by Muddy Waters List Price:$18.00 Our Price:$13.00 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Product Details
Media: Audio CD
Release Date: Tuesday, March 25, 1997
Label: Chess
Average Customer Review: 5 Based on 18 reviews.
Sales Rank: 1220
Tracks
1.
Still a Fool
2.
Standing Around Crying
3.
Baby Please Don't Go
4.
I Want You to Love Me
5.
(I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man
6.
I Just Want to Make Love to You
7.
I'm Ready
8.
Young Fashioned Ways
9.
Mannish Boy
10.
Sugar Sweet
11.
Trouble No More
12.
She Moves Me
13.
Honey Bee
14.
Long Distance Call
15.
Louisiana Blues
16.
Rolling Stone
17.
Rollin' and Tumblin', Pt. 1
18.
Train Fare Blues
19.
I Feel Like Going Home
20.
I Can't Be Satisfied
21.
(I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man
22.
Baby Please Don't Go
23.
I Can't Be Satisfied
24.
I'm Ready
25.
Rollin' Stone
26.
Rollin' and Tumblin', Pt. 1
Editorial Review
One of the best recordings in Chess Records' 50th Anniverary series is the first of two bookend Muddy Waters collections, His Best 1947-55. Documenting Waters's most creatively and commercially successful years at Aristocrat/Chess, this CD begins with his formative years and ends with Waters at his peak. So you're in for a lot of terrific bottleneck slide guitar work as well as electric Chicago blues. What's to criticize? Superb remasterings of "I Can't Be Satisfied," "Rollin' and Tumblin'," "I'm Ready," and "Mannish Boy" are simply beyond reproach. With simple bass accompaniment from Ernest "Big" Crawford, Waters's bottleneck tracks are spare, haunting and, quite frankly, perfect country blues. And listening to Waters, Little Walter, Willie Dixon, and Jimmy Rogers piece together (and perfect very quickly) the classic Chicago sound is pure blues epiphany. At the very least, this collection shows you why Waters's rollicking stop-time classics like "Mannish Boy" and "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man" have sparked endless imitations over the years--and why nobody has played them better since. --Ken Hohman
Top Customer Reviews
Rating:
5 Simply classic blues recordings by a true blues giant
The two volumes of Muddy waters best provide a good overview of his powerful and influential recordings as they go from amplified country blues to full Chicago Blues band tracks with sidemen that became legends in their own right. The music is essential for any credible blues collection Assuming one does not have too much duplication of the music here, there is no excuse for not having these essential releases.
Rating:
5 Great Classic Music
These are the seminal years of the second, the electric wave of Chicago Blues. Muddy Water's collaborations, especially with Willie Dixon here, created the modern Chicago blues which replaced the older acoustic style represented best by Tampa Red and Big Maceo, and by Lil Hardin Armstrong and Lonnie Johnson collaboration. The older smaller tighter, more person (and it is hard to talk about anything more personal than even the least well prepared Muddy sides),blues. The performances are breathtaking in their strength. You know this man, and you know more about yourself after you hear this.
Rating:
5 Blues from heaven
This album blew my mind and is essential listening for any lover of blues, rock or any form of music(interested listeners are requested to also check out Howlin' Wolf 'His Best' CD issued simultaneously by Chess Records).Nearly 50 odd years later the music sounds as fresh as yesterday. If this isn't where all the rock maestros of later years got their sonic ideas, it should have been.
Rating:
5 ESSENTIAL EVEN FOR NON BLUES LOVER
These are the songs that the BRITISH INVASION groups played to death in the sixties;here's your chance to hear the originals in this wonderful collection.In fact to be frank,this can be the only blues record you ever need when your friends want to hear that kind of music.Just for the record ,let's enumerate which songs were recorded by the likes of THE ROLLING STONES(I CAN'T BE SATISFIED,I JUST WANT TO MAKE LOVE TO YOU,MANNISH BOY);CREAM(ROLLIN AND TUMBLIN,I'M READY)and THEM(BABY PLEASE DON'T GO)and this is only a partial list.MUDDY WATERS was more than anybody else the best performer of the CHICAGO blues.If you like it, you can go with the follow up which completes this anthology perfectly.
Rating:
4 Excellent compilation
"Excellent compilation", eh? So why only four stars?Well, the track selection is really good, bringing together almost all the best of Muddy Waters' rough, muscular blues. Or rather, the best of 1947-55, which is why this is "only" a four star-compilation: It's not a career spanning retrospective, and it doesn't work all that well on its own.But get this CD along with its companion volume, "His Best: 1956-1964", which also features 20 tracks, and you'll have a really fine career overview, second only to the three-disc "Chess Box" set (and perhaps the 50-track "The Anthology: 1947-1972").This CD only has one significant flaw: A production error means than a sloppy alternate take of "Hoochie Coochie Man" is included instead of the master. Otherwise, it's just about as fine a compilation as you could wish for, including Muddy's first single, the slashing acoustic slide guitar blues "I Can't Be Satisfied", and tough, electric Chicago classics like "Honey Bee", "I'm Ready", "Trouble No More", and "I Just Want To Make Love To You".Just remember that this isn't the definitive word on Muddy Waters - he made superb songs after 1955 as well.
Rating:
5 this is the one !
I was looking for the definitive Muddy Waters CD, and I found it here. The best songs from his best period with the best musicians. To me this is a CD that will always be heard. All 20 songs are masterpieces but I could single out "I'm Ready", "Mannish Boy", "can't be Satisfied" for their outstanding quality. Little Walter was an amazing Harmonica player who was at his best playing with Muddy Waters. His piercing solos gives the music here an edge I found nowhere else. The sound is very good, and the number of song (20) lets you enjoy the music thoroughly without being abraptly cut. This is a CD for the "deserted island" list.
Rating:
5 A must-have
I'm willing to stick my neck out and assert that Muddy Waters was the greatest blues performer in history. Robert Johnson wrote the world's creepiest blues tunes and his shadow looms large over every blues player who followed him, but Muddy and his band gave birth to rock and roll. They electrified the blues, and not just literally. The band that cut most of these tracks smokes like no other, and the cuts have a sound which, like Sun recordings, just can't be duplicated.It may be the blues, but there is plenty of joy in these recordings, and nobody does bravado like Mr Morganfield ('I'm Ready', 'Mannish Boy' and the sublime 'Hoochie Coochie Man'.)Just look at the track list. The blues does not get any better than this.
Rating:
5 WOW!
Is there any better buy you could make? I mean, the cost of these songs comes out to about 69 cents a song. This was my first Muddy Waters CD as I wanted to get a taste of what he offered, and all I can say is that there is no going back now.Often imitated but never duplicated, Muddy is the epitome of the blues. From I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man to Mannish boy, these are timeless classics which will never be improved. This is most definitely a "desert island cd".....add it to your collection. If you don't buy the two "His Best" CD's: 1947-1955 and 1956-1964, I would highly recommend the Chess box set. Again.....one word: "WOW"
Rating:
5 Muddy Is The Man!!!
If you are a blues fan you have to have at least one Muddy Waters CD and this would be the one. "Mannish Boy" is probably my favorite. This is the first Muddy Waters song I ever heard although I had heard plenty of his songs done by other artists. It was used in a beer commercial (Budweiser I believe)back in the early '90's and I had to find out who it was. His version of the often recored "Baby Please Don't Go" is my favorite version of this song. This is an essential CD if you are just getting into blues. Also see Howling Wolf's "Rocking Chair album" and "Moaning at Midnight." And for Delta Blues, Robert Johnson's complete recordings since it is only two CDs and Son House's "Father of the Delta Blues."
