Muddy Waters compilation, His Best 1947-55, released

The Best of/His Best 1947-55 Muddy Waters

Released: April 1958 B, March 25, 1997 H Recorded: 1948-54 B, 1947-55 H Peak: -- Sales (in millions): -- Genre: blues B The Best of H His Best 1947-1955

Tracks: Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. I Can’t Be Satisfied (9/18/48, #11 RB) B I Feel Like Going Home (9/18/48, B-side of “Satisfied”) Train Fare Home (1948) Rollin’ and Tumblin’ (1950) Rollin’ Stone (1950) B Louisiana Blues (1/13/51, #10 RB) B Long Distance Call (4/14/51, #8 RB) B Honey Bee (7/14/51, #10 RB) B Still a Fool (11/24/51, #9 RB) B She Moves Me (2/23/52, #10 RB) B Standing Around Crying (1952) B Mad Love (I Want You to Love Me) (11/21/53, #6 RB) B Baby Please Don’t Go (1953) Hoochie Coochie Man (3/13/54, #3 RB) B I Just Want to Make Love to You (6/5/54, #4 RB) B I’m Ready (10/23/54, #4 RB) B Mannish Boy (6/30/55, #5 RB) Young Fashioned Ways (1955) Sugar Sweet (1955) Trouble No More (1955) All of the above tracks are featured on His Best 1947-1955 (H). Tracks featured on Best of are noted by B

Rating: 4.398 out of 5.00 (average of 11 ratings) Quotable: “Perfect country blues” – Ken Hohman, Amazon.com Awards H: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: Muddy Waters was born McKinley Morganfield in 1913 in Mississippi. He grew up on a plantation and learned to play guitar and harmonica. In 1941, Alan Lomax recorded him for the Library of Congress. Two years later, Waters moved to Chicago to become a full-time professional musician, first recording with Aristocrat from 1947 to 1950 and Chess from 1950 to 1971. He became known as the “father of modern Chicago blues.” His first chart appearance came in 1948 when I Can’t Be Satisfied reached #11 on the R&B chart. After signing with Chess, he landed fourteen top-ten hits on that chart from 1950 to 1958. In 1958, Chess Records released a Muddy Waters’ greatest hits collection simply entitled The Best of Muddy Waters. It compiled a dozen songs which were initially issued as singles from 1948 to 1954. Most appeared on Billboard magazine’s R&B charts. It was the first Muddy Waters album and only the third album released by Chess on the LP (long-playing) format. WK In 1983, it was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. Nearly 40 years later, as part of their 50th anniversary series, Chess released a new compilation (His Best 1947-55) JH which covered all the songs on the original Best of collection plus another eight songs. This includes ten of his songs which reached the top-ten on the R&B chart. These songs represent Waters from his formative years through his peak. Listeners are “in for a lot of terrific bottleneck slide guitar work as well as electric Chicago blues.” KH These “tracks are spare, haunting and, quite frankly, perfect country blues.” KH “I Can’t Be Satisfied, Rollin’ and Tumblin’, I’m Ready, and Mannish Boy are simply beyond reproach.” KH The latter song and “Hoochie Coochie Man have sparked endless imitations over the years – and…nobody has played them better since.” KH

Resources and Related Links: KH Ken Hohman, Amazon (His Best) WK Wikipedia (Best of) Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 9/7/2018; last updated 3/17/2024.