Confessions of a Fanboy

Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life & Times of Muddy Waters by Robert Gordon

I finally finished my Muddy Waters bio. I’ve had the thing well over a year, meant to read it, and never would sit down and do it. Even this time, when I read it straight through, I took more than a few pauses. I usually don’t read that way, not sure why it worked out that way this time.

I feel I understand Waters better without feeling like I know a lot more about him. Robert Gordon was able to interview a lot of the people who were close to Muddy and you do get a better sense of the man and where he came from.

You learn Waters was without conscience when it came to womanizing, fathered enough children to populate a small town, and didn’t always provide well for them in life or in the way his estate was handled. You also find out that Waters was generous with his home, sharing it with many dozens of people throughout his life. You learn that while some musicians would get jealous or bitter when their sidemen left to go solo, Muddy saw it in far less threatening terms and was mostly supportive of it. You learn that Waters was too unsophisticated to really understand the business, but had a sense of when he was getting shortchanged. Gordon does a fantastic job of illustrating the effects of growing up a sharecropper had on Waters’ personality.

What you don’t get is a lot of insight into Waters’ music or recordings. They are mentioned, but only sometimes discussed and even then serve more as markers on a timeline. His time in the studio and his approach to writing or playing don’t get a lot of mention or analysis. That doesn’t render the book useless, but fans of Waters’ music might feel a bit shortchanged.

The book is impossibly well researched, as nearly half of the overall page count is bibliography, notes, and appendix. I am still combing through that portion of the book and it looks like there is much to be mined from it. Can’t Be Satisfied is a worthwhile read and serves as a nice companion to the legacy of Waters’ recordings.

Filed under: Muddy Waters, Musical Musings and Random Ramblings