MINT + Booklet 6 LP MUDDY WATERS - CHESS BOX BLUES

$

104

                                                  ***  ATTENTION! **

  72 TRACKS overloaded BLUES Legend 6 LP BOX + BOOKLET

          MUDDY WATERS

                         USA - CHESS RECORDS - 80002    

Thee ORIGINAL mammoth SIX LP BOX SET (72 tracks!) plus a large 32 page booklet ... limited, long gone lavish of love production, straight from the original CHESS master tapes... 23 of the tracks are 'rare' and 10 have never been released...the rest essential blues classics.   

Of all the Chicago blues artists who thrived in the 1950s and early 1960s, Muddy Waters arguably had the most influence on rock and roll music.  Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson, to name two, were certainly important figures for young British R&B bands.  But consider: one of the biggest rock bands of all-time, a national music magazine, and a plugged-in Bob Dylan all took inspiration from a Waters song, "Rollin' Stone"; early rock and roller Bo Diddley modeled his "I'm a Man" after Muddy Waters' persona; and heavy blues-rock groups like Led Zeppelin started out playing amped-up Muddy Waters songs, two of which were written by his bass player, Willie Dixon.  "You Shook Me" and "You Need Love," with its percolating rhythm, may not be as driving as the Zeppelin covers (the latter song renamed "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zep), but Waters' cool vocals are much better suited to the songs than Robert Plant's hysterical screams.

The roots of rock and roll are varied and run deep, but one important strand can be uncovered by listening to Muddy Waters' The Chess Box.  This 6 LP BOX set covers the major tracks Waters recorded for the influential Chess label beginning in 1947 and continuing into the early 1970s.  The man born as McKinley Morganfield arrived in Chicago from the Mississippi delta and helped transform the blues from its rural, acoustic roots to the urban, electric sound that many a bar band plays today.

Muddy's vocals range between a field holler, no doubt courtesy of years working on a plantation, an a low bellow meant to be more seductive than menacing.  The singing, though, only tells half the story.  Muddy's band might have been the best urban blues band ever assembled, which in its 1950s prime included Dixon, Otis Spann on piano, second guitarist Jimmy Rogers, and the smokin' harp playing of Little Walter Jacobs, who is best featured on the instrumental, "Evans Shuffle."  When Little Walter bowed out to concentrate on a solo career, Waters replaced him with James Cotton.  In the 1960s, as blues producers began to emphasize the use of horns, Waters experimented by substituting the usual harmonica for a clarinet to give songs like "Short Dress Woman" a New Orleans-style jazz sound.

Unlike some of his contemporaries, Waters seemed at home in a jazz music idiom.  Some of the first tracks on this set place him in a setting not unlike early blues singer Bessie Smith, with a strumming guitar and woodwind in the background and a ragtime piano roll as the lead instrument.  Further along, on Disc 2, finds Waters on a few jump-blues sessions, like "Good News," where the singer is overjoyed upon hearing of the birth of his son.  

Of course, Muddy's well-known numbers like the aforementioned "Rollin' Stone," "Mannish Boy" (written as an answer record to Bo Diddley), and the boogie shuffle "Baby Please Don't Go" are here, as well as Dixon's "(I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man" and "I Just Want to Make Love to You."  But since these are available on any given Best of compilation, what I find most appealing about this set, and the reason for purchasing any box set I suppose, are his more obscure songs, which I believe merit a mention.

The blues is a feeling, either you got it or you don't, and on a song like "Flood," Muddy Waters mixes his emotional state with the impending sense of natural doom.  You want heartless?  Try "Diamonds at Your Feet" where the first line Muddy sings is "She gotta take sick and die one of these days" as if he can't wait until his old lady up and croaks so she isn't a bother to him.  At other times, the blues is a reflection of sexual urgency, as found on the saucy "Elevate Me Mama."  But sometimes those urges go unfulfilled, like in "Young Fashioned Ways," where Muddy sings that he may be older, but he still has his eye on the young pretties.  However, when he gets one, as he does on "She's 19 Years Old," he realizes he is deficient and cannot satisfy her.

Like other Chess sets by Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters' The Chess Box includes tracks that peer into the recording studio and show how Waters and producer Leonard Chess exchanged ideas.  An informative booklet, including essays and photos on Muddy's career, complete the package. The Chess Box may be too much of a good thing for casual fans, but anybody with a desire to hear vital blues music, or who wants to learn about one of the foundations of rock, would do themselves a great service by listening to this set.

CONDITION: The cover is a thick solid box in top M- the light beige color would gather soil and dirt easily, this one is CLEAN ...no splits, no bends or dents, no problems 

The vinyl  all six records (and the booklet) are clean, M- will play top level ...essentially like new long gone original issue... 

                keeper copy!

SEE: SELLERS OTher items for more & more of similar cool sounds for "head" people...

EFFICIENT/CAREFUL GRADING

All imperfections are noted both cover & record