MUDDY WATERS
So powerful, he scared Hendrix
Six-time Grammy winner Mckinley Morganfield ruled the Chicago blues scene from the mid 1940s on. Moving from Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1941 and switching from acoustic to electric guitar two years later, Morganfield (now Muddy Waters) assembled a band of the finest players in town, including Little Walter (harmonica), Otis Spann (piano) and Jimmy Rogers (guitar). Live, Muddy’s band was a powerhouse. Jimi Hendrix found it terrifying – “I first heard him as a little boy and it scared me to death,” quipped Jimi, who took a famous Muddy lick and turned it into Voodoochile. Muddy’s playing was almost primeval.
Bluesman John P Hammond stated, “Muddy was the master of just the right notes; profound, deep and simple.” Although he wrote songs, he is mainly remembered for covers that became the definitive versions, such as Rollingstone (from which both magazine and band took their name), Gotmymojoworking, Mannish boy, and Hooc hi ecooc hi e man. Muddy was rarely seen without his red Fender Telecaster, on which he mostly played slide and the occasional riff, but his legend and musical influence remain almost unequalled. As BB King put it, “It’s going to be years before people realise how great his contribution was to American music.”
LEAD BELLY The King of the 12-String
Born Huddie William Ledbetter in 1888, Lead Belly led a roaming life, picking up hundreds of songs from the oral folk traditions of the Deep South. He was a proficient multi-instrumentalist, but his primary instrument was the 12-string acoustic guitar. A posthumously released collection of prison ballads recorded in the 1930s immortalised his status with its title: Kingofthe Twelve-stringguitar. He played a 1920s jumbo-bodied, flat-topped Stella Auditorium with an extra long scale length, measuring 26.5 inches, which he would commonly tune down to B or C Standard to give his guitar its characteristically deep tonality.
Renowned not only for his musical skill, Lead Belly had an infamous predilection for violence, and it was during a stint at Lousiana’s Angola Prison Farm for attempted murder that he was “discovered” by musicologists John and Alan Lomax, who were recording folk songs for the Library of Congress. The pair campaigned for his release in 1934 and recorded his classic tracks Midnight Special, Goodnight, Irene and many more.
Following his death in December 1949, Lead Belly left behind an immense body of work that directly inspired Britain’s skiffle movement. George Harrison, a 12-string master himself, once said: “No Lead Belly, no Lonnie Donegan. Therefore no Lead Belly, no Beatles.” Moreover, Lead Belly’s influence has continued into the modern era, with Nirvana and Jack White among those who have covered his songs.
T-BONE WALKER The man who invented electric blues guitar playing as we know it
Some blues pundits have opined that Aaron Thibeaux ‘T-bone’ Walker laid down the template of pentatonic fretboard shapes that blues guitarists have followed ever since. A huge influence on B.B. King, Walker played mellow, swinging lines and jazzy chords on his hollow-bodied Gibson ES-250. On stage, however, he became the supreme showman, playing the guitar behind his head and doing the ‘duck walk’ which Chuck Berry copied (along with many of T-bone’s licks). Hugely musical, Walker studied with the same teacher as jazz guitar innovator Charlie Christian, both of whom spearheaded new, electric forms of their respective genres.
JOHN LEE HOOKER As low down and dirty as the blues can get
This son of a Mississippi sharecropper had a musical style that was all his own. Usually playing an Epiphone Emperor while sitting down, Hooker drove the music with simple, open-position licks. Hooker spat out songs with barely hidden innuendo about sex and other basic desires like alcohol and money. Hooker never much cared for time signatures and his band often had to guess when he was changing chords. But if anything this added to his unquestionable authenticity. A true blues giant!