Muddy Waters - Woodstock Album (Great Album US 1975)

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Of all the post-Fathers & Sons attempts at updating Muddy's sound in collaboration with younger white musicians, this album worked best because they let Muddy be himself, producing music that compared favorably to his concerts of the period, which were wonderful. His final album for Chess (recorded at Levon Helm's Woodstock studio, not in Chicago), with Helm and fellow Band-member Garth Hudson teaming up with Muddy's touring band, it was a rocking (in the bluesy sense) soulful swansong to the label where he got his start. Muddy covers some songs he knew back when (including Louis Jordan's "Caldonia" and "Let The Good Times Roll"), plays some slide, and generally has a great time on this Grammy-winning album. This record got lost in the shuffle between the collapse of Chess Records and the revival of Muddy's career under the auspices of Johnny Winter, and was forgotten until 1995. The CD contains one previously unreleased number, "Fox Squirrel."

Recorded in 1975, The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album was the brainchild of the Band's Levon Helm and producer/songwriter Henry Glover. At the time, the duo's production company, RCO, had recently set up shop in a barn-turned- studio in Woodstock, New York, and Muddy Waters was their first client. The album, born of a unique merger of top-flight talent (Waters' touring band plus the cream of the musicians then living in and around Woodstock), is one of the loosest, swingingest records that Waters ever cut, and features such musicians as blues-harp great Paul Butterfield, Helm and Garth Hudson (of the Band), guitarist Bob Margolin and keyboardist Willie "Pinetop" Perkins (from Waters' band), and renowned session players Fred Carter and Howard Johnson. 

The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album includes five original songs written by Waters ("Going Down to Main Street," "Born With Nothing," "Funny Sounds," "Love, Deep as the Ocean" and the previously unreleased CD-only bonus track, Fox Squirrel) plus covers of Louis Jordan's "Let the Good Times Roll" and Caldonia, Bobby Charles' "Why Are People Like That" and Leiber & Stoller's Kansas City. As chronicled in the newly penned liner notes by Billboard's Chris Morris, the disc proved to be the last that Waters would record for Chess. It was, however, a memorable farewell - The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album was awarded the 1975 Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording. 

* Paul Butterfield, harmonica 
* Henry Glover, producer 
* Levon Helm, bass/drums/producer 
* Garth Hudson, accordion/keyboards/saxophone 
* Howard Johnson, saxophone 
* Sammy Lawhorn, guitar 
* Bob Margolin, guitar 
* "Pinetop" Perkins, piano 
* Muddy Waters, vocal/guitar 

01. Why Are People Like That   
02. Going Down to Main Street  
03. Born With Nothing  
04. Caldonia    
05. Funny Sounds   
06. Love, Deep as the Ocean   
07. Let the Good Times Roll  
08. Kansas City 
09. Fox Squirrel 
 

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Woodstock Recording