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When Muddy Waters moved to Chicago in 1943, it didn’t take him terribly long to find his footing in the local music community.<\/p>\n
“There was quite a few people around singing the blues, but most of them was singing all sad blues,” fellow bluesman Willie Dixon later said of the scene (via the 1987 book Rockin’ in Time: A Social History of Rock-and-Roll<\/em><\/a>). “Muddy was giving his blues a little pep.”<\/p>\n Though Waters worked hard, recording with multiple labels and playing with a variety of different people, his success came gradually. It wasn’t until 1950 that he finally landed a\u00a0relatively popular hit, “Rollin’ Stone,” that\u00a0afforded Waters some relief from the pressures of being a full-time working musician.<\/p>\n Of course, Waters’ career would only grow from there and his ultimate influence stretched far beyond the city of Chicago \u2014 the Rolling Stones<\/a> named themselves after the aforementioned song \u2013 but\u00a0even through the ’60s and ’70s, Waters’ recognition as a blues artist came more as a slow drip than a flash flood. The highest\u00a0placement any of his albums ever reached on the\u00a0Billboard<\/i>\u00a0200\u00a0was No. 70, with 1969’s\u00a0Fathers and Sons<\/i>.<\/p>\n “I’m sorry that the world didn’t know me for 40 years,” Waters said in 1970 (via\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/a><\/em>). “When I was younger, I could have put out more.”<\/p>\n In total, Waters released 14 studio albums, plus many more live ones. His final studio release, King Bee<\/em>, arrived in 1981, produced by Johnny Winter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Also in 1981,\u00a0Rolling Stones members\u00a0Mick Jagger<\/a>, Keith Richards<\/a> and Ronnie Wood<\/a>, plus pianist Ian Stewart<\/a>, used their night off from tour to slip into the Checkerboard Lounge in Chicago\u00a0and jam a little<\/a> with Waters.<\/p>\n Watch Members of the Rolling Stones Play With Muddy Waters in 1981<\/strong><\/p>\n Two years later, 70-year-old Waters went to sleep on the evening\u00a0of April 30, 1983 in his home and did not wake up. According to reporting by The New York Times<\/em> <\/a>then, he’d had a heart attack and\u00a0was pronounced dead at Chicago’s Good Samaritan Hospital. His funeral was held a few days later on May 4, attended by a number of famous musicians.<\/p>\n “The world is richer that we had him,” Waters’ manager, Scott Cameron, said at the time.<\/a>.<\/p>\n Waters’ headstone<\/a>, engraved with his given name\u00a0McKinley Morganfield, has a curious discrepancy on it. In numerous interviews and other related conversations, Waters claimed he was born in 1915 and it was that year that was written on the stone, but other government-issued documents list his birth year as 1913. Regardless, etched below the dates on either side of a guitar, are the words: “The mojo is gone, The master has won…”<\/p>\n READ MORE:\u00a0<\/b>Top 10 Rolling Stones Blues Songs<\/a><\/p>\n Waters’\u00a0legacy lived on in the music of countless blues and rock ‘n’ roll artists. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame<\/a> in 1987, four years after his death.<\/p>\n Paul Butterfield provided the induction speech: “He really made me feel that it was all worth it to go ahead\u00a0and really learn how to play my instrument.”<\/p>\n And Waters seemed to feel good about where his career had taken him.<\/p>\n “This is the best point of my life that I’m living right now,” he said in 1978, the year Waters won his eighth Grammy (via The New York Times<\/a><\/em>). “I’m glad it came before I died, I can tell you.”<\/p>\n Inspired by giants like Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and B.B. King, rock artists have put their own spin on the blues.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gallery Credit: UCR Staff<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nMuddy Waters’ Passing<\/h3>\n
Top 40 Blues Rock Albums<\/h2>\n