McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1915 or 1913–April 30, 1983), better known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician and is generally considered "the father of Chicago blues."
Early years
Morganfield was born in an area of Issaquena County, Mississippi near the Mississippi River known as Jug's Corner. The nearest town, Rolling Fork, Mississippi, is incorrectly believed to be his birthplace. He got his nickname Muddy Waters from his grandmother growing up in the area because of his fondness for playing in mud puddles.
Waters' mother, Berta Jones, died when he was very young, and he was subsequently raised by his grandmother. They moved to the Stovall Plantation outside of Clarksdale, Mississippi when he was three. He was very eager to play music as a child, and bought his first guitar in 1930. He was soon in a regional outfit, the Son Sims Four, as a vocalist. Waters worked on his guitar style with the group.
Waters was first recorded on a Mississippi Delta plantation by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. Lomax had returned to Mississippi to make additional recordings of the late, great, legendary Robert Johnson, unaware that Johnson had been dead for three years. Upon learning of Johnson's demise, Lomax was pointed in the direction of Muddy Waters.
Waters played music anywhere from church picnics to disreputable juke joints, but he longed for a break from the hardscrabble life of rural Mississippi, so after a fight with a plantation overseer in 1943, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, and took a factory job. In Chicago he switched from acoustic to electric guitar which was becoming increasingly popular among black musicians, as it allowed them to be heard in heavily crowded city bars. Waters' own guitar playing was gaining notoriety due to his use of the bottleneck on electric guitar (heavily influenced by Robert Johnson's acoustic style).
Recording career begins
By 1946, Waters had gained the attention of record producers, and he cut some tracks for Columbia, which went unreleased. His first recordings for Chess Records featured Waters on guitar and vocals supported by a double bass. Later, he added a rhythm section and the harmonica of Little Walter to form his classic Chicago blues lineup. With his deep, rich voice, charismatic, ultra-macho personality, and an all-star backing, Waters rapidly became the most recognizable figure of Chicago Blues. Even B.B. King would later recall him as the "Boss of Chicago." Waters' bands were a "who's who" of Chicago blues musicians: Little Walter, Big Walter Horton, James Cotton, Junior Wells on harmonica; Willie Dixon on bass; Otis Spann, Pinetop Perkins on piano; Buddy Guy, Jimmy Rogers, and numerous other notables on guitar.
Waters' recordings of the late 1950s and early 1960s are particularly good. Many of the songs he performed have since became standards: "Got My Mojo Working," "Hoochie Coochie Man," "She's Nineteen Years Old", and "Rolling and Tumbling" have all become classic songs, frequently covered by bands from many genres.
Indeed, the birth of rock and roll can be simplified as an amalgamation of the music of Muddy Waters and Hank Williams. If not explicitly in their music (Muddy was still a few years behind some of the artists he had already influenced, in Chicago), then, in their modern musical stylings - adding drums and electrified guitars. These seemingly disparate types of music were being soaked up in the musical melting pot of the Memphis, Tennessee area by the likes of Sam Phillips, and the artists he was beginning to record, including a young Elvis Presley
Later times
Still vital into the era of psychedelia, Waters' music was embraced by Sixties' rock musicians, His then manager/bookers (Willie Ashwood kavanna and Bob Messenger) were booking him with these "young rockers' as a way to introduce his music to college audiences and convinced him to record one of these concerts with resulted in a collaboration with Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, and others resulting in the album entitled, Fathers and Sons, which featured some incendiary, Jimi Hendrix-style arrangements of some of Waters' classic songs. The traditional blues fans were outraged. The previous year, it was Ashwood kavanna who had been instrumental in convincing Muddy and Chess to release "Electric Mudd" which was an LP that traced the linage of the Delta Blues to the then current hard rock, as imported by the British rockers, most of which was merely electrical versions of Muddy Waters and the other first generation bluesman (Robert Johnson, Lowell Fullsom, Sun Ra, etc).
Most of Muddy Waters' output from the early and mid-1970s is less satisfying. Waters sounded mostly old, uninspired, and often out of touch with his own music.
He made a memorable appearance in the film and recording of The Band's The Last Waltz, and subsequently, on 6-7 February 1975, Waters went to Woodstock New York to record, with The Band's Levon Helm and Garth Hudson, plus Paul Butterfield, Pinetop Perkins, and Bob Margolin, what was to become his final Chess album — the Grammy-winning Woodstock Album. Clearly enjoying the busman's holiday, Waters turned in an acclaimed performance. Helm has called his production of the Woodstock Album perhaps his greatest achievement, ever.
A meeting towards the late '70s, however, with Texas guitarist/vocalist Johnny Winter resulted in three of the finest albums Waters ever released. Using Winters' stripped-down (and mostly live) production, the albums Hard Again, I'm Ready and King Bee capture Muddy Waters as riveting and vital as he was in his prime. One listen to the astonishing power of "Mannish Boy" (from Hard Again) and it is clear that Waters sounds utterly reborn, reconnected to the swagger and confidence he possessed when he originally wrote the song two decades earlier. Those albums served as Muddy Waters epitaph, as the legendary bluesman passed away scarcely a year after recording the King Bee album.
Shortly before he died, the hard-living Waters fired his entire band in a single swoop, in a fit of anger. He performed a final run of shows with a less-road-tested outfit that, not surprisingly, lacked the presence of the Johnny Winter-era Muddy Waters Blues Band. It is the Winter-produced albums, therefore, that serve as Muddy Waters' memorable epitaph.
Muddy Waters died in Westmont, Illinois at the age of 68 and is buried in the Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois near Chicago. Westmont renamed a street for Waters and holds an annual blues festival there.
Influence
His influence has been enormous across many music genres: blues, rhythm and blues, rock, folk, jazz, and country. Waters even helped Chuck Berry get his first record contract.
His tours of England in the early '60s marked possibly the first time an amplified, hard-rocking band was heard there. (One critic retreated to the restroom to write his review because he found the band so loud.) The Rolling Stones named themselves after his 1950 song, "Rollin' Stone," also known as "Catfish Blues." One of Led Zeppelin's biggest hits, "Whole Lotta Love," is based upon the Muddy Waters hit, "You Need Love," which was written by Willie Dixon. Dixon wrote some of Muddy Waters' most famous songs, including "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (a big radio hit for the '70s rock band Foghat), "Hoochie Coochie Man," and "I'm Ready." Angus Young has cited Waters as one of his influences, shown in AC/DC's cover of "Baby Please Don't Go".
Other songs for which Muddy Waters is known include "Long Distance Call", "Rock Me", and the jumping blues anthem "Got My Mojo Working". 
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