Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield, 1913–1983) founded Chicago electric blues — he is the man through whom the rural Delta blues moved to the city and began to sound like the rock we know. Born in Mississippi, he grew up on the Stovall plantation near Clarksdale and played guitar from childhood; in 1941 the folklorist Alan Lomax recorded him for the first time, for the Library of Congress. He was still a quiet acoustic singer then.
In 1943 Waters moved to Chicago, like thousands of Black Southerners in the years of the Great Migration, and picked up an electric guitar — nothing quieter could be heard in the noisy bars of the West Side. So Chicago blues was born: a rhythm section with drums, bass, piano, harmonica, and a biting, distorted electric guitar. For Chess Records he cut "Hoochie Coochie Man," "Mannish Boy," "I Just Want to Make Love to You," "Rollin' Stone," "Got My Mojo Working," "I'm Ready" — songs that became a textbook.
From "Rollin' Stone" Brian Jones took the name of his band, Rolling Stone magazine took its title, and Bob Dylan the title of "Like a Rolling Stone." The Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix all grew up on Waters's music; in the 1970s he returned with new studio albums made alongside Johnny Winter and won the recognition he had long been denied.
His regular band — Little Walter on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Otis Spann at the piano — remained the model of the Chicago ensemble.
To listen to Muddy is to understand how the blues became electricity, and how the blues verse became the foundation of rock and roll.