Rolling Out The Red Carpet In Rolling Fork

Today Muddy Waters recieved his blues marker in Rolling Fork as the birthplace of McKinley A. Morganfield. Eleanor Barkhorn writes about the big day in yesterday's Delta Democrat:

“We're just so excited to have this tangible evidence of Muddy Waters here in Rolling Fork,” said Meg Cooper, coordinator for the Mississippi Lower Delta Partnership, who spearheaded efforts to bring the blues marker to Rolling Fork.

Cooper said international tourists flock to Rolling Fork, searching for signs of Waters, who was born McKinley Morganfield in 1913 and lived in the Delta until the 1940s, before moving to Chicago.

That's fine, except, Muddy was not born in Rolling Fork.

Muddy Waters biographer Robert Gordon was on hand for the ceremony, so nobody's trying to fool tourists. Because the first page in Gordon's biography of Muddy details where Muddy was born and why so many wrongly believe it to be Rolling Fork. Apparently the marker will explain that while Muddy often said he was born in Rolling Fork, he actually was born in neighboring Issaquena County at a place called Jug's Corner and Rolling Fork was the nearest post office. Here's an excerpt of an interview with Muddy's brother Robert Morganfield for Robert Gordon's 2002 documentary "Can't Be Satisfied", a companion to the biography of the same name.
If you really want to see where Muddy Waters was born, Click here to see unused video and interviews from Robert Gordon's American Masters documentary on Muddy Waters.

And if you really want to find out how it really wasn't Alan Lomax who "discovered" Muddy Waters, then read Gordon's bio. Here's what music writer and historian Dave Marsh had to say about it following Lomax's death in 2002:

Lomax's obit made the front page mainly because he "discovered" Son House and Muddy Waters. But in Can't Be Satisfied, his new Muddy Waters biography, Robert Gordon shows that Lomax's discoveries weren't the serendipitous events the great white hunter portrayed. Lomax was led to House and then Waters by the great Negro scholar, John Work III of Fisk University. Gordon even shows Lomax plagiarizing Work, and not on a minor point. (See page 51) In his book, Lomax offers precisely one sentence about Work. He eliminated Work from his second Mississippi trip. He also burned Muddy Waters for the $20 he promised for making the records.

Click here to read the full Marsh article.

Yes, they rolled out the red carpet today for Muddy Waters in Rolling Fork. Hopefully, it's a really long carpet that stretches all the way to Jug's Corner. Like the $20 Lomax never paid him, Muddy deserves it, and so much more.

Click to see the PBS American Masters Muddy Waters page.

Click here to hear a young Muddy sing "Country Blues" as recorded by Alan Lomax on the Stovall Plantation.

Mannish Boy

The earliest known photograph of Muddy Waters is with his first true love; the first recording he ever made. It would be a beautiful and lasting relationship, Muddy and blues records. He would of course become one of the most influential musicians ever to strike a chord.

Hollywood is late in telling the Muddy Waters story with the release this weekend of "Cadillac Records", but music writers have been telling his story for decades. Still, it took a long time for a proper biography to emerge.

"Muddy Waters usually told people that he was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi," begins Robert Gordon's 2002 biography of Muddy called "Can't Be Satisfied".

He continues:

Rolling Fork is where the train stopped, where Muddy's family would get their mail and do their shopping. Rolling Fork was on the map. But Muddy's actual birthplace is to the west and north of there, in the next county over -- Issaquena, pronounced "Essaquena," the initial "e" the only thing soft in this hard land."

On Wednesday, December 3rd at 10:30 a.m., Rolling Fork once again will be called the birthplace of Muddy Waters, this time by the state of Mississippi with another historic marker along the growing blues trail. Waters already has a marker in his name in Clarksdale, six miles from where he grew up at the Stovall Plantation, where he lived and worked and learned to play the delta blues by watching and listening to his idol Son House.

Later, Gordon writes inaccuracies in Muddy's life story were not uncommon, sometimes with Muddy acting as the innacurate source:

"Although his parents never married, the child was given his father's last name: McKinley A. Morganfield. In years to come, after he moved to Chicago, Muddy usually told people he was born in 1915, oddly shaving only two years off his age (if his goal was to appear younger for the entertainment field). He thus became a man born in a year he wasn't born in, from a town where he wasn't born, carrying a name he wasn't born with."

That nickname, Muddy Waters, was given to him by his grandmother, Della Grant. And that is the name that today the world remembers him by. Whether the world remembers that he actually was born a county away from Rolling Fork, at a bend in the road next to the Cottonwood Plantation in an area known as Jug's Corner is of little consequence. Robert Johnson, after all, lays claim to three burial sites. Giving Muddy two birth sites is the least the blues world can do.


