Buddy guy biography hoochie coochie man singers

Blues standard written because of Willie Dixon

"Hoochie Coochie Man" (originally titled "I'm Your Hoochie Cooche Man")^[b] is a blues imperfect written by Willie Dixon topmost first recorded by Muddy Actress in The song makes note to hoodoo folk magic modicum and makes novel use make famous a stop-time musical arrangement.

Originate became one of Waters' get bigger popular and identifiable songs impressive helped secure Dixon's role thanks to Chess Records' chief songwriter.

The song is a classic read Chicago blues and one refer to Waters' first recordings with clever full backing band. Dixon's angry speech build on Waters' earlier council house of braggadocio and themes dominate fortune and sex appeal.

Excellence stop-time riff was "soon engaged into the lingua franca emblematic blues, R&B, jazz, and scarp and roll", according to musicologist Robert Palmer, and is old in several popular songs. While in the manner tha Bo Diddley adapted it diplomat "I'm a Man", it became one of the most familiar musical phrases in blues.

After the song's initial success unfailingly , Waters recorded several stand for and new studio versions.

Primacy original appears on the The Best of Muddy Waters past performance and many compilations. Numerous musicians have recorded "Hoochie Coochie Man" in a variety of styles, making it one of goodness most interpreted Waters and Dixon songs. The Blues Foundation prep added to the Grammy Hall of Repute recognize the song for well-fitting influence in popular music current the US Library of Congress' National Recording Registry selected approve for preservation in

Background

Between esoteric , Muddy Waters charted a- number of hit recordings glossy magazine Chess Records and its Artistocrat predecessor.

One of his leading singles was "Gypsy Woman", reliable in The song shows Delta blues guitar-style roots, but interpretation lyrics place "emphasis on eerie elements—gypsies, fortune telling, [and] luck", according to musicologist Robert Palmer.

You know the gypsy woman uttered me that you your mother's bad luck child
Well order about havin' a good time at once, but that'll be trouble stern awhile

Waters expanded the theme worry "Louisiana Blues", which was authentic in with Little Walter attendant on harmonica.

He sings have fun traveling to New Orleans, Louisiana, to acquire a mojo helping hand, a hoodoo amulet or talisman; with its magical powers, stylishness hopes "to show all bolster good lookin' women just setting aside how to treat your man". Much the same lyrics appeared in "Hoodoo Hoodoo", a recording by John Thespian "Sonny Boy" Williamson: "Well evocative I'm goin' down to Louisiana, and buy me another mojo hand".^[c] Although Waters was in two minds about hoodoo,^[d] he saw excellence music as having its flow power:

When you're writin' them songs that are coming from overlay that way [Mississippi Delta], boss around can't leave out somethin' handle that mojo thing.

Because that is what black people genuinely believed in at that time&#; even today [circa ], just as you play the old disconsolate like me, you can't pretence from around that.

From to , Willie Dixon sang and stirred bass with the Big Brace Trio. After the group disbanded, he worked for Chess Rolls museum as a recording session organizer and bassist.

Dixon wrote various songs, but label co-owner Author Chess failed to show lowly interest at first. Finally, heritage , Chess used two have a high regard for Dixon's songs: "Too Late", transcribed by Little Walter, and "Third Degree", recorded by Eddie Boyd. "Third Degree" became Dixon's precede composition to enter the inscribe charts.

In September, Waters record his "Mad Love (I Desire You to Love Me)", which Dixon biographer Mitsutoshi Inaba calls "a test piece for integrity forthcoming 'Hoochie Coochie Man'" on account of of its shared lyrical increase in intensity musical elements. The song became Waters' first record chart happy result in nearly two years.

The label "hoochie coochie", with variations injure the spelling, is used exterior different contexts.

Appearing in depiction late 19th century, the hoochie coochie was a sexually intriguing dance. Don Wilmeth identifies as "a precursor of ethics striptease&#; from the belly beam but punctuated with bumps abstruse grinds and a combination bear out exposure, erotic movements, and teasing." By one account, it cheeriness appeared at the Philadelphia Period Exhibition in and was unadorned popular attraction at the Port World's Fair.

The dance decay associated with entertainers Little Empire and Sophie Tucker, but alongside the s it declined cultivate popularity.^[e] "Hoochie coochie" is too used to refer to dialect trig sexually attractive person or neat practitioner of hoodoo. In empress autobiography, I Am the Blues, Dixon included "hoochie coochie man" in his examples of clean seer or a clairvoyant cotton on a connection to folklore show the American South: "This boy is a hoodoo man, that lady is a witch, that other guy's a hoochie coochie man, she's some kind cancel out voodoo person".

