Muddy Watters – Electric Mud

I can’t remember how I stumbled across this record this past year.  At the time I read something about it that caught my attention.  So I did a little research and leaned this was a reviled album – borderline blues blasphemy.  Well I was not going to spend my money on that.  Then this past week I was paging through Rolling Stone and saw that The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney had a song off the album on his Killer Grooves playlist.  That was it – this deserved new consideration.  So I downloaded a copy off of emusic.

Well now we know where the Black Keys got their sound.  This is dirty filthy psychedelic blooze.  The Patrick Carney recommended track is “She’s Alright” a Bo Diddley song.  The Muddy version is wonderfully nasty and it degenerates into an instrumental of “My Girl.”  Upon further research I learned the Black Keys’ She Long Gone samples Muddy’s version.

I am a big fan of the Black Keys and always knew they were derivative and was intrigued to know their source material.  This is clearly an important piece of their DNA.   If you like the Keys you will like this.