Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters by Robert Gordon
Muddy Waters bestrides American music like a colossus. He invented electric blues and created the foundation for rock and roll. Leaving behind the cotton fields of rural Mississippi, he moved to Chicago, plugged in an electric guitar and changed the world. In Can't be Satisfied, Robert Gordon gives us Muddy's epic, rollicking, up and down life as we've never read it before. Combining the most extensive research and interviews ever done on Muddy with a writing style as rich, poetic and powerful as the music he writes about, Gordon transports us: we are alongside Muddy in the cotton fields as he is discovered by Alan Lomax; we are on the South Side of Chicago as Muddy and his band become stars and innovators; and we follow Muddy through scores of women, hits, bottles of booze and moments of divine grace. A must for blues and rock fans, Can't be Satisfied is a brilliant work of musical archaeology.