Can't Be Satisfied (39 page)

Cameron continued to come through on the gigs, doing his best to expand Muddy’s audience. The Mr. Kelly’s gig led to performances at Carnegie Hall and a circuit of higher-class
cabarets. In December of 1972, the Hoochie Coochie contingency found themselves at the St. Regis Hotel in New York, settling into suites for an extended engagement at the hotel’s classy
Maisonette Lounge. The accommodations lacked for nothing, but Muddy couldn’t get comfortable. “For a blues band such as Mr. Waters’s to make the transition from a blues club or
concert situation to the more formal atmosphere of the Maisonette requires some adaptation on both sides,” wrote the
New York Times
.

By the time of his 1972 return to Europe, promoting
London Sessions,
Muddy was committed to the times: he was sporting an afro
and wearing loud suits. A
journalist for
Ebony,
a magazine directed at African Americans, described him as “the essence of the black man in Chi Town.” He was able to carry the feeling overseas.
“One of the best Muddy Waters shows I saw was at the 100 Club on Oxford Street,” said Frank Weston, a writer and longtime British fan. “They were literally hanging from the
rafters. It must have been the nearest thing England ever got to hearing what he sounded like playing in a Chicago club. That was the full band going full throttle. By then, there really was a
blues audience, they were queueing out around the block. They had to turn people away that night.”

The main event of the trip was an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, but the highlight was an intimate recording made of a Swiss radio broadcast. The eleven songs,
available on the posthumous Muddy compilation
One More Mile,
are as near to sitting around with Muddy Waters as anything since his early days. His slide work is full of personality and
humor, his vocal phrasing is sensual and gripping. It’s a side of Muddy not revealed on any other recordings of the era, nor in interviews. He sounds perfectly relaxed and comfortable, his
electric guitar turned way down, accompanied by Louis Myers on acoustic guitar and Mojo Buford on harp. (Oscher had taken a sick leave from which he never returned; Sammy Lawhorn, a couple days
before departure, pissed off someone and had both his legs broken. “They threw me out the third-floor window. I never had time to get right so I could land balanced. Would’ve been
different if they’d thrown me out the fourth one, I betcha.”)

They played Australia and New Zealand in 1973, a tour that proved them not only transcontinental but also transmorphic. In Canberra, the venue was a circus tent. Scott Cameron dragged him
outside the tent to witness his newest fans. “It was the only time he laughed louder than when he first met me. There were these huge elephants that were chained to the ground but they were
rocking back and forth like they were dancing to the music. Muddy went right down on his knees, laughing. Right on his knees.”

The band returned to America and began a West Coast tour.
(They crossed paths with ZZ Top, a rock trio impressed by the band’s backstage pastime: playing poker on a
guitar case, each man’s money next to his gun.) By this point, the road had finally become too long for guitarist Pee Wee Madison and he caught a bus to Chicago. Muddy quickly hired Hollywood
Fats (born Michael Mann), who’d come to his attention through a stint with Albert King. Muddy’s tunes, even his arrangements, were the standard fare for bands around the country; there
was someone everywhere who could play Muddy’s music Muddy’s way. Fats fell right in, but didn’t stay long; he wanted to be a front man. By then he’d switched bassists too,
Calvin “Fuzz” Jones replacing Sonny Wimberley.

While Muddy’s career was taking an upswing, blues that music couldn’t cure came to his home. Gut pains had plagued Geneva, and as they got worse, the doctor’s news came:
cancer. It had spread from her bowels to her stomach. “That whole thing with cancer,” said Cookie, “they never wanted to be educated about it. It was their belief, you got it,
you’re dead. Muddy was very distraught that whole time. I don’t think he knew how to run the house — pay the bills, buy the groceries, and that was the first time I was really
scared.” Geneva suffered for about a year. Muddy took Dennis, her son, off the road and put him on duty at Lake Park. Charles, Geneva’s other son, took his mother’s illness very
hard. “I felt sorry for Charles,” said Cookie. “Geneva got ready to die, and I noticed a lot of changes in Charles with the drinking and not holding a job. Before then he
wasn’t nothing like that. A big change.”

Changes were evident in Muddy too. His Boston friends noticed he was uncharacteristically drinking hard liquor, and hitting it hard. “I called Scott the next day and told him what was
up,” said Al Perry, who managed a radio station there. “He thought it was about Geneva. I took Muddy to a doctor, he gave a scrip. I said, ‘Is there anything else he can do for
himself?’ The doctor said, ‘Yeah, he can give up smoking cigarettes.’ ” Muddy never smoked another cigarette.

“With Muddy and Willie Dixon,” said Cameron, “I found I was arranging hotel rooms, I was setting interviews up, I was doing
everything but driving the
van, and they weren’t yet major income for Willard. So I had a meeting with both of them and we decided that as of February 1, 1973, I would quit Willard Alexander and I would go to managing
them for a one- or two-year term, after which we’d assess the relationship. And it just kept going.” Lacking a lawyer of his own, Muddy left it to Scott’s to look over the
agreement papers.

“Once I became Muddy’s manager,” Cameron explained, “everything came to me. He might talk business with people, but he never committed himself to do anything unless it
was sent through me.” At an early meeting in the Chess offices, Cameron made his presence known. “We walked into Ralph Bass’s office,” said Cameron, “and I’m
looking at some of the stuff up on the wall, I see a Grammy nomination plaque and it was for Muddy’s ‘Got My Mojo Working.’ Muddy never even knew he was nominated.” The
plaque went home with Muddy Waters.

