Article: The Muddy book took me...

The Muddy book took me five years to research and write. I had no children when I began, and now I have two, but that's only part of the reason it took so long.

The deeper I got into Mud, the stickier he became. He was a reserved man, an illiterate man, and from a culture that was rarely, and often erroneously, recorded. I took as a mandate the necessity to track anyone who could speak about Muddy's early years; I knew that part of his life would soon be blowing away like the dust his stomping grounds have become. One hot afternoon I drove the rural roads outside Rolling Fork, asking people walking “where any old people lived.” I had several great encounters, and turned up the story about Muddy's father performing on Christmas Day (p. 3.).

Muddy opened up as a character for me after I spent time with his half-brother Robert Morganfield, and his granddaughter, Amelia “Cookie” Cooper, whom he raised. Being around Robert Morganfield gave me a sense of Muddy's presence. His build is similar to Muddy's, and so is his demeanor—a quiet determination. Robert still lives in Rolling Fork, Mississippi. Cookie lives in Chicago. She was raised by Muddy and Geneva, and she brought me into the life and soul of Muddy's Chicago home. She was frank and unflinchingly honest, and became a personal hero to me.

I spent a lot of time researching this book, and the first time I thought I was done writing, I looked at the tome I'd created and saw a big, fat boring book. I spent another two years refining the story, creating the back notes system, and doing further research (including the production of a companion documentary). I worked hard to hone the story, giving it a narrative drive without burying the reader in facts. I strove to make the book appealing to both the novice and the aficionado, realizing the back notes helped tremendously. Part of what pleases me about the book is its form as a book: the information conveyed and how it’s conveyed (the text, the back notes, the peculiar appendices).

I wrote this book in a small backhouse in Memphis, Tennessee. It's a freestanding efficiency. The wall in front of me holds an overblown map of Chicago's South Side, along with a few talismans collected along the way: a page from John Work's field notebook, a business card from the Rolling Fork Motel (I don't recommend it), a calendar applicable to various years. The wall to my right has my evolving outline thumb tacked to it. I collected a huge number of recordings, mostly on CD but also on albums and cassettes.

All in all, spending five years with Muddy was a blast. (There were times when I couldn't face him or the book, but over five years, that's natural—an indication, even, of the right path). I interviewed several people previously reported dead, hob-knobbed with a few rock stars, and uncovered the truth behind the mysterious “Antra Bolton.” To get near Muddy, I hunted down many videotapes of his performances and interviews with him, so the documentary was a natural outgrowth. Muddy Waters Can't Be Satisfied airs as part of Thirteen/WNET New York's AMERICAN MASTERS series on PBS next season.

Over the course of this project, I asked myself and asked myself again what was the meaning of Muddy’s achievement. Clearly he personified much of the process and the progress of African-American culture in the 20th century—the rural roots, the migration to the industrial north, the rise to middle class. As well, his movement from the acoustic to electric guitar represented the century’s technological achievement. I was struck by his lifelong interest in technology and, with it, his reach for a bigger world: I see his embrace of the automobile and the electric guitar as very closely related. However, my gut told me that Muddy represented something larger in American culture, beyond music, beyond economics. And finally I realized: The achievement of Muddy Waters is the triumph of the dirt farmer. Muddy’s voice, one of many, rose up, sang of dissatisfaction and disaffection and disenfranchisement. And, at last, it could not be silenced. A culture for which no records had been kept became all about records. America had to listen. The voice of the field hand became a soundtrack for African-American achievement and self-respect.

© 2002 by Robert Gordon