Sunday Morning Blues - Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Sippie Wallace, Peetie Wheatstraw

Getting down towards the end of the ABC Of The Blues... Volumes 47 and 48


Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield, known by stage name Muddy Waters, is considered the father of modern Chicago Blues. While there's some minor controversy over his nickname, it's most widely (and probably correctly) accepted it came out of the 1927 flood in Mississippi where he was born. He'd moved to Chicago in 1940, but quickly moved back to Mississippi and opened a Juke Joint. The Library of Congress recorded him twice, in 1941 and 42. He moved back to Chicago in 1943 to become a professional musician after hearing those. Muddy quickly rose to prominence in the 1950s, his band become the starting point for a number of musicians. He continued on with steady success until his death, due in part to his louder electric blues style.

Some of the recordings here are the much earlier pre-Chicago era recordings from his early career. And we get some of his later Chicago Blues sound as well. A good mix, with some of his hits. His discography is very easy to get a hold of still so the scattered selection is a good sample.

Junior Wells
Another Chicago Bluesman, Junior Wells started with Muddy Waters band in the 1950s, a strong harmonica player. He would go on to support the Rolling Stones numerous times in the 1970s, bleeding the Chicago Blues with more rock. He never completely left the blues behind, he never had a big career as a solo artist, though it was steady.

Great blues harmonica leads all the songs here. All the recordings are nice and clean, and include his few hits from his solo recordings as well. The seeds for the modern Chicago Sound are here, learned from his time with Muddy Waters' band carried into his solo career. All the cuts here are earlier from before his output started to waver from a pure Chicago sound.

Sippie Wallace
Sippie started out in Chicago's jazz scene before getting into the blues in the 1920s. Known as the Texas Nightingale on early billings. She moved to Detroit soon after, where her husband and brother both died in 1936. She dropped out of the music scene until the mid 60s, where she was coaxed out of retirement as the folk blues revival was getting into full swing. She enjoyed a solid twenty year career from that point until her death after a stroke.

Unfortunately, many of the recordings here are from early 78s and are of poor quality. Whomever recorded these did not do a great job of cleaning them up, her voice is almost lost in the hiss in some instances. Though not all of them are that bad, there isn't anything from her comeback career to compare it to.

Peetie Wheatstraw
Stage name of William Bunch, Wheatstraw was on of the most prolific recorded blues artists of the 1930s. Born around 1902, he moved to St Louis in the late 1920s where he started to play. While the only known picture shows him with a guitar, he primarily played piano. He was a consistent seller of recordings during the depression, even with a two year hiatus from 32-34 to perfect his piano playing.

Due to the nature of a drastically reduced recording industry in the 1930s, most of Peetie's music (and others of the era) have a nearly stagnant consistency to them. In a short set like the ten tracks here it's not particularly noticeable though. All the recordings are fairly clean, with very little hiss. A lot of devil references are in play too, some say this is where Robert Johnson got his idea.

The next two volumes cover Johnny Guitar Watson, Big Joe Williams, and both Sonny Boy Williamsons (John Lee & Rice Miller).