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Great Commercial Suicide Albums
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FifePsy
FifePsy
540 posts

Edited May 12, 2011, 19:57
Re: Great Commercial Suicide Albums
May 12, 2011, 19:56
Stevo wrote:
Piquiod wrote:


Muddy Waters - Electric Mud...either unifying the blues w/ the 60's kids, or alienating from his older mainstream base...wild album



Funny this, think it was an idea from the record company to make him seem more current. So, it had the opposite intention. Not sure why it would be 'needed' at that point? Black audience not counted? possibly getting more into Soul etc at the time.
& young white audience much more relevant?

Think it sounds better if you forget it being about the singer.
Backing band grooves are very interesting & feature a pre-Miles Pete Cosey.

They repeated the experiment about 6 months later with Howlin Wolf which i just found out has been reissued on cd on Get on Down, thought it was vinyl only on Light In The Attic.

Was the Endless Boogie lp a further attempt at something similar tried with John Lee Hooker?

Stevo




I love this album but then again i'm not a lover of purist Blues. I was reading the sleeve notes to this recently which were quite illuminating. It came about at the behest of Marshall Chess who was the 26 year old son of Chess founder Leonard Chess. Marshall had embraced the psych age - he mentions Leary etc - and started the Cadet Concept label whose first release by Rotary Connection was a huge success for Chess Records. As he says it gave him 'the keys to the studio'. The sleeve notes suggest that Waters career had peaked in the 50s and it had been 10 years since he had any major hit. Marshall had noticed that Hendrix was performing Hoochie Coochie Man and so came up with the idea of Electric Mud using the Chess studio band (Cosey/Upchurch/Satterfield etc). Apparently the album was a big success financially and revived Muddy's career when he was in danger of becoming an elder statesman who couldn't sell to his own community and was revered by a small coterie of collector purists. Of course it was the latter (and the critics) who hated it. Marshall Chess considered the studio band as by inclination one of the most avant-garde black group of musicians in Chicago and not really blues guys. I've just started to read George Lewis's book 'A Power Stronger Than Itself - The AACM and American Experimental Music' and its interesting how these guys were all part of this scene as well.

Good news that the Howlin Wolf one is re-released on CD as well - thanks Stevo.
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