THE BLUES ROCKS BACK

Rip It Up, Issue 12, 1 June 1978, Page 9

THE BLUES ROCKS BACK

Ken Williams

The blues, often regarded as music of solitary expression, has yielded some fruitful alliances. Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy, Sleepy John Estes and Hammy Nixon. Now Muddy Waters, the King of Chicago Blues, and Johnny Winter, fast fingered Texan guitar throttler, link arms to breathe new vigour into a form that even die hard enthusiasts feared was a thing of the past. Last year Muddy Waters joined forces with Winter to deliver Hard Again, the most powerful blues album of the seventies and a rejuvenation for Muddy. Now 63 year old

Muddy Waters and 34 year old Johnny Winter present their second collaboration, I'm Ready, The CBS album is easily the equal of its predecessor. Once again, Waters' collaborators are a stellar crew. Apart from Winter, who plays with restraint throughout, there’s Pinetop Perkins (piano) and Willie "Big Eyes' Smith (drums) from Hard Again. Guitarist Bob Margolin switches to bass and the second guitar seat is taken by Jimmy Rogers, one of Waters' most outstanding 50s' sidemen. Replacing James Cotton on harp are Big Walter Horton, a veteran of the

Chicago blues scene, and Jerry Portnoy, who, like Margolin, was in the last Waters’ band that toured New Zealand. This congregation of heavyweights doesn't play on every track the album has a thoughtful variety of tone and mood but when everyone is in there the kitchen gets hot. Winter may be the ideal sideman for Waters, the sting of the younger man’s guitar echoing the master’s sure phrasing, and the harp duelling of Walter and Portnoy is sheer inspiration. Hard Again wasn’t half bad, but Winter seems more at ease as producer this time out. On the earlier album the instruments seemed crammed up to the front of the speakers. There seems more space here. The songs are a mixture of old and new. There are superb remakes of such Waters' standards as “I'm Ready,” “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man’’ and “Screamin’ and Cryin’”. 8.8. King’s “Rock Me” (although Muddy gets the composer credit) and Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” also get the treatment. The new songs are solidly in the Waters’ mainstream. A big extra is a more than fair lashing of that keening slide guitar that Muddy made his trademark before age and ill-health forced a slowing down. The association with Johnny Winter seems to have shed years from Muddy. The verve of these recording bears no comparison to the oftimes torpid perfunctoriness of his later recordings with Chess. Rick Derringer, Winter’s former guitar partner, sums it up: "What I liked about Muddy and Johnny together wasn’t how good Johnny was playing, but just the fact that when Muddy was on the stage with Johnny he was incredibly alive and aware and energetic. “If you ask Muddy, ‘Which out of the young rock and roll guys turns you on?’ he’d say, 'My favourite one is that Johnny Winter,’ and Johnny’d tell you that his all-

time idol living, at least is Muddy Waters. So when they get together it’s a real two way thing. That’s why they work good.” At an age when most men have given it away, or at least slowed down, Muddy Waters sounds as if he could sjrut on forever. And Johnny Winter is the catalyst in this formula of funk. Muddy Waters: “I met Johnny a few years ago in Texas. He didn’t have the big contract then and he wasn’t a big rock and roll star. He was playin' so much of the old stuff ... all the old blues players like me and Jimmy Rogers and a lot more. He was playin’ all of our stuff. “I figured that this was the greatest chance (the opportunity to work with Winter), man, of all my days, to get with

someone who’s still got it, got that early 50s sound.”