Can't Be Satisfied (47 page)

A generation has been born and matured since his death, and the testament to the endurance of Muddy’s music is his power over those experiencing a world he never knew. His legacy is as
strong as it’s ever been. His culture — the blues culture — had an impact in the twentieth century that was, arguably, second to none. Duke Ellington evokes a cosmopolitan
sophistication. Harry Belafonte’s catalog captures the breadth of African influence on Western song. Louis Armstrong conjures America’s melting pot. But Muddy’s achievement is the
triumph of the dirt farmer. His music brought respect to a culture dismissed as offal. His music spawned the triumphant voice of angry people demanding change. This dirt has meaning.

A coatrack full of empty hangers. A potbellied stove with no flame. The first chill of winter in Chicago’s September air.

Dusk lingers, evening fending off night. This is the light when reflections are translucent, when a window reflects one’s own image as easily as reveals what’s beyond.

A shop front on Chicago’s South Side, the start of a new century. Two old men in their seventies, or maybe their sixties and hard living. The room is scattered with more objects than
either will be able to repair in this lifetime. Which bothers them none as they sit and play guitar.

A TV on its side. Two-thirds of a three-way mirror. A curious white wax apple smudged with auto grease, a refrigerator covered with a 1960s psychedelic pattern. “Your fingers are a little
stiff,” says the one who is not picking. His fingers are, in fact, palsied.

This room is long and deep. The ceiling is high, with fluorescent light fixtures hanging down several feet, and still way out of reach. The bulbs in most no longer even flicker. The sounds of
glasses tinkling, patrons milling, matches lighting cigarettes, and old friends from the South stumbling upon each other in the North — these are all absorbed into the empty space now the
domain of spiders.

The address of this shop is 706 Forty-seventh Street. Chicago.
The South Side. This block is a series of shop fronts, old buildings with common walls. Next door, they sell
furniture and bicycles, dining room suites with gold-painted aluminum frames, clear Plexiglas table tops, and padded chairs, the fabric of which will fray sooner than expected. The address of that
shop is 708 Forty-seventh Street. It used to be a club, the 708 Club, and Muddy Waters played there. Regular. Howlin’ Wolf, once he began to attract attention, played there. Before them,
Memphis Minnie played the 708 and after them, Buddy Guy played there, new in Chicago and thinking about returning to Louisiana.

The man and his companion at 706 lean back in their old office chairs, roll a little bit on the wheels. The chair arms are worn through, and foam stuffing seeps out. A young woman opens the
front door and asks for spare change so she can buy drugs. No one gives her any money, but she sits down and listens to the guitar. They make her welcome.

“The blues were around way before I was born,” Muddy said. “They’ll always be around. Long as people hurt, they’ll be around.”

The Fisk–Library of Congress Coahoma County Study is a significant landmark in America’s appreciation of its African American art and culture. In a report to the
Library of Congress after the 1941 trip, Alan Lomax wrote, “So far as I know this study marks the first occasion on which a great Negro university has officially dedicated itself to the study
and publication of Negro folk songs. . . .”

The trip yielded many resources and was itself well documented. When recordings from the trip have been cited, the dates have usually been approximated. Through correlating journals and
correspondences at the Fisk Library, the Alan Lomax Archives, the Library of Congress, and The Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University, I have determined the itinerary of the
recordists.

In the 1941 report, Lomax also wrote,

The study was not only never published, it was misplaced, its hunt the subject of correspondence since 1945. During research in the John Work Archives at Fisk University, I
located the complete study, along with complementary manuscripts by Lewis Jones, Fisk Department of Sociology, and Samuel Adams Jr., one of Jones’s students. Hopefully, these works will
finally be published.

The 1941 traveling party included John Work III, Alan Lomax, Lewis Jones, and a Dr. Ross, from the Fisk Drama Department. The sociologists and musicologists apparently split up
while in Clarksdale.

The 1942 traveling party included Alan Lomax, Lewis Jones, and several of Jones’s students, including a Ms. Worley and a Senor Eduardo. Lomax worked alone in Coahoma,
regrouping with the others periodically.