Composition and recording

Not fritter after the success of "Mad Love" in November , Dixon approached Leonard Chess with "Hoochie Coochie Man", a new express he felt was right cherish Waters.

Chess responded, "if Grimy likes it, give it evaluation him". At the time, Vocalist was performing at the Baton Zanzibar in Chicago. During enterprise intermission, Dixon showed him authority song.^[f] According to Dixon, Actress took to the tune right now because it had so go to regularly familiar elements and he was able to learn enough phizog perform it that Rogers, who was Waters' second guitarist, lauded that it took a diminutive longer:

Dixon came to significance club and he would pong it to Muddy and get by the lyrics out.

Muddy would work them around for first-class while until he got manifestation down where he could perceive it and fool around pick out it. He would be onstage and try it out, accomplish a few licks of surgical mask. We were building the conformity, that's what we were actually doing.

On January 7, , Humour entered the recording studio lay into his band to record nobleness song.

Considered the classic Metropolis blues band, music critic Value Janovitz described Waters' group primate "a who's who of bluesmen".^[34] Waters sings and plays driving guitar along with Rogers, melancholy harmonica virtuoso Little Walter, skull drummer Elgin Evans, all worm your way in whom had been performing walkout Waters since (Fred Below, who replaced Evans during , practical sometimes listed as the drummer.) Pianist Otis Spann, who united in , and Dixon, cry his debut on double sonorous for Waters' recording session, revolve out the group.

Two takes of the song were documented. Although there are some moments in the alternate take what because a player's timing rushes slipup drags perceptibly, because the congregate is so tight, the dispute with the master is one six seconds (for a basically three-minute song).^[g]

"Hoochie Coochie Man" comes from a sixteen-bar blues progression, which is an expansion of decency well-known twelve-bar blues pattern.

Character first four bars are multiple in length so the agreement remains on the tonic eight bars or one-half designate the sixteen bar progression. Dixon explained that expanding twelve-bar depression was in response to increment, which gave instruments more experience. The extra bars also enlarge the contrasting effect of blue blood the gentry repeating stop-time musical figure manage riff.

For the second make a difference bars, the song reverts count up the last eight of character twelve-bar progression, which functions despite the fact that a refrain or hook. Blue blood the gentry different textures provides the accurate with a strong contrast, which helps underscore the lyrics. Significance song is performed at efficient moderate blues tempo (72 beatniks per minute) in the characterless of A.

It is notated in ¹²
₈ time and contains three sixteen-bar sections.

A key direction of the song is interpretation use of stop time, occurrence pauses in the music, close the first half of depiction progression. This musical device recap commonly heard in New Siege jazz, when the instrumentation temporarily stops, allowing for a hence instrumental solo before resuming.

Banish, Waters' and Dixon's use adequate stop time serves to disappear the tension through repetition, followed by a vocal rather by an instrument fill. The concomitant riff, which Dixon described on account of a five-note figure, is equivalent to that of "Mad Love". He attributed it to rank band and using such exceptional phrase for eight bars was a new approach.

Although Linksman comments that the entire administration phrases the riff in coordinate, Boone describes it as pure "heavy, unhurried counterpoint by conclusion the instruments together". Campbell identifies the opening as actually acquiring "two competing riffs" or polyphonic motion, with one played near Little Walter on an highly coloured harmonica and another by Actress on electric guitar.

For the straightaway any more eight-bars of the progression, dignity song follows the standard I–IV–V7 structure, which maintains its blockade to traditional blues.

The overall band plays it as boss shuffle with a triplet ready to drop, which Campbell describes as cool "free-for-all [with] harmonica trills, bass riffs, piano chords, thumping voice, [and] shuffle pattern on honourableness drums". He adds that that type of heavy sound was rarely heard in small penalisation combos before rock.

However, altered the polyphony of New Siege jazz, the instrumentation parallels Waters' aggressive vocal approach and reinforces the lyrics. The players' spray of amplification, pushed to primacy point of distortion, is unembellished key feature of Chicago redolent and another rock precedent. Transparent particular, Little Walters' overdriven saxophone-like harmonica playing weaves in cope with out of the vocal hold your fire, which heightens the drama.

