddy, approaching sixty, and Spann, forty, hovered over that section.
“When I was fourteen, into the Stones, a friend told me to listen to Muddy,” said Barbara “Candy” Purro. “He came to the Jazz Workshop and I went with my girlfriend.
We had to sit on the side, and Muddy and Spann started talking to us. Muddy was a total gentleman. Otis drank a lot. Every time they’d come to town, they’d get us into the shows, and
Muddy would always dedicate ‘Nineteen Years Old’ to me.”

In a Boston club, Paul got impatient waiting for a patron to get off the phone. “I said, ‘Man, can you get off the phone, I got to make a phone call.’ He said something smart
to me, I was drunk, and I punched him. Then Muddy took me to the side, slapped me, said, ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ It was a light slap on my cheek. I didn’t mind that Mud
slapped me, I considered him a father. But what was weird, the next day he got real close in my face and said, ‘I never touched you, I never touched you.’ ”

In Austin, Muddy heard Johnny Winter: Bill Bentley, now a Warner Brothers Records publicity executive, drove up from Houston, August 2 and 3, 1968: “This was back when nobody yet knew who
Johnny was. He opened the show and smoked Muddy, blew him away. But the second night, Muddy’s band came out and nailed Winter to the ground. They pulled out all the stops: Oscher was playing
on his knees, Muddy played a version of ‘Long Distance Call’ I can still hear note for note. S. P. Leary, during one of the stop-time songs, would jump up and spin around. Later in the
night, after he got loaded, he jumped up and he spun and fell. I’ll never forget the look Muddy gave him.”

Nor will Johnny Winter forget his visit from Oscher: “He came to my hotel room. Paul seemed to put on an act, like he was from the country. He asked if it was safe being that high, and we
weren’t but on the twelfth floor. In Chicago, I’m sure he must have been in some elevators. We were doing an interview, and he asked me if it was safe to talk on a tape recorder.
He’d done records, so I can’t believe he’d really be scared of a tape recorder. He was a nice guy, but he was funny.”

Oscher was enjoying the road. “I’d learned these three-card monte games, now I wanted to try ’em out. So Jerry Portnoy and I go to this place where these big-time card hustlers
are. We’re going back to this traveling salesman’s motel room and I
tell Jerry, ‘When I put my hand on this pocket it’s the card on the right, if I
put my hand on this pocket it’s the card on the left.’ So I’m fading the money and we’re beginning to gamble and I put my hand in this pocket and then Jerry goes
—” Portnoy interjected: “I’m facing Paul: his right or my right?” They blew the hustle.

“I was really into the lifestyle of the guys in the band,” Oscher continued. “People would come into the dressing room and say ‘Oh, man, that was a great show,’ and
I’d say ‘Hey, you ever seen this?’ I was hustling them for like ten, twenty dollars and it was really wrong because the real hustle I had was blowing the fucking harmonica. That
was the real get over.”

Muddy went from the East Coast to a string of University of California dates, then way east for an October / November European tour — billed as “The Story of Soul” —
stopping in England for Jazz Expo ’68 and the BBC’s “Jazz at the Maltings,” then heading to Paris, and eventually landing at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. (Paul
McCartney hung out with the band at Aynsley Dunbar’s club, where Muddy’s group was sitting in. “We hung out, drank,” said Oscher. “Not really anything.”) In
Germany Paul asked for written directions to an electronics store. Walking around Berlin, he’d hold out his paper and ask for help, until someone said, “Do you know what this note
says?” Paul wagged his head. “It says, ‘Send this boy to a barbershop, he needs a haircut.’ ” Coming back, at U.S. Customs, Snake nudged Paul, said, “Hold this
for me, will you?” and handed him his radio. Later Oscher watched with surprise as Snake retrieved the .32 snub-nose he’d taped inside.

“Snake was dangerous,” said Oscher. “I saw him pull a gun on a bus driver right on Forty-third Street. Snake had a five dollar bill and he wanted to board, it was like two in
the morning, me and Snake. And the bus driver said you gotta have exact change. Snake pulled a gun. ‘Drive, motherfucker.’ The bus driver hit the headlights and the police locked him
up, just like that.” In New York, walking across Washington Square Park, the claustrophobia of the big city overwhelmed Snake and he broke it open with a taste of the frontier, whipping out
his pistol and shooting at S. P.’s feet. “Dance, motherfucker.” But Snake’s danger also had a charm. His pickup lines in bars were infamous. He’d say, “Could I
kiss you right there?” and he’d touch the pretty girl’s toe, then “Could I kiss you right here?” and touch her knee, and work his way up to her wicked midnight.

198
“open tunings that he probably hadn’t employed in ages”: Muddy had stopped traveling with two guitars, and when he
played slide, instead of retuning to Spanish, he played in the standard tuning in which he picked; the effect was still powerful, but less gut-wrenching.

199
short a harmonica player: Birmingham Jones played harmonica for Muddy immediately before Paul. (See “Birmingham Jones, an
Introduction” by Len Kunstadt.)

201
The Blackstone Rangers: The Rangers were formed earlier in the decade in response to The Woodlawn Organization’s two attempts
to upgrade the neighborhood; see Lemann,
Promised Land.
The Civil Rights Bill had passed on July 3, 1964, but the lack of actual change brought riots back to the West Side.

202
“The last time I seen Little Walter”: O’Neal, “Blue Smitty” part 2.

202
“We were still hangin’ out together”: O’Neal, “Junior Wells,” p. 20.

203
Geneva remained the backbone: Once, on Geneva’s birthday, everyone in the family — along with those in the house and some
from outside the house — was sitting around the kitchen with guitars and harmonicas. “Muddy believed birthdays were the most special day of the year, because that’s your
day,” said Cookie. On Geneva’s day, she asked, “Old man, you gonna sing me a song?” And Muddy began “Rock Me.” Cotton accompanied on harmonica. (“I
realized what a powerful voice Muddy had,” said Paul. “That whole house shook. It made me understand how Son House and those guys working without microphones could be heard.”)