Rock Hall Fetes Muddy Waters

C L E V E L A N D, Sept. 26 -- Muddy Waters has been gone for 17 years, but his mojo just won’t quit.

Just last weekend, some disciples that Bonnie Raitt referred to as “the greatest blues brothers in the world” gathered at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to make sure that it never does.

Muddy’s mojo — or whatever one might call his significant blues power — was channeled by Raitt, Jimmie Vaughan, Charlie Musselwhite, Chris Whitley, Dave Alvin, Deborah Coleman, Paul Rodgers, Vernon Reid, Bernard Allison, and the North Mississippi Allstars, plus his contemporaries James Cotton, Hubert Sumlin, Johnnie Johnson, and Robert Lockwood Jr., all paying tribute to the acknowledged father of electric Chicago blues during the Rock Hall’s fifth annual American Music Masters series program. The week of performances, talks, films, and related events culminated in a Saturday symposium, a club concert that night, and an all-star blues blowout on Sunday.

Raitt Full of MuddBritish Muddy disciples Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Eric Clapton did not make it — the latter because his recent project with B.B. King ate up the time that his visa allows him to spend in the States — but ex-Rolling Stone Mick Taylor materialized Saturday night. And Sunday belonged to rock hall inductee Raitt, who conjured Muddy’s spirit with an earthy edge that blew most of her male counterparts off the stage.

“I am full of him from head to toe right now,” Raitt said. “Muddy, wherever you are, you are with us tonight.”

Hall-of-Famer Levon Helm also paid his respects, drumming during Sumlin’s lowdown-and-dirty delivery of “Little Red Rooster” with pianist Johnson and bassist Calvin Jones, who, like Cotton and drummer Willie Smith, had performed with Waters. Cotton remains a fierce harp blower, though like Helm, cancer has turned his voice into a no-longer-viable instrument. Unlike Helm, he still attempts to use it — a bad idea, unfortunately.