his massive hips begin to shake. “I’m a tail dragger…”

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Muddy Waters alone turned that style into a vehicle for personal popularity, and fifteen years later it is Muddy Waters alone who retains any wide personal following.

“It was sex,” says twenty-seven-year-old Marshall Chess, whose father, Leonard, discovered Muddy. “If you had ever seen Muddy then, the effect he had on women. Because blues, you know, has always been a women’s market. On Saturday night they’d be lined up ten deep.”

“I like to think I could really master a stage,” says Muddy. “I think I was a pretty good stage personality, and I knew how to present myself right. No, I never developed an act of any kind. I just had a natural feel for it.”

As the music warmed up Muddy began to comment, give encouragement, working himself up to a pitch of excitement that made a tremendous impact when he fronted the group. There was no doubting who was king—the effect was stunning. And frightening too. The sheer physical drive of band and blues singer chilled the spine. Muddy roared, leaped, jerked in fierce and violent spasms. When he came off the stage he was in a state of near-trance and the sweat poured off him.