Doc Shoe's Music Blog

Muddy Waters played this song for Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress.  This was back when he was still McKinley Morganfield, a sharecropper and bootlegger down in the Delta. He’d never been recorded before.  It opened up certain possibilities to him.

He picked up an electric guitar—an instrument he’d grown fascinated with—and recorded “I Can’t Be Satisfied” once again, years later, for the Chess brothers.  They sold all 3,000 copies of that record in one day, and made Chicago the new home of the Blues in one stroke. 

By 1977, Chess Records was dead, and the thriving Blues scene that had supported Muddy was waning.  He was so much older now, but he had a loooooong memory, and part of him was never far from Mississippi.  He signed with Johnny Winters’ label Blue Sky and recorded Hard Again, one of the best records in a long career of great records.

When the press asked about the title, Johnny Winters tried to articulate the record’s sonic qualities.  Muddy Waters interrupted him.  He announced: “This music done made my pee pee hard again!”