Bob Margolin

In 2023, I celebrate 50 years since Muddy Waters (1915-1983) hired me to play guitar in his band and put me on the road I still ride. The biggest thrill was to play his Blues next to him onstage, thousands of times. I thank him and try to honor him every time I play music or write about it. He was a charismatic icon, a legend at the top of Human Achievement. He was my favorite musician way before I met him and worked for him for seven years. The most important concept of this album is Thanks Muddy! He was an Angel at my 1973 Crossroads. Everything since goes back to this.

I thank and honor some of the legendary musicians that I met through or because of my association with Muddy. I recorded songs that salute their spirits. Here are the stories behind each song…

Originally released in 1952 by Muddy and his original band featuring Jimmy Rogers on second guitar and Little Walter on harp. It was always one of my favorite Muddy songs from before I was in his band, but he didn’t play it often. In 1975, however, I recorded it with him for The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album, featuring Levon Helm and Paul Butterfield. Levon liked to sing this song too, in his own southern-fried voice. I dedicate this to Muddy and Levon, and thank them.

They opened their shows with this rocker. I play it here as a Blues shuffle, Blues music was in their background. The lyrics by the recently -departed Robbie Robertson are desperate Blues in content. I humbly pay tribute to The Band’s inimitable, funky Down-Home harmonies too. On the recent Blackbird Presents Last Waltz Tours, I hear today’s musicians deliver this opener with power and creativity. I watch every rehearsal and show. I love that music more than ever and I learn so much from all of them. These stars put together by Blackbird Presents have become a band and a family. I thank them too.

I wrote this song at the moment I lived it. It mourns the death of my friend, Chicago Blues Legend Jimmy Rogers. On my flight’s final approach to Midway Airport in Chicago, to attend Jimmy’s funeral, the song came to me all at once and I wrote it on a drink napkin with a pen before we landed. I recorded it for my 1999 Hold Me To It album on Blind Pig Records but I wanted to play it on the ES-150 now, for Jimmy and Muddy and all the Chicago Blues players we’ve lost since, especially so many of the other players in Muddy’s band. I play it in Muddy’s standard tuning slide guitar style.

The single was released in 1956 by harmonica genius Little Walter. I used to play this song between 1985-2008 with R&B legendary singer, and showman Nappy Brown on our gigs where I backed him. Willie Dixon is one of the greatest Blues songwriters and his original lyrics for this one are deep and clever. I’m not-so-much into the threatening lyrics as those of the of the two verses after the solo, social commentary disparaging gossipers. Today’s social media amplify gossip much more than word-of-mouth used to. Musically, I chose to forego the original’s signature easy-going riff for Nappy Brown’s hard driving shuffle delivery. I added my own ES-150 slide guitar part which often echoes the melody.

In 1977 I wrote this Blues song. Muddy liked it, added a verse of his own, shared the credit and recorded it for his I’m Ready album, his second for Johnny Winter’s Blue Sky Label. Before CD’s, vinyl records could only be about 35 minutes long or bassy sounds would make the stylus jump out of the groove. Our song did not make it onto the original vinyl album. But in 2003, my friend, Sony Legacy producer Steve Berkowitz gave me the opportunity to co-produce reissues of Muddy’s Blue Sky albums. I heard the song again for the first time in 25 years. I played bass on it, with Muddy, Jimmy Rogers, Johnny Winter, Big Walter Horton, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith and Pinetop Perkins — not a shabby Chicago Blues band. In 1998, I recorded it for my Hold Me To It album. For this album, I use the ES-150, the perfect guitar for it. And I play it in Muddy’s Mississippi Open-G Tuning slide guitar style. I also add a second guitar part that thanks Jimmy Rogers’ complementary, beyond the concept of lead and rhythm guitar. Jimmy told me he and Muddy did that deliberately and called it “filling in the cracks".

In 1978, Muddy toured Europe with Eric Clapton. I met and jammed with Eric in 1976 at The Last Waltz and on the 1978 tour I had much more opportunity to hang with him. He told me, “If I’m singing a Blues and forget a lyric, I can always get out of it by rhyming something with the line “My baby can’t be found.” Pretty good way to save a song onstage. Not long after, I lived those lyrics in a difficult, doomed…uh…relationship. And in 1993, I wrote and recorded the song for my first Alligator Records album Down In The Alley. I think it’s one of my better songs but I’m particularly moved that Johnny Winter singled out that song as one of mine he really liked. So I dedicate this version, played on the ES-150, to Johnny, not the baby who couldn’t be found. And I thank Eric for the lyric idea.

James A. Lane is the name of the Chicago Bluesman Jimmy Rogers and this song is one of his classic Chess Records 1950s singles. It’s not one of his better known songs but I love how plaintively he sings it and his Delta/Chicago Blues-style guitar playing. I wanted to cover it using the ES-150. I met Jimmy when I first joined Muddy’s band in 1973. When I had nights off in Chicago, Muddy’s other guitar player, the late Hollywood Fats, and I would take a cab to Jimmy’s house and he would drive us to the North Side where he was a guest with the Bob Reidy Blues Band. 

