Muddy Waters: Muddy Waters At Newport 1960 (Chess 75 series) [CHESS]

Why you'll love it

This Chess 75 series edition is mastered from the original analog tapes and pressed on 180g vinyl. Rolling Stone placed At Newport 1960 at No. 348 on its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and it's often called the first live blues album.

This edition

• Chess 75 series
• Mastered from the original analog tapes
• Remastered
• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Stereo mix

About the album

Picture a jazz festival crowd in their summer best, then a Chicago blues band walks on and plays like it has somewhere to be. That was Muddy Waters at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 3, 1960, with Leonard Chess making sure the tapes were rolling. The album came out that November and carried the electric Chicago sound to a whole new audience.

The band is a powerhouse: Otis Spann on piano, James Cotton on harmonica, Pat Hare on guitar, Andrew Stevens on bass and Francis Clay on drums. They open with "I Got My Brand On You," which plenty of listeners rate above the studio take, then roll through "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man," "Baby, Please Don't Go" and "Tiger In Your Tank." "Got My Mojo Working" goes down so well they play it twice, and Spann sings the closing "Goodbye Newport Blues," with words by Langston Hughes.

Along with The Best of Muddy Waters, this record showed a generation of young American and British players what electric blues could do, and you can hear it later in the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. Playing the same song twice in one set might look like poor planning. On this evidence it was simply good manners.

Also at Kops: more Muddy Waters on vinyl · browse Blues

Tracklist

Listen

On Chess (cat# LP 1449), a reissue of the 1960 live album.