To exemplify the influence blues guitarist and singer Muddy
Waters had on the music world, filmmaker Robert Gordon describes an
early ’60s Rolling Stones concert. The band, whose name also
comes from a Waters’ song, covered “I Just Want To Make
Love To You,” one of Waters’ biggest hits.
In his new documentary about Waters, “Muddy Waters
Can’t Be Satisfied,” Gordon included footage from this
concert along with archival interviews of various musicians talking
about Waters’ influence.
“You see Bonnie Raitt and Keith Richards saying they got
their ideas from (Waters),” Gordon said.
Gordon’s film will screen this Friday at the Getty Center
as part of a night of film screenings under the umbrella event
title “Feel Like Going Home: Musicians on Film.” Also
screening are two 1960s documentaries directed by Les Blank, titled
“The Blues Accordin’ to Lightin’ Hopkins”
and “Dizzy Gillespie.” Following the screenings, Blank,
Gordon and co-director on the Waters documentary, Morgan Neville,
will be present at a panel discussion.
Describing his film as an “innovative historical
biography,” Gordon hopes to show Waters’ influence on
America as much as on its music.
“The achievement in (Waters’) life was the triumph
of the dirt farmer,” Gordon said.
Raised as a sharecropper in the Mississippi delta only to move
to Chicago and become one of the most important American musicians,
Waters is an example of the American dream, according to Gordon.
The innovation in “Muddy Waters Can’t Be
Satisfied” is its focus on that personal transition.
“We didn’t get bogged down in traditional
biographical details,” Gordon said. “I don’t
think we ever say what his birthday is.”
To tell that story and not fall into an A&E Biography-type
filmmaking style, Gordon looked at as much film and video footage
of Waters as possible. The research served a dual purpose: Gordon
is also writing a biography on Waters due out in paperback next
month.
“I really wanted to get the intonations and rhythms of his
voice down,” Gordon said.
To do that, Gordon did extensive research on Waters’
childhood life in Mississippi. The work is and will be evident in
his film and book.
“The thing that made (Waters) was his background in
Mississippi, so we spent a lot of time in Mississippi,”
Gordon said.
Although Waters has been dead for over 20 years, Gordon believes
much can still be learned about Waters’ music and that
America still feels its influence. However, according to Gordon, to
understand that influence, it is first necessary to understand
Waters himself.
“(Waters) made great music, and lived a complicated,
sometimes ugly life,” Gordon said. “I want people to
explore the relationship between the two.”
While the link between musical fame and a difficult life is not
new, Waters’ blues may have been directly influenced by the
racial tensions he faced growing up in the South in the early
1900s. However, out of that racism, Waters helped to unify
America.
“His blues became rock and roll, and rock and roll became
the voice of America in the later half of the 20th Century,”
Gordon said. “Rock and roll became the voice of
democracy.”