Muddy Waters: The Best of Muddy Waters (Chess 75 series) [GEFFEN]

Why you'll love it

This Chess 75 series edition is mono, mastered from the original analog tapes, pressed on 180g vinyl at Quality Record Pressings and housed in a tip-on gatefold jacket. The Blues Foundation inducted the album into its Hall of Fame in 1983 as a Classic of Blues Recording.

This edition

• Chess 75 series
• 180g vinyl
• Mono
• Mastered from the original analog tapes
• Pressed at Quality Record Pressings
• Tip-on gatefold jacket
• Remastered

About the album

Muddy Waters' first album was a hits collection before anybody had heard of the album as a format worth fussing over. Chess's third LP ever, it gathered twelve singles issued between 1948 and 1954, and most of them had already been top 10 R&B hits on Billboard.

The man born McKinley Morganfield grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, was recorded there by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941 and moved to Chicago in 1943. Plug him in and you get modern Chicago blues: "I Can't Be Satisfied" and "Louisiana Blues" from the early days, "Long Distance Call" and "Honey Bee," then the Willie Dixon classics "Hoochie Coochie," "I Just Want To Make Love To You" and "I'm Ready." Little Walter's harmonica, Jimmy Rogers' guitar and Otis Spann's piano fill out a band that set the template.

He toured England in 1958, helping spark the British blues boom, and Chess put the album out again in 1969 as Sail On. A certain London band took their name from track five, "Rollin' Stone," which counts as a fairly good return on one song.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Chess (cat# LP 1427), a reissue of the 1958 compilation.