Regarding that “Muddy Waters Folk Singer” album, it’s now a CD issued as a double album with “Muddy Waters Sings Big Bill Broonzy.” I first encountered the Broonzy album in the University of Washington Undergraduate Library. I think it was only one or two songs from that album that appeared within a taped lecture on the history of African-Americans. The professor noted how the record and the music both captured the Black migration from the rural South to the urban North. Muddy and his band of all-stars (Otis Spann on piano and James Cotton on harmonica, amongst others!) are playing songs by Big Bill, who was hosting blues musicians at his club in Chicago. When you listen to the tunes, you are hearing this transitional form of blues–somewhere between rural acoustic and urban electric. This is a seminal moment that marks the beginning of electric Chicago Blues and, potentially, the first seed of Rock and Roll.

I was in my early twenties at the time, and not long into learning the guitar. The Blues was my start. I had also just decided I needed to learn to play the harmonica. I made it a point to find and buy that album, because it had everything I was looking for to learn from. Listening to it, James Cotton became my first mentor for the Blues harp. Years later, I caught Cotton playing a gig in Seattle. I asked him to sign my CD. He barely could remember that session. I know I told him that I learned my first harmonica chops listening to him. I hope I remembered to tell him that they were teaching that album at the local university.

–Dave Eriksen