Search - Muddy Waters :: More Real Folk Blues

Great music, and a couple of rarities as well

Docendo Discimus | Vita scholae | 08/14/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Muddy Waters' "The Real Folk Blues" album compiled a number of early recordings and some electric mid-50s numbers and presented them as a "folk blues" record in order to cater to the whims of the record buying public at the time, and this companion volume does pretty much the same thing.

Most of the songs are more down-home, though, and there are a few rarities here which don't usually show up on Muddy Waters-compilations (a couple of them aren't even on the otherwise magnificent "Chess Box").



Recorded between 1948 and 1952, these 12 songs include numerous highlights: Drummer Elgin Evans plays a supremely tough cut-and-shuffle rhythm on "She's Alright" (one of only two songs to feature a full band, including a drummer), and Little Walter's chromatic harp smoulders on "You're Gonna Need My Help" and burns a hole right through "Landlady".

Muddy shamelessly credits a really good rendition of Robert Johnson's "Kindhearted Woman" to himself, his electric slide guitar is howling on the great slow "Sad Letter Blues", and "Train Fare Home", "Sittin' Here Drinking'", "Too Young To Know", and "Honey Bee" are among his best early country blues. Just remember not to trust the credits too much...one or two songs feature a harmonica player who has mysteriously disappered from the credits (it must be either Little Walter or Jimmy Rogers, who started out as a harpist in the first Muddy Waters Band), and the liner notes are not the greatest ever. But the music is top-notch.



This is a great collection of early Muddy, and while there are CDs available which document that period much more thoroughly, "More Real Folk Blues" (which is now only available as a twofer-CD, paired with its sister volume), is certainly not a bad place to start. The newcomer is advised to pick up "Muddy Waters At Newport" and the excellent double-disc "Anthology 1947-1972" for starters, though."