Saturday video break: Got My Mojo Working

Posted on June 6, 2015 by Charles Kuffner

Here’s one of the great voices of American blues, Muddy Waters:

As our subtitled narrator notes, Muddy Waters was a huge influence of many other blues artists, as well as on rock musicians. ZZ Top is a prime example of the latter – they tip their hats to the man in their early classic “Jesus Just Left Chicago”. I wish I could find a good clip of his version of “Mannish Boy” from the movie “Risky Business”; that was the song that stuck in my head as I left the theater, even with that iconic scene on the el set to “In the Air Tonight”.

Here’s the Asylum Street Spankers doing one of their renditions of this, from their “Reassembly” recording:

The Spankers loved this song – they recorded it at least five times, as that’s the number of versions I have in my library. Originally, they hewed close to Waters’ style – if you can still find their “Live in Europe 2001” disc, that’s what they have on it. Some time after that, they switched to this slower arrangement, with the doo-wop choreography. A big hit when they performed it live, and Lord knows Christina Marrs has the pipes for it, but I always kind of preferred their first take. But at least I have it on MP3.

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