Yes, I lifted the title from the Laura Nyro record. Upon consideration of how to begin, the only thing that came to me was what I had done so far tonight. I’d walked the dog. I‘d put the lights on in the house.
The key event was actually that I gave The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album a spin while I cooked dinner. It’s one of the few blues records I own. I was freezing and I was looking for a record that would be appropriate for the mood. I love the cover of the album – basic, with a snapshot on the front of what looks like everyone in town standing at the Village Green to say “cheese.” It’s cold and wet. You can just feel it. You can see the Dutch Reformed Church in the background, just like it looks today. Among the frozen in the grainy picture, you can make out Muddy and Paul Butterfield pretty easily. Muddy is holding his key to the city. The sky behind them is the archetypal gray of winter in the Catskills. The Turtle Creek studio photo on the back cover is a very icy, snowy scene. The gatefold photos of everyone in the session band are very dark and earthy, like they were taken at dusk or illuminated only by firelight. It’s exactly what you’d imagine it would have been like in the dead of winter during those sessions, holed up where it was warm. With that snow and ice and cold outside, you ain’t goin’ nowhere. May as well cut some blues with Muddy live off the floor. The irony is that despite the feel of the sleeve design, the whole thing was completed in just a couple of February days in 1975.
The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album starts with a Bobby Charles tune, “Why Are People Like That.” It sounds like it could have been on the Bearsville Bobby Charles record a few years earlier. In typical Bobby Charles style for that era, it feels like it wrote itself. In its masterful simplicity, you feel like you already know it. It’s taken as a blues, even though to my ear Bobby Charles always transcends the blues with his almost childlike lyrical perspective. I think Muddy’s record would have been a great one for the Bearsville catalog, but it was released on Chess.
By the time I’d finished chopping my vegetables, side one was ending with “Caledonia,” of which I’ve heard many recordings. This is the one with the hook “What make your big head so hard?” It had never occurred to me that Todd Rundgren might have been thinking of the same phrase when he wrote “Hodja,” which appeared on his A Cappella album. “I know what to wear/ I know how to sound/ I know about kissing the ground.” Same rhythm and feel. Well, like Woody Allen said, “If you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.” For what it’s worth, Todd’s tune stops borrowing there if it really ever did at all. “Hodja” is one of my favorites on that record.
On side two, after having been enjoying the record, I started to notice the sounds of the instruments. There is some slap echo on things, but it seems like that barn they were recording in had some hard (and cold) surfaces. I think it’s the same place where the Band filmed those performances of “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)” and “Up On Cripple Creek” in 1969. There was lots of wood in there for sure. You can hear it. It was on this side of the album that I started to wonder which tune Levon Helm played bass on (if the liner notes are to be trusted). Maybe it was “Funny Sounds,” which is an outlier on the bottom to my ear. I also started to notice a lot of harp with accordion. It’s a very interesting choice in what is certainly an informal arrangement. They cover so much of the same musical ground and range. At one point, even Pinetop Perkins’ piano was in the same register too. After hearing Paul Butterfield doing that impressive circular breathing trick on “Mannish Boy” at The Last Waltz concert, I was hoping to hear some of that on this record, but there is none in evidence here.
“Let The Good Times Roll,” originally recorded by Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five really makes Side Two with kind of a swing feel, heavy on drum fills for that unmistakable intro. (Easy there, Levon.) I can only guess the horns were handled by Garth Hudson and Howard Johnson, whose name Robbie Robertson mentions as one of the best horn men in New York at the beginning of the Band’s live album Rock of Ages. This is a solid and enjoyable take on a classic, good-feeling tune I know well. It gives me pause that Muddy cutting this in 1975 would be the equivalent of a group today recording a “standard” that originally came out in 1995. Yikes, man. I do confess a weakness for the Louis Jordan version, but this one is no slouch.
What can I say about “Kansas City?” I just never got into that tune. Muddy gives some vocals to Pinetop on this one, while Muddy’s off-mic, upping the ante. First he’s gonna get one of them women there, then two. By the end, he claims that he’ll be getting all of them.
The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album breathes. It’s alive.There is no question about that. The tempos drift. The music pushes and pulls. This is what’s supposed to happen when humans move air together. The group is seeing where things go, and having a great time doing it. They even left the studio chatter in between tunes. It must have been a good hang, or was made to sound like a good hang. For me, it’s great just for listening. No pressure to cop licks or anything. Just letting it wash over me is plenty special. Muddy’s voice is just what I wanted it to be. Levon, Garth and Butterfield are speaking their own languages, but they are also languages I know, so it’s a pleasure to hear them put their stuff in the mix.
I put The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album in the category of Woodstock “homespun” records that I admire just for their sound. These include Bobby Charles and Mud Acres Music Among Friends. Just human beings making a sound and laying it down. That’s what it’s all about. Not to take away from the miracle that is New Aquarius, on which I made every single sound, but these records really just sound like they were a blast to make.
So, I started with Laura Nyro and ended up with Muddy Waters and a good dinner. I’ll take that. Now, I must do something about that grounding problem with my turntable. The only way to mask that 60 cycle buzz is to play my records really loud. It’s been working out, but it’s a short term solution.
I wonder if my neighbors liked Muddy Waters.
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