Muddy Water Performs a killer set an the Newport Jazz festival in 1960. We also talk about “dentist blues” and what it means to “put a tiger in your tank” .
029 Muddy Waters – At Newport 1960
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One response to “029 Muddy Waters – At Newport 1960”
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The whole album is just a build up to “I’ve Got My Mojo Working” and he hits that song and just goes off. Then he plays it again and you still aren’t tired of it. Blues can be formulaic and samey but I’m glad this performance was captured on tape because it was something special.
In fact, listening to this live album makes me wonder if I have been wrong about the blues all along. Maybe it’s not formulaic and samey, maybe we’re just experiencing it the wrong way. The songs don’t have variety because they are all parts of a whole, which is the performance. We are no more meant to listen to a single blues song on tape at our work desk than we’re meant to read Shakespeare in a classroom. These things are meant to be experienced live. We are meant to attend a performance by this artist where he builds and builds and builds from song to song and lures us into a sense of regularity and then explodes and blows everyone away.
Also, hearing Muddy Waters sing about mojo the way it’s meant to be sung makes me want to slap Jim Morrison in his stupid hippie face.
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