Muddy Waters – Hoochie Coochie Man: The Complete Chess Masters Volume 2, 1952-1958

The years covered by this two-disc set coincide exactly with Muddy Waters’ reign on the Billboard Rhythm & Blues charts, the same charts that big sellers such as the Platters, Fats Domino, B.B. King, Ruth Brown, the Drifters, and, uh, Elvis Presley were zooming up and down. Today, it might seem a little strange that Muddy Waters kept such company, that his music was actually popular music in the black communities of America, competing with Ray Charles, Count Basie and the Coasters on their jukeboxes. But back then, it was just another flavor that black music came in.

A particularly rich flavor, too; sitting down with these 50 Muddy Waters songs can be like eating as many Belgian chocolates at one time. But this collection is irresistible, and has considerably fewer calories. What you hear is a man who is supremely confident, at the top of his game, commanding his material effortlessly with a group of co-conspirators who fit him like a tailored suit. A tailored Italian silk suit. Little Walter, especially: Muddy will put the situation out there so you’re familiar with its musical and emotional content, and then Walter picks up his harmonica for learned commentary: “Another way of saying this might be…”

Check out the titles here: “Baby Please Don’t Go”, “Hoochie Coochie Man”, “I Just Want To Make Love To You”, “I’m Ready”, “Mannish Boy”, “Forty Days And Forty Nights”, “Got My Mojo Working”. The canon. And some of the less familiar tracks? Absolutely as good; they just weren’t hits. Nine of these records charted, six of them in the R&B Top 10, the other three missing by a point or two.

And in case you think you’ve heard this before, let me draw your attention to Erick Labson of Universal Mastering Studios-West, who is credited with digitally remastering these tracks. While there’s some distortion here (this is, after all, a band that liked to play loud), there are plenty of tracks where you can hear the wood in Willie Dixon’s acoustic bass, where you can hear musicians talking to each other, quietly planning split-second strategies. I am astonished that Chess had equipment capable of making recordings this good — either that, or Labson has a time machine among his digital goodies. This music has never sounded so good.

So…why do I have a problem with this set? Well, on the one hand, I don’t; I have mine, after all. But for you to get yours, you have to go to hiposelect.com and pay 40 bucks — if, that is, you’re one of the first 5,000 people, because that’s all they’ve made. Now, if there were any justice in this world, that amount would be covered by libraries and universities alone. This is, I repeat, the canon — a uniquely and essentially American canon. Surely there are blues fans out there, too, who routinely buy this sort of thing.

The same goes for Hip-O Select’s complete disc of the Johnny Burnette Rock ‘n’ Roll Trio recordings: 20 bucks, 5,000 copies worldwide. Perhaps Universal’s plan is to cautiously release this stuff and see what flies and what doesn’t and then make it more, um, universally available. I hope so; unlike some of what’s in Hip-O Select’s catalogue the Honk album (who?), for instance this has an importance and appeal that goes well beyond specialists.

Great American music like this needs something like a Modern Library — affordable editions of the classics so this heritage belongs to everyone. Which, of course, it does. And that means you.