Geneva died on March 15, 1973. Cookie distinctly recalls that Muddy was at home. “We were called to the hospital and Muddy and I went. Bo drove us in the Cadillac. Geneva was kind of
delirious, going out of her mind. We took my baby at the time, Chandra, because Geneva really felt that that was her child, the little girl that she lost. By the time we got back home, the doctor
called and said she was even worse and we turned back around and that night she died. Geneva made Muddy promise that he would take care of Chandra. He swore it on her deathbed. And two seconds
later she was gone and Muddy began to cry.”

Muddy bought a double plot in the Restvale Cemetery so he could be buried next to her. Geneva had purchased a dress she was hoping to wear to Cookie’s upcoming high school graduation; she
was buried in it. In addition to losing his wife, Muddy had also lost Lucille’s kids; they were in foster homes. “After Geneva’s funeral,” said Cookie, “we had a
conversation concerning those kids, that he wanted to take them into our home. They were wards of the state. If it hadn’t been for him and my grandmother, we would have been in the same
situation.”

“I didn’t know about Joe and Renee and Roslind until after Geneva died,” said Scott. “He told me about them and he said that he wanted to formally
adopt them and get them out of the situation they were in.”

“I was put in the foster home for maybe two years,” said Joseph Morganfield. “Then my dad finally got me out. I knew it was in the process. My social worker would talk to my
foster parents and they would relay it to me. My sisters were in the same neighborhood, I’d see them going to school. It was kind of tough.”

Spent and drained extracting Lucille’s kids from the system (her mind still on dope), emotionally ragged from the death of his wife, and frayed by the road, Muddy must have thought it a
blessing when Phil Chess called from the publishing company’s Chicago office asking him to swing by and collect another “big check,” $2,000 this time, and to sign a few more
papers. On April 23, 1973, Scott drove Muddy to the John Hancock Building, waited in the car while Muddy went in. “He didn’t tell me that he signed something to get the check,”
said Scott. According to the lawsuit filed three years later, Phil

The two grand was tendered as an annual “salary payment recoupable” against future royalties, making it not a salary at all, for he was being paid with his own money —
thirty-eight dollars and forty-five cents per week. If he didn’t sell enough records, he’d have a debt to the company.

When Muddy finally got his Chicago children collected at home, he began looking for a new house. No one was comfortable bringing the outside kids into
Geneva’s home. Scott lived west of Chicago, in Clarendon Hills, and Muddy bought a house near there, paying the down payment from his increased savings; he rented Lake Park to Willie
Smith.

The new home was on a large lot in the suburban, all-white town of Westmont, about an hour from downtown Chicago. White frame, it was unpretentious and thoroughly middle class. It had five
bedrooms, a basement where Bo could live, a yard where Muddy could establish a garden, and, as cachet, a swimming pool. Muddy and Renee, his youngest, slept on the main floor; upstairs, Laurence
(Muddy’s adolescent grandson, Cookie’s younger brother, who had been living with Leola and whose favorite songs were suddenly “Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Mannish
Boy”) and Joseph shared a room, Cookie had a room with her daughter (Muddy’s great-granddaughter and his youngest daughter were the same age), and Roslind had a room. Birds sang in the
trees, lawn mowers roared in summertime, church bells pealed on the hour. There was no bustle, no hustle, no hassle. The sand in this oyster was sugar. “I hated Westmont,” Cookie said.
“I was like, ‘Where has he taken us?’ ” Charles stayed there the first week, then returned to the South Side. Dennis and his fiancée settled in as live-in
baby-sitters and supervisors.

“In the beginning, I was really bitter toward the outside kids,” Cookie said, “because I knew where they came from. I knew their mom. And I felt that Geneva had just died and
we were disrespecting her. So there wasn’t a lot of love in that house in the beginning. And just to hear them call Muddy ‘Daddy,’ it really threw me a loop. I felt they had no
right. I’d been with this man through the neck-bones, the chicken and dumplings, the no money, and now you bring your outside kids.”

But in time, Cookie assumed a matriarchal role. “She kind of raised me,” said Joseph. “She was there for us. Back then, she was all we knew. Bo and Cookie were in charge of
everything, made sure we got to school, ate, whatever. Dennis would prepare all the meals, make sure everything ran smooth. Most of the outside work was my
responsibilities,
inside was my sisters’. Muddy didn’t believe in the male washing dishes, vacuum cleaning, laundry. He was kind of old-fashioned that way. I had to cut the grass. I had to shovel the
snow out of the path, and had to feed the dogs every day. We had two German Shepherds. Plus we had a pool I had to keep clean.”

But the newfound lifestyle could only do so much. “Me and Muddy didn’t get along,” said Laurence, whose drug problems echoed his late mother’s. “I was the only
black guy in my high school and I didn’t do typical sports that fit the old ways that he had. [Muddy’s son] Joe played basketball and he went to every basketball camp that was. I was a
swimmer and a diver. I was very good but I couldn’t go to the university. In Chicago it was gangs and in the suburbs there was drugs. I got through high school, I didn’t want for
anything, but basically we didn’t get along.”

Cookie felt Muddy lost his “self-worth” when they moved to the suburbs. “The last few years, it was like there was another man there. When he got his outside kids, I think he
thought that if he bought them things, they’d love him. The quiet time on Forty-third, when it was his cooling down time, those were good nights, you saw McKinley Morganfield. You
didn’t see Muddy Waters. You saw him laying around resting and joking and eating ice cream — those were good times. When we moved to Westmont, our life changed. When he was McKinley, it
was one thing, but when he was Muddy Waters, he could do anything he wanted to.”