page_title: Hoochie Coochie Man
section_title: Composition and recording
hierarchical_section_title: Hoochie Coochie Man / Composition and recording
caption_attribution_description: English: Willie Dixon at Monterey Jazz Festival, 1981. photo by Brian McMillen / brianmcmillen@hotmail.com
context_page_description: "Hoochie Coochie Man" is a blues standard written by Willie Dixon and first recorded by Muddy Waters in 1954. The song makes reference to hoodoo folk magic elements and makes novel use of a stop-time musical arrangement. It became one of Waters' most popular and identifiable songs and helped secure Dixon's role as Chess Records' chief songwriter.
  The song is a classic of Chicago blues and one of Waters' first recordings with a full backing band. Dixon's lyrics build on Waters' earlier use of braggadocio and themes of fortune and sex appeal. The stop-time riff was "soon absorbed into the lingua franca of blues, R&B, jazz, and rock and roll", according to musicologist Robert Palmer, and is used in several popular songs. When Bo Diddley adapted it for "I'm a Man", it became one of the most recognizable musical phrases in blues.
  After the song's initial success in 1954, Waters recorded several live and new studio versions. The original appears on the 1958 The Best of Muddy Waters album and many compilations. Numerous musicians have recorded "Hoochie Coochie Man" in a variety of styles, making it one of the most interpreted Waters and Dixon songs.
context_section_description: Not long after the success of "Mad Love" in November 1953, Dixon approached Leonard Chess with "Hoochie Coochie Man", a new song he felt was right for Waters.  Chess responded, "if Muddy likes it, give it to him".  At the time, Waters was performing at the Club Zanzibar in Chicago.  During an intermission, Dixon showed him the song. According to Dixon, Waters took to the tune immediately because it had so many familiar elements and he was able to learn enough to perform it that night.  Jimmy Rogers, who was Waters' second guitarist, remembered that it took a little longer:
  Dixon came to the club and he would hum it to Muddy and write the lyrics out.  Muddy would work them around for a while until he got it down where he could understand it and fool around with it.  He would be onstage and try it out, do a few licks of it.  We were building the arrangement, that's what we were really doing.
  On January 7, 1954, Waters entered the recording studio with his band to record the song. Considered the classic Chicago blues band, music critic Bill Janovitz described Waters' group as "a who's who of bluesmen".  Waters sings and plays electric guitar along with Rogers, blues harmonica virtuoso Little Walter, and drummer Elgin Evans, all of whom had been performing with Waters since 1951.  (Fred Below, who replaced Evans during 1954, is sometimes listed as the drummer.)  Pianist Otis Spann, who joined in 1953, and Dixon, in his debut on double bass for Waters' recording session, round out the group.  Two takes of the song were recorded.  Although there are some moments in the alternate take when a player's timing rushes or drags perceptibly, because the band is so tight, the difference with the master is only six seconds (for a nearly three-minute song).
  "Hoochie Coochie Man" follows a sixteen-bar blues progression, which is an expansion of the well-known twelve-bar blues pattern. The first four bars are doubled in length so the harmony remains on the tonic for eight bars or one-half of the sixteen bar progression.  Dixon explained that expanding twelve-bar blues was in response to amplification, which gave instruments more sustain.  The extra bars also increase the contrasting effect of the repeating stop-time musical figure or riff.  For the second eight bars, the song reverts to the last eight of the twelve-bar progression, which functions as a refrain or hook.  The different textures provides the tune with a strong contrast, which helps underscore the lyrics.  The song is performed at a moderate blues tempo (72 beats per minute) in the key of A.  It is notated in  time and contains three sixteen-bar sections.
  A key feature of the song is the use of stop time, or pauses in the music, during the first half of the progression.  This musical device is commonly heard in New Orleans jazz, when the instrumentation briefly stops, allowing for a short instrumental solo before resuming. However, Waters' and Dixon's use of stop time serves to heighten the tension through repetition, followed by a vocal rather than an instrument fill.  The accompanying riff, which Dixon described as a five-note figure, is similar to that of "Mad Love".  He attributed it to the band and using such a phrase for eight bars was a new approach.  Although Palmer comments that the entire group phrases the riff in unison, Boone describes it as a "heavy, unhurried counterpoint by all the instruments together".  Campbell identifies the opening as actually having "two competing riffs" or contrapuntal motion, with one played by Little Walter on an amplified harmonica and another by Waters on electric guitar.
  For the second eight-bars of the progression, the song follows the standard I–IV–V7 structure, which maintains its connection to traditional blues.  The whole band plays it as a shuffle with a triplet rhythm, which Campbell describes as a "free-for-all [with] harmonica trills, guitar riffs, piano chords, thumping bass, [and] shuffle pattern on the drums".  He adds that this type of heavy sound was rarely heard in small music combos before rock.  However, unlike the 
caption: Willie Dixon at Monterey Jazz Festival, 1981
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