These rare performances -- all electric -- capture Muddy as the embers of his career glowed anew. By 1968, the folk blues had waned and the sound he popularized in the mid-1950s was returning to the fore. Over the next decade, Muddy secured his place as the godfather of rock and roll. The slide guitar technique he plays on these versions of Country Boy, Honey Bee, and Long Distance Call is at once contemporary and as pure as when he learned it as a dusty child in the delta fifty years earlier. In Got My Mojo Working, Muddy works the vocals from his cavernous chest into his mouth and then shakes the words from his jowls and cheeks. His singing is as glorious as his playing.

Throughout his career, Muddy always drew exceptional sideman. Muddy's two great pianists -- Otis Spann and Pinetop Perkins -- are both featured here, as are harmonica players Carey Bell, Paul Oscher, and Jerry Portnoy. Guitarists include Pee Wee Madison, Bob Margolin, and Luther Johnson, and on the skins are Muddy's last two great drummers, S.P. Leary and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith.

-- Robert Gordon, author of It Came From Memphis

1. Blow, Wind, Blow
2. Country Boy
3. Got My Mojo Working
4. Baby Please Don't Go
5. Honey Bee
6. They Call Me Muddy Waters
7. Walking Through the Park
8. Long Distance Call
9. Mannish Boy
10. Caldonia
11. Everything Gonna Be All Right
12. 12th of April (Soon Forgotten)