Soul Strut 100: #91 - Muddy Waters - Electric Mud
RAJ
tenacious local 7,782 Posts
I will slowly be unveiling the Top 100 Soul Strut Related Records as Voted by the Strutters Themselves.
#91 - Muddy Waters - Electric Mud
Please discuss your reactions to this record. The thread will be archived later here.
Wikipidea
Electric Mud is a studio album by Muddy Waters. Released in 1968, it is a concept album which imagines Muddy Waters as a psychedelic musician. Producer Marshall Chess suggested that Muddy Waters record experimental, psychedelic blues tracks with members of Rotary Connection in an attempt to revive the blues singer's career.
The album peaked at #127 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart. It was controversial for its fusion of electric blues with psychedelic elements, but was influential on psychedelic rock bands of the era.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Mud
Related Threads
...which Muddy Waters LP?
Cadet Concept
Dismissed Upon Release But Standing Strong Today
cadet concept favorites?
#91 - Muddy Waters - Electric Mud
Please discuss your reactions to this record. The thread will be archived later here.
Wikipidea
Electric Mud is a studio album by Muddy Waters. Released in 1968, it is a concept album which imagines Muddy Waters as a psychedelic musician. Producer Marshall Chess suggested that Muddy Waters record experimental, psychedelic blues tracks with members of Rotary Connection in an attempt to revive the blues singer's career.
The album peaked at #127 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart. It was controversial for its fusion of electric blues with psychedelic elements, but was influential on psychedelic rock bands of the era.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Mud
Related Threads
...which Muddy Waters LP?
Cadet Concept
Dismissed Upon Release But Standing Strong Today
cadet concept favorites?
Comments
I Just Wanna Make Love To You is great if a bit long. Tom Cat FTW!
I have a gatefold w/ black cover and disturbing picture of Muddy in what looks like a bishop's robe.
Not sure if this is a second pressing or something, got it in a trade w/ Belson BITD.
I think I read from somewhere that Jimi Hendrix at some point used to listen this song before going to stage.
I've ran across that one a couple of times but the records were skated. I think it may have been produced around the same time as the white cover. I found a British pressing about 11 years ago with a white sleeve and rainbow lettering similar to the US pressing with the chess piece logo on the labels. I tried to Google it, but I haven't been able to find a picture for it.
Only his version of the Stones'"Let's Spend The Night Together" is good enough to stand with his classic earlier Chess sides. IMO.
I think that was supposed to be a reach-out to the hippies whom this album is aimed at.
It possibly is, if it's on Cadet Concept.
Later on, when All Platinum acquired the Chess masters in the seventies, they reissued Electric Mud without the gatefold. And the formerly color photo on the back cover was now black & white.
Black cover, gatefold. Black & white picture on the inner of Muddy in robe, looking like a pervert.
Cover on back (backstage dressing room or something?) in colour.
It's Cadet Concept.
i love this whole album, i have both the black and the white covers and i listen to it often cover to cover.
70's issue with green label, still gatefold and color back , no booklet. Seems rarer than first pressing. Chess.
Crappy All Platinum issue late 70's/early 80's.
I've never seen a US blue label chess pressing
Sounds like an original pressing to me.
We've discussed before about the variations on the front cover (some have black print on white background, others have white print on black background). I get the drift that both covers were released simultaneously, ala the Rolling Stones' Some Girls ten years later.
And as far as the pic on the back, I think that was the counter of the barber shop where Muddy was shown getting his process together in the booklet that came with.
It would be mid-late 70s, as All Platinum had become Sugarhill by late '79.
I doubt if one exists. Electric Mud was meant to come out on Cadet Concept from the gitgo. I imagine that by the time Cadet Concept was retired, they had stopped using the old two-shades-of-blue design.
Yeah, this.
I can't front like I'm some sort of big-time blues head, and of course, I got up on this album in the first place because Cypress Hill braekz, yo! It's a fascinating oddball of a record, though -- so left-field, but not in a kitschy sort of way.
There is, but you won't hear any fuzz. Muddy pointedly didn't do any songs from his "psychedelic" albums in concert. If it was a remake of an older song, he did it the older way.
mannish boy is an all-time song
i like it but the cover is always stained
yeah, me too, first thing I thought - wonder if the Wolf is on here too and charted higher. I always felt like the Wolf album was more coherent and, despite the title of the album, he seems more comfortable in the psych-rock attempt than Muddy does, whether it was forced upon them or not. The Waters LP has some moments but has always sounded forced and a little fake to me - the best way I can put it is that the Waters LP sounds like they overdubbed a modern rock band onto a tape of a standard Muddy Waters session, while the Wolf record sounds like he is actually involved in the process, sitting in with the band.
Ever since picking up the other Muddy Waters LP on Cadet Concept, "After the Rain," from a year later, I've felt that it is a far more successful attempt to update his sound for the late 60's youth. It sounds more like an actual album by Muddy, with a more coherent mix of trad blues and modern rock styles.
http://open.spotify.com/user/1121775350/playlist/54CR4Ce88uFkr6shaMHxVX
(personalliy speaking, I like his earlies abums a lot more. This one seems like a novelty record to me.)
Agreed.
"In place of Muddy Waters' regular musicians were Gene Barge, Pete Cosey, Roland Faulkner, Morris Jennings, Louis Satterfield, Charles Stepney and Phil Upchurch."
"Peaking at #127 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart, it was Muddy Waters' first album to hit on the Billboard and Cash Box charts."
"According to Robert Gordon in Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters, the valet of Jimi Hendrix later told Pete Cosey that Hendrix would listen to 'Herbert Harper's Free Press News' for inspiration before performing. Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones cited Electric Mud as the inspiration for the riff of 'Black Dog'."
most people won't understand me but for me this is my all time favorite album. so crazy! i must have heard it at least a hundred times...
whoo, my thoughts exactly.
i have a couple copies of electric mud, i see it way more often than i'd expect. "tom cat" is fucking INSANE. the rest has its moments and BrAeKzz but honestly i never put it on and listen all the way through. the howlin' wolf record on the other hand, i only have in mp3 form, and it's gotten many, MANY plays. i'd love to find a copy out in the field but it has yet to happen. far superior in my opinion. electric mud feels like a novelty record straight up, the howlin wolf one sounds like they spent some time with it. its beautiful.
yeah me too, it's gotta be.