Muddy Waters, The Painter

Welcome to the blog for my book 50 Licks: Myths and Stories From Half A Century of The Rolling Stones. A couple of weeks ago on here, we talked about rock and roll urban legends. Last week we talked about Muddy Waters. Today we merge the two topics. Because, of course, there is a Rolling Stones rock and roll urban legend about none other than Muddy Waters.

On their first tour of America, the Stones got their chance to visit Chess Studios. They were in need of a boost. Their tour wasn’t going exceptionally well (the whole story is in the book on page 28). They recorded fourteen tracks in two days, including “It’s All Over Now.” Famously, Keith Richards insists he saw none other than Muddy Waters himself up on a ladder painting the ceiling! The implication being that the Chess brothers were such cheapskates that they put the talent to work in other ways as well.

Marshall Chess: I’ve laughed in his face many times as he’s insisted he saw Muddy up a ladder with a paint brush in hand. I guess people want to believe that it’s true.

Keith Richards: Marshall was a boy then; he was working in the basement. And also Bill Wyman told me he actually remembers Muddy Waters taking our amplifiers from the car into the studio. . .I know what the Chess brothers were bloody well like – if you want to stay on the payroll, get to work.

[Chess Producer] Norman Dayron: Marshall is right, Keith is wrong. And if Muddy Waters was helping carry anybody’s amplifiers – which isn’t likely – he was doing it out of courtesy.

Buddy Guy: I was the new guy. If anybody would have been painting the ceiling, it would have been me.

OK, so that’s Keith on one side, Marshall, Norman and Buddy on the other. Sorry, Keith, you lose. We’re going to put this one in the MYTH column. But there’s no doubt it’s a funny story/image and there’s a reason it’s persisted, even if mostly in Keith’s imagination

Marshall Chess: It says something about how unfashionable the blues had become at that time. By ’64 nobody really wanted to know. White people had never bought blues records. The audience had always been black. A new generation of black people looked down on the blues. They saw it as slavery music. Instead they were listening to Motown and Stax. It was bands like The Stones and The Yardbirds who introduced the blues to a white market.

Keith Richards: The most bizarre part of the whole story is we turned American people back on to their own music. And that’s probably our greatest contribution.

March 15th ROCK CALENDAR: Mike Love Not War

Before I get to the new feature on today’s blog, I want to pass along that I’ll be a guest tomorrow (Saturday) on WFUV on MIXED BAG with Don McGee at 6pm eastern. That’s 90.7 WFUV on your FM dial in the tri-state area or you can listen anywhere in the world via the WFUV website.

As for this new feature, perhaps the concept will seem familiar to some of you. . .I’ll aim to do these once a week for a little while, and I’ll just pick whichever date in a given week I deem the most interesting. . .together we’ll celebrate various dates in rock history in blog form.

On March 15th, 1941, Mike Love of the Beach Boys was born in California. Here’s what he had to say about the phenomenon of The Beach Boys.

MIKE LOVE: The Beach Boys are an American institution. A folk group that grew up from middle-class upbringings. In fact, we were really poor when my mother moved to California. The first few months they were there, they camped on the beach, in Huntington Beach, because they didn’t have enough money to get a house, or rent a house. So they lived in tents. A lot of people did in the Depression days. So here, a generation later, we’re singing songs about the surf, about the beach, and making millions of dollars at it. So it’s a phenomenal rise and success from just one generation for a family, for anybody, it’s an inspiration. So our group is just that, an inspiration, an American dream come true.

The obligatory. . .

And if you prefer something with a little more heft to it. . .