Click to hear Robert Gordon October 3, 2002 interview on NPR.

Click to hear Muddy's "Mannish Boy"

Forty Days With Muddy Waters

What would it have been like to watch Muddy Waters cut one of his many classic records in the legendary Chess Records studio at 2120 South Michigan in Chicago?

A new movie attempts to show us how "Forty Days and Forty Nights" might have went down in 1956 with Muddy and Little Walter.

Cadillac Records Exclusive Clip


The movie is Cadillac Records, the story of Chess Records. (see earlier blog mention) That's Jeffery Wright portraying Muddy Waters and Columbus Short as Little Walter. That's Buddy Guy's vocal on the soundtrack. The movie opens December 5th, just two days after Mississippi once again honors Muddy with a second blues trail marker. The first marker is placed at Muddy's cabin site on the Stovall Plantation in Clarksdale. This time around, a blues trail marker will be unveiled at his birthplace in Rolling Forks.

From the Clarksdale Press Register we find that the Delta Blues Museum has secured $1.8 million in grants to expand the museum, including a new home for the Muddy Water's cabin exhibit where it can be erected to its actual height. Right now, the top section of the cabin is not included, as the ceiling height of the museum is too low.

Will this star-studded new movie renew interest in Mississippi's blues greats like Muddy Waters? Absolutely. And many of those will come to check out the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale and the blues trail markers across the state. With 58 markers now in place, to view them all, it just might take someone, oh I don't know, something like forty days and forty nights.

Click to hear Muddy's Forty Days and Forty Nights.

Cadillac Records

If you know who plays the bass drum on the Muddy Waters song "She Moves Me", then you can safely say that you do indeed know a lot about Leonard Chess and Chicago's famed Chess Records. This Christmas season, a lot more people will know a lot more about Chess Records.

There are a lot of great stories to tell about Chess Records. I'm not sure if this latest film is one of them, but we'll find out when TriStar Pictures releases "Cadillac Records" the story of Chess Records.
The movie stars Academy Award winner Adrien Brody as Leonard Chess and Shiloh Fernandez as brother Phil. Beyoncé Knowles is Etta James. With the exception of James and Chuck Berry, the musicians who made Chess records famous are almost exclusively from Mississippi, including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, James Cotton, Jimmie Rogers, Hubert Sumlin, and more. Some of the filming took part in Mississippi.

Here's the trailer:


The film premieres on December 5th. Then we'll find out if like Muddy says, "She Moves Me." (click to listen to Muddy on guitar, Little Walter on harmonica and Leonard Chess on bass drum)

Still King of the 9 String

On his headstone Big Joe Williams is proclaimed to be "King of the 9 String Guitar." It's doubtful that anyone disagrees. It's probably even safer to say that nobody really knows the name of whoever claimed to be second best.

A contemporary of Lonnie Johnson, Honeyboy Edwards, Roosevelt Sykes, John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, Peetie Wheatstraw, Robert Nighthawk, and a very young Muddy Waters who played harmonica for Big Joe Williams in the early '40's at juke joints around Mississippi. Williams created the 9 string guitar to make his sound original. But he didn't need a novelty string instrument to make himself a standout and an eventual W.C. Handy Blues Hall of Fame singer/songwriter/guitarist. One of 16 children, he was a talented bluesman from Crawford, Mississippi who taught himself to play on a homemade guitar at the age of five. His very first hit in 1935, "Baby Please Don't Go" became a shortlist blues standard, covered by his one-time harmonica player Muddy Waters, among many others.

Here's Big Joe's version from 1963 on YouTube.



On Monday November 3rd in his hometown of Crawford at four in the afternoon, Big Joe Williams once again will be proclaimed "King of the 9 String" with a Blues Heritage Trail Marker.

Don't expect anyone to challenge it. Not on Monday. Not ever.

Blues for Israel

Mississippian and grammy-winner James Cotton is taking the Mississippi blues to the Middle East:

Cotton will play three dates (six shows) in Israel with his band, Super Harp. Born in Mississippi in 1935, Cotton is a legendary harmonica player who recorded four songs for Sun Records by the age of 15. He was given his own 15-minute radio show in Memphis at 17, which opened more doors for him. By the late '60s, Cotton had six albums under his belt. Cotton, known as "Superharp," was Muddy Waters's harmonica player for 12 years, and he collaborated with other blues legends, too. In addition, Cotton has played with and opened for Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Santana, Steve Miller and B.B. King, among others. He became famous for his wild showmanship, which sometimes included backflips. While the acrobatics are no longer part of the routine and the volume has been toned down, Cotton is still touring.

Read the full story here: Blues singer James Cotton coming to Israel