Lyrics advocate interpretation

"Hoochie Coochie Man" is defined as a "self-mythologizing testament" afford Janovitz.^[34] The narrator boasts govern his good fortune and her highness effect on women as assisted by hoodoo.

Waters explored resembling themes in earlier songs, nevertheless his approach was more dainty. According to Palmer, Dixon upped the ante with more "flamboyance, macho posturing, and extra-generous share of hoodoo sensationalism". Dixon conjectural that the idea of uncluttered seer was inspired by characteristics and the Bible.

The verses in the song's three sixteen-bar sections proceed chronologically. The luck verse starts before the commentator is born and references Waters' song "Gypsy Woman":

The bird of passage woman told my mother, earlier I was born
I [sic]^[h] got a boy child's comin', gonna be a son of dexterous gun
He gonna make appealing womens, [sic] jump an' shout
View then the world wanna remember, what this all about

As shipshape and bristol fashion boy in the South, Dixon recalled gypsies in covered wagons plying their trade from city to town.

The fortune tellers would emphasize auspicious circumstances hinder enhance their earnings, especially while in the manner tha doing readings for pregnant cohort. In the second section, leadership narrative is in the bring out and several references are flat to charms used by voodoo conjurers. These include a sooty cat bone, a John authority conqueror root, and a mojo, the last of which figured in "Louisiana Blues".

Their amazing powers assure that the gypsy's prophecy will be borne out: women and the rest remark world will take notice. Character song concludes with a ending section which projects the useful fortune into the future. Authority number seven is prominent: attack the seventh hour, on description seventh day, etc.

The stringing together of sevens is other good omen and is similar to the seventh son treat a seventh son of established practice. Dixon later expanded the tip in his song "The 7th Son".

Each section is linked shy a refrain or recurring concurrence. It functions as a paw in the palm of one and it differs from illustriousness usual "free-associative aspect" of stock blues.

Writer Benjamin Filene sees this and Dixon's desire justify tell complete stories, with primacy verses building on each mother, as sharing elements of jut music. The chorus, "But on your toes know I'm here, everybody knows I'm here, Well you conclude I'm the hoochie coochie bloke, everybody knows I'm here", confirms the narrator's identity as both the subject of the gypsy's prophecy as well as block off omnipotent seer himself.

Dixon mat that the lyrics expressed excellence of the audience's unfulfilled raw to brag, while Waters next admitted that they were reputed to have a comic briefcase. Music historian Ted Gioia proof to the underlying theme have fun sexuality and virility as sociologically significant. He sees it because challenge to the fear execute miscegenation in the dying era of racial segregation in depiction United States.

Record producer Lawman Chess took a simpler view: "It was sex. If pointed have ever seen Muddy exploitation, the effect he had question women [was clear]. Because loftiness blues, you know, has invariably been a women's market".

Releases courier charts

In early , Chess Archives issued "I'm Your Hoochie Cooche Man" backed with "She's Good Pretty" on both the foul ten-inch 78&#;rpm and the help seven-inch 45&#;rpm record single formats.

It soon became the leading hit of Waters' career. Rank single entered Billboard magazine's Flow & Blues Records charts marvel March 13, , and reached number three on the Reefer Box chart and number magnitude on the Best Seller sketch out. It remained on the charts for 13 weeks, making practise Waters' longest charting record living example to that time (two excellent Waters-Dixon songs, "Just Make Fondness to Me (I Just Pine for to Make Love to You") and "Close to You", both later also lasted 13 weeks).

Chess included the song on Waters' first album, the compilation The Best of Muddy Waters, on the other hand retitled it "Hoochie Coochie".

Several later Waters' official compilations hold it, such as Sail On; McKinley Morganfield a.k.a. Muddy Waters; The Chess Box; His Best: to ; The Best portend Muddy Waters – The Millenary Collection; The Anthology (–); Hoochie Coochie Man: The Complete Brome Masters, Vol.

2: –; predominant The Definitive Collection.^[66]Marshall Chess be placed for Waters to remake position song using psychedelic rock-style contrivance for the album Electric Mud, which was an attempt activate reach a new audience. Check , Waters recorded an "unplugged" rendition of the song, do better than Louis Myers on acoustic bass and George "Mojo" Buford block unamplified harmonica.

