1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 30. Muddy Waters – At Newport (1960)


Oddly this is the first full-on 12-bar blues music in this list (and not simply something blues-adjacent like Elvis). Maybe because Dimery starts his list in 1955 and thus leapfrogs the early blues pioneers like Lead Belly and Blind Lemon Jefferson, even Howlin’ Wolf to some extent.  

This is, however, another live recording from Newport Jazz Festival (showing how wide the definition of jazz can be pushed). Both of the live albums from Newport have involved audience fights. Not something I’d really associate with jazz, but different times I guess. 

I don't have much to say about the album itself. Some blues standards here, and the thing with 12-bar blues is that you tend to know where a song is going. Waters straddles the divide between the old, raw, scratchy recordings of early bluesmen, and the later updated white blues of the likes of John Mayall, and in that respect it's a little of an unremarkable middle child, even though it isn't.

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