I’m grateful to meet my musical heroes through my Muddy connection and that applies deeply to Jimmy. His friendship and the times I played with until his passing in December 1997 are a blessing that I carry inside. Thank you Jimmy Rogers, who had my job in Muddy’s band 25 years before I did, and shared so much about working with Muddy in conversation and by example. 

In 1977, when I was off from Muddy, I went to see Jimmy play. At the end of the night, I told him I was going to talk to Muddy the next day and asked if there was anything he wanted me to tell Muddy. They hadn’t played together or seen each other for a long time. Jimmy said, “Tell him any time he wants to get together and play those old Blues like we used to, I’d love to do that.” I got chills to think of them together again. The next day I called Muddy and told him what Jimmy said. Muddy replied casually that he would love it too. After the call, instead of hanging up I kept my finger on the phone button for a dial tone and called Johnny Winter. I told him Muddy and Jimmy wanted to play together again. Johnny got chills too and said, “I’ll make that happen!” Indeed he did instantly get Jimmy to be on the recording for Muddy’s next Blue Sky album, I’m Ready. But that put me out of a guitar job, with Muddy, Jimmy and Johnny playing. 

Muddy had seen me play bass on a European show with Gatemouth Brown and kindly said he wanted me to play bass on that album. I did. But I also had the opportunity on the first day in the studio to set up Jimmy’s guitar in Muddy’s amp and Muddy’s guitar in my new Music Man amp. I bought it after Eric Clapton lent me his Music Man at The Last Waltz. I still have that amp. 

Muddy and Jimmy wanted heavy, overdriven sounds like they used in the 1950s. Johnny Winter, producing from the control room, asked if they wanted cleaner tones and they both laughed and said “No!” like two bad little boys. I watched both of them play together again, magically, for the first time in 20 years while I thumped along on bass. That is one of my all-time biggest musical thrills.

I think music lovers somehow have an affinity for songs that came out…when they did. This song was released in 1949, the year I “dropped” (modern music biz term). I first heard it sung by Pinetop Perkins, born in 1913, when I was in Muddy’s band. There’s a fine recording of it with virile 63-year-old Pinetop singing it on The Nighthawks’ Jacks and Kings album. I’m on guitar. Researching the song to record it for this album, I found great versions by Nat King Cole and Nellie Lutcher, the original by Paul Gayten with a very exotic groove, Larry Darnell and Lou Rawls. There are some elaborate arrangements but I chose to present it as straight Blues, as Pinetop did, using the ES-150 with a clean, archtop tone. I kept the groove on bass too. I feel my dear friend, Pinetop Perkins, when I sing it. As the song says, “I hope you feel the same.” 

Pinetop was the oldest and I was the youngest when we were in Muddy’s band and I loved his Old School singing and piano playing. We’d also go out and find more bands to play with after Muddy’s gigs and I made sure we got back to our hotel OK. Pinetop lived to be 97, making people happy with his music for about 80 years. In 1998, we were touring in Japan when I got the news that my father had passed in Florida and I had to leave the tour. Pinetop put his arm around me and said, “I’m your Black daddy now.” It is one of the sweetest things anyone ever said and did for me. Thank you Pinetop, I love you.

I wrote this sad song as I lived a hard time and recorded it for my 1999 album Hold Me To It on Blind Pig Records. I used a National Steel Guitar, a gift from Pinetop Perkins but I recorded it with a raw, not sweet, electric tone on the ES-150 for this one. As I began to record, I got very uncomfortable with my absolutely hopeless song of ultimate defeat, with no redemptive “Consolation.” Twenty-five years later, I don’t feel the same way about my hard time and Blues. I preserved the original lyrics on this new version but put them in the past. Tense. I added new lyrics telling how I feel now, the lessons and coping skills I’ve learned. Time helped me feel better. Spoiler alert for this song: “Sometimes, Consolation is slow.”

I originally wrote and recorded this for my 2007 In North Carolina album, the first album released by The VizzTone Label Group. Here it is just me singing my Blues about romantic loneliness. I feature only the ES-150 with a sweet-this-time vintage tone that reveals its burnished sparkle and a touch of enhancing amplifier vibrato and reverb. I hope you can feel all the music I’ve made on this guitar over 45 years as I love it on this song. 

The title is not in the lyrics, and ironically describes a time of day when I felt the purest love in my life. “Before dawn” is a phrase my mother used to use to describe early morning hours, from dark to the first light of sunrise. When I visited my parents as an adult, my mother and I sometimes found ourselves talking in the living room just before dawn. In the dark light, her old age and my middle age didn’t matter. It was just as we always are together.

My wife, Pamela 

All of our dogs and cats, past, present and future 

My family, always, for their love and support 

The Pinetop Perkins Foundation - pinetopperkinsfoundation.org 

The VizzTone Label Group, my partners Amy Brat and Richard “Rosy” Rosenblatt 

Warren Haynes, Don Was, Jamey Johnson and Cameron Williams