Muddy Waters: Mannish Boy

heat lightning, moonshine alligators and women stumbling through the burning corn

When Robbie Robertson asked Muddy Waters to participate in the filmed concert that was to become The Last Waltz, Muddy Waters agreed with the condition that Waters would bring his own rhythm section to back him. Robertson had explained during the negotiations that the idea of the concert was that The Band was, well, the band for the night and they’d be the ones backing the artists.

Muddy understood all that, but he didn’t trust the single repeating measure of Mannish Boy to anyone but his own crew – a five-note riff repeated exactly eighty-four times in the song, a lick so simple you could learn it your second week of playing guitar.

In the end The Band was permitted to play along. Robbie Robertson and his friends could ride his locomotive, but they sure weren’t going to drive it.

Oooooooooh, yeah. Oh, yeah…
Everything gonna be alright this morning…
Ooooh, yeah.

And then Muddy Waters lets loose The Sound that gives birth to an entire universe of rock and roll every time it is played.

If …