‘Born in blues’: Mud Morganfield hits Hey Nonny on the heels of his new album
Mud Morganfield has never felt any pressure following in the Chicago blues tradition of his famous father, Muddy Waters.
The music just couldn’t be denied. Morganfield was compelled.
“I tell people, I was born in blues,” Mud said.
Morganfield’s authenticity and deep, Muddy-like voice will convince listeners of his lifelong passion for Chicago electric blues at a concert Saturday, Sept. 27, at Hey Nonny in Arlington Heights.
It’s a CD release party for Morganfield’s latest album, “Deep Mud,” scheduled for release Friday, Sept. 26, in his first pressing for Nola Blue Records.
Recorded at Joy Ride Studio in Chicago and produced and arranged by Chicago blues man “Studebaker” John Grimaldi, “Deep Mud” offers 12 originals and two covers of Muddy Waters songs, “Strange Woman” and “Country Boy.”
Morganfield’s eight-piece band for the Hey Nonny show as well as a Thursday, Sept. 25, appearance on WGN television’s “Morning News,” includes Studebaker John on blues harp, Sumito Ariyo on piano, Melvin Carlisle on drums, Rick Kreher on guitar, Phil Perkins on horns, Harlan Terson on bass and Mike Wheeler on guitar.
Morganfield will periodically pluck a bass. Besides a strong singing voice as his main instrument, bass replaced the drums for Morganfield after watching Verdine White play in an early Earth, Wind & Fire concert when Mud was in his teens.
“It’s so full of different styles, different sounds on this album,” Morganfield said. “It’s a ballad, it’s a shuffle, it’s a rhumba. I wanted to do that because I wanted to appeal to more than one group of people.”
The vocalist promises a stirring set at Hey Nonny, where he’ll deliver his tunes “on my 45th birthday,” he said, wryly.
Saturday, Sept. 27, actually will be his 71st birthday.
“We’re going to mix it up, man. We’re going to do a few of the songs off the album, and a few of what we always do,” said Morganfield, who lives in Oak Park.
“We’re going to go into Fort Knox and we’re going to rehearse that stuff, and then we’re going to hit the stage, man, try to give people their money’s worth. We want to make sure that you saw a show.”
He’s been bursting with music all his life.
The eldest son of Muddy Waters, Mud was the product of an affair with Mud’s mother, Mildred McGhee. She lived in a building owned by Joseph Chess, father of the men behind the blues mecca Chess Records on Chicago’s South Side.
“I was born in blues when I first come out of my mother,” Morganfield said.
“And then when I was a kid, 3, 4, 5 years old, I used to have to tap on the side of my mattress and my ear to put myself to sleep. I had this rhythm, these different sounds of music that just ran through me from the day I got here.”
Morganfield said he never knew his father well, but well enough to tell Muddy Waters he wanted to take up the drums “to get this music out of me.”
The blues legend responded by buying him a cheap set of drums for Christmas every year — “and by New Year’s I’d knocked a hole in the snare. Then he started to get me a more expensive pair,” Morganfield said.
Growing up he’d bump into famous musicians such as Bo Diddley or Howling Wolf in his apartment building without knowing who they were. Morganfield also would encounter the blues outside his apartment, the wrong kind.
“I heard gunshots, ambulances, fire departments, hustlers, pimps. This is what I saw in my neighborhood coming up,” he said.
“I’m grown now, and I tell you, I wouldn’t give one day back, because it made me the man I am today.”
Though as a younger man he tried singing other artists’ music, no matter the source material, the sounds he produced sounded like his famous father. Eventually, Morganfield embraced it.
In fact, he sang his father’s “Hoochie Coochie Man” at this year’s Chicago Blues Festival.
Professionally, his music career took some time. Morganfield drove trucks for years and didn’t cut an album until he self-produced “Fall Waters Fall” in 2008. He’s since recorded albums for Severn, Delmark and Big labels, and has toured internationally for more than two decades.
Morganfield also won a 2015 Blues Music Award for Traditional Blues Album, one he did with the Fabulous Thunderbirds’ Kim Wilson, “For Pops (A Tribute to Muddy Waters).”
The blues still come up to bite him, even if they can inspire his songwriting.
He wrote “A Dream Walking,” the last track on “Deep Mud,” after doctors told his ailing mother there was no more they could do for her. She died of heart failure on March 4 at 92 years old.
“That look she gave, that fear in her face, will haunt me the rest of my days,” Morganfield said.
“It ties right into the blues.”
Not all blues are sad. The first single off “Deep Mud,” the horn-, keyboard- and guitar-infused “She’s Getting Her Groove On,” is a lively track about tough luck with a woman.
“You don’t always have to cry with the blues,” Morganfield said. “Sometimes you can have a great time, if only for 15 minutes.”
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Mud Morganfield
“Deep Mud” CD release party
When: Doors open at 5:30 p.m., the show is at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 27
Where: Hey Nonny, 100 S. Vail Ave., Arlington Heights
Tickets: Start at $24 at heynonny.com/shows/mud-morganfield-5/