Page 58 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2013

“I’d grown up not realizing the influence my father
had in the music industry, not just the blues – but rock
and even rap. That all changed when my father was
taking me to the airport, the first time I’d ever been in
an airplane, to send me back to Mississippi for school.
It was just he and I and he was trying to soothe my
nervousness by telling me how much he’d flown and
how easy it was. We stepped into the airport and a
group of young adults recognized him. Then more
people recognize him – people are asking him for his
autograph. They’re young people, and they’re white
people, and for a thirteen-year old from Mississippi –
for the first time I looked at my dad from their eyes. I
was proud – just really so incredibly proud. Up until
that point he was the father that played solitaire at the
kitchen table while he cooked the most delicious food
you could ever imagine. He was the guy who’d hug us
and kiss us and discipline us and give us money to go
shopping. He was just ‘daddy’. And in the airport that
day, I saw Muddy Waters.”
- Mercy Morganfield (daughter)

Hubert Sumlin (2nd from Lt), Mildred McGee (Mud Morganfield’s
mother) and Otis Spann with friends at Silvie’s Lounge, Chicago. IL.
Photo courtesy Mildred McGee and Mud Morganfield

Selections here from Ted Drozdowski’s article, “How Guitar Giant
Muddy Waters Patented the Electrified Delta and Chicago Blues
Sound,” first appeared on Gibson.com. When Ted isn’t leading the
Mississippi Delta and hill-country-informed blues band Scissormen or
producing other artists, he’s usually slinging ink. The Keeping the Blues
Alive Award-winner’s writing about music has appeared in publications
across the globe. He’s also contributed to books and encyclopedias
and consulted for television, including the “Martin Scorsese Presents:
The Blues” PBS-TV series. Scissormen’s latest release is the CD+DVD
set, Big Shoes: Walking and Talking the Blues, in collaboration with
famed roots music filmmaker Robert Mugge.

56 Blues Festival Guide 2013