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Fact #3379

When:

Short story:

Muddy Waters records Hoochie Coochie Man at Chess Studios, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Full article:

Willie Dixon (songwriter/bassist/performer) : Hoochie Coochie Man, that's from the old idea of the seventh son of a seventh son, how he has special powers. Or some lines people can remember, like 'you can't judge a book by looking at its cover'.

I had to get involved in the recording, to get the right tone, otherwise it wouldn't come out the way I wanted. Getting the sound was sometimes hard. There was this rivalry between (Howlin’) Wolf and Muddy, and each of them thought the other was getting the best songs. A lot of times Wolf wouldn't like a song unless I told him I'd written it for Muddy. In the studio, it was a question of blending the sound. You got each of the guys only thinking about what they are playing, but you got to be thinking about how all comes together, and how it will come out on record. There was no headphones, maybe only one or two microphones, you'd have to do all the harmonising and blending with your ears, go into the room and listen, and work out how to blend the sound properly.

Marshall Chess (son of Leonard Chess, owner of Chess Records) : Muddy Waters was our first really big artist. He was the biggest of the Delta blues singers. His was the first electric band. Muddy Waters was like a king. He had tremendous presence. You never treated Muddy Waters with disrespect. He was a leader, always in control, always a gentleman. He liked women and Cadillacs.

In a way, Muddy was an immigrant, just like my father. Muddy came from a farm where you made fifty cents a day. He came to Chicago, just like my father, and what's an immigrant's big dream? To make money. My father and the blues singers were there to make money, not to make great music. It was never a head trip of, "Let's make great music. Music is art." That wasn't it. The main reason was to make money.

We heard about Muddy when he was still driving a truck. My father called him up and said, "Come to Chess. " He came by and we recorded him.

Phil Chess (co-owner, Chess Records) : Muddy never paid rent, the notes on his home. Muddy never paid for his car. I mean, Little Walter, when he got the hit and then he had to go on the road, he didn’t have no transportation, we had to buy him a wagon. You usually took it out of their royalties, but you bought it. People hear you bought it, they figure you just give it to them. I bought a Cadillac, didn’t like it. Bo Diddley, he bought my Cadillac.
(Interview with Mary Katherine Aldin in CD box set The Chess Story, 1947-1975)

John Hammond (folk-blues singer) : Willie was probably the most prolific songwriter I ever met. I remember he once told me, ‘John, back in 1951, me and Memphis Slim were broke. We took a ride to New York for a gig. On the train ride from Chicago I decided I was going to re-word all these great country-blues songs I’d heard since I was a kid – and I just did it. All these great songs like Spoonful … I found I had a real facility for doing that.’.

So all these great songs he wrote for Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter just flowed out of him.
(Rock’n’Reel, November 2007)