#483: Muddy Waters, ‘The Anthology’

MCA, 2001

It took me two days to listen to this anthology. 50 songs at 2 hours and 25 minutes. Even though the songs are short, they did start sounding the same around song 35 though.

My big takeaway is that this is what Gen Z would call “simp” music (symp?). Muddy Waters is a wildly masculine man and acts all needy in 90% of these tracks, not caring at all about what anyone is going to think about him. Somehow, the more needy his lyrics are, the more swagger he carries. He’s got mojo.

It is such a confusing little trick that I don’t know if anyone else could accomplish. I think Drake tries but it just comes off needy and soft, not hard and resilient.

Resilient. That’s a word I’ve been thinking about for the past two days. The Blues genre is born of sharecropping and slavery. It is the music that is made at rock bottom when the musician can see the way out. Only the musician can determine if there even is a way out. It is a choice to believe in that.

Muddy was a sharecropper who took his guitar to Chicago, got famous, confused society by going electric and then became famous again. He basically invented rock & roll, inspired British people to like rock & roll and is the reason why the Rolling Stones became the Rolling Stones.

Resilient.

For the past few months, I made the spiritual choice to forsake resilience and just feel terrible about my health and my job situation and my lack of direction and focus. My soul was moany and tired. If the Rolling Stones had shown up at my door to invite me on tour after I felt my career was long gone, I would have shut the door in their face and told them that I was not interested in making a fool of myself. Muddy didn’t do that. He got on the plane and performed and kept working. I’m sure he was tired and sick of racist gigs and changing trends in music. He kept going.

I think I can too. I think I should. So here is to resilience and to listening to Muddy Waters and giving some musky little hip swivels to each of his verses.

Top songs: Rollin’ Stone, Standing Around Crying, I’m Ready, I Want To Be Loved, Sugar Sweet, Look What You’ve Done