Muddy Waters: Classic Concerts
Anyone who calls the late McKinley Morganfield, aka Muddy Waters, the greatest of all bluesmen isn't likely to get a whole lot of argument. But just in case,Classic Concertsoffers a handy rebuttal to any doubters. The approximately 90 minutes of music here were drawn from three separate Waters concerts, spanning some 17 years. The five tunes from the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival include two, "(I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Got My Mojo Working," that will no doubt have been seen by many Muddy fans before now. Yet while the grainy black & white visuals still leave something to be desired, the producers' choice to sync up three songs with stereo sound from the Chess albumMuddy Waters at Newporthas resulted in vastly improved audio, all the better to appreciate Waters and his superb band's (with James Cotton on harmonica and Otis Spann on piano; also look for blues shouter Jimmy Rushing and other guests, including a couple of delightfully entertaining dancers, on the show-closing medley) now legendary performance. The eight-song Copenhagen show from 1968, a complete set seen here for the first time, may be even better; the audio, featuring Muddy's inimitable slide guitar, is astonishingly clean, the band rocks (this set's version of "Mojo" is the finest this reviewer has seen), and although the Danish director seems a bit lost (as swell as drummer S.P. Leary is, do we really want to see close-ups of his hands while someone else is soloing?), the many shots of Waters' wonderfully expressive face are a treat. By the time we get to the footage from Norway's Molde Jazz Festival in '77, the personnel have changed again (guitarist Bob Margolin, who wrote the DVD liner notes, and harmonica player Jerry Portnoy stand out, but they're all aces), but Waters, now in the more avuncular mode he adopted after medical problems confined him to a stool for much of the gig, sounds as strong as ever. A couple of brief interviews and one bonus performance fill out a thoroughly entertaining, exceptionally well-presented DVD package.--Sam Graham