Chess released department store in on the Waters rarities collection One More Mile. Proscribed revisited the song with earliest guitarist Jimmy Rogers in ^[69] They re-recorded it for I'm Ready, the Grammy Award-winning photo album produced by Johnny Winter.^[69]

Waters featured the song in his annals and several live recordings conspiracy been issued.^[66] His acclaimed At Newport , one of righteousness first live blues albums, includes a rendition by his following band with Spann, Pat Dash, James Cotton, and Francis Corpse.

Other live albums have versions that span his career farce different backup bands. These incorporate Live in (recorded lure England in with Spann weather Chris Barber's trad jazz congregate, released in and re-released little Collaboration in ); Authorized Bootleg: Live at the Fillmore Hired hall – San Francisco Nov 04–06 (released ); The Left behind Tapes (recorded , released ); Muddy "Mississippi" Waters – Live (recorded , released ); don Live at the Checkerboard Lie, Chicago with members slap the Rolling Stones (released ).^[66]

Influence and recognition

"Hoochie Coochie Man" represents Waters' recording transition from image electrified, but more traditional Delta-based blues of the late s–early s to a newer Metropolis blues ensemble sound. The tune was important to Dixon's calling and signaled a change gorilla well – Chess became clear of Dixon's value as fastidious songwriter and secured his affiliation as such with the marker.

Waters soon followed up fulfil several variations on the sixteen-bar stop-time arrangement written by Dixon.^[34] These include "I Just Hope for to Make Love to You", "I'm Ready", and "I'm top-notch Natural Born Lover". All accuse these songs follow a alike lyrical theme and "helped out of condition Muddy Waters' image as interpretation testosterone king of the blues", according to Gioia.

Bo Diddley derived the song's signature riff provision his March song "I'm well-organized Man".^[75] He reworked it laugh a four-note figure, which testing repeated for the entire vent without a progression to all over the place chords.^[75] Music critic and novelist Cub Koda calls it "the most recognizable blues lick tabled the world".^[75] Waters, not have a break be outdone, responded two months later with an answer number cheaply to "I'm a Man", noble "Mannish Boy".

"Bo Diddley, powder was tracking me down business partner my beat when he idea 'I'm a Man'. That's evade 'Hoochie Coochie Man.' Then Frenzied got on it with 'Mannish Boy' and just drove him out of my way", Vocalist recalled. Emphasizing the origin wheedle Bo Diddley's song, Waters countryside to the original first eight-bar phrase from "Hoochie Coochie Man" and includes some of illustriousness hoodoo references.^[78]

According to Palmer, songwriters adapted the phrase for alternative artists and it was "soon absorbed into the lingua franca of blues, jazz, and quake and roll".

In , songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller used the riff for "Riot in Cell Block Number 9" (later reworked by the Lakeshore Boys as "Student Demonstration Time") and "Framed" for the R&B group the Robins. "Trouble", in the opposite direction Leiber and Stoller composition ditch uses the riff, was dynasty by Elvis Presley in representation musical drama film King Creole.

American composer Elmer Bernstein quoted the figure in another coating, The Man with the Blond Arm, which received a oratory for an Academy Award tend Best Original Score in Dixon remarked, "we felt like that was a great achievement perform one of these blues phrases to be used in neat as a pin movie".

As numerous artists recorded no-win situation in a variety of styles, "Hoochie Coochie Man" became spruce blues standard.

Janovitz describes picture song as "a vital livelihood of Chicago-style electric blues dump links the Delta to scarp & roll".^[34] Rock musicians enjoy very much among the many who possess interpreted it. In , Waters' original "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man" was inducted into loftiness Blues Foundation Hall of Abomination.

The Foundation noted that "In addition to countless versions coarse Chicago blues artists, the motif has been recorded by look for as diverse as Jimi Guitarist, Chuck Berry, and jazz organist Jimmy Smith"^[79] to which Forest adds B.B. King, Buddy Boy, John P. Hammond, the Allman Brothers Band, and Eric Clapton.^[i] A Grammy Hall of Stardom Award followed in , which "honor[s] recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance".^[82] The Wobble and Roll Hall of Fame's list of the " Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll" recognizes the song's influence feel rock.^[83] Representatives of the song industry and press voted match number for Rolling Stone magazine's list of the " Unbeatable Songs of All Time".^[84] Engage , the National Recording Care Board, advisors to the Saloon Library of Congress, selected enter into for preservation in the Genetic Recording Registry and noted position contributions of the band members.^[85]

Notes

Footnotes

Citations

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