![]() ![]() You just released a really great box set of your work, True to the Blues. I’ve discovered if you have to do more than a few takes, all the life goes out of the performance. Luckily for me, Muddy always nailed it in one or two takes. ![]() You had to stay on your toes and know what you were doing, ’cause he never wanted to do more than one or two takes of a song. When I worked with him, I was amazed at how fast he worked. Muddy just had such extraordinary presence and naked emotion in his voice and slide guitar playing, especially on a slow blues. ![]() What did you get from that experience? - Warren Waterman You produced and played on several albums with the legendary Muddy Waters. I like how it sounds, and the bonus is I break fewer strings. I kept thinking that I would switch back-but I just never did. 009s, so I tuned it down one whole step to make it easier to play. But the first day I plugged it in, it sounded so good I wanted to use it for a gig that night. When I first bought one, I thought I was just going to use it as a travel guitar. I was never a big fan of humbucking pickups, but the mini-humbuckers on the Firebird have a little more bite and treble. It feels like a Gibson, but it sounds closer to a Fender than most other Gibsons. I was initially attracted to the Firebird because I liked the way it looked, and when I played it I discovered I liked the way it sounded, too. Can you tell me what you liked about each of those guitars? - “The Mack” You’ve played some left-of-center guitars through the years-a Gibson Firebird, a Fender Mustang and a Lazer made by Mike Erlewine. It’s maybe the deepest blues performance I’ve ever heard. One of the greatest slide guitar performances I’ve ever heard is Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground).” The way his slide mimics his vocals and vice versa always gives me the chills. These days, I tend to favor open E, especially live, I think partly because I’m too lazy to carry another guitar around. I wear my slide on my little finger, and through the years I’ve played primarily in open A or open E. He made me just one, and I really like it, so I’ve never lost it. Studios and a guy made me a slide by hacking up some drum hardware. I was practicing in New York City at S.I.R. What kind of slide do you use, and what finger do you use it on? Also, do you have a favorite slide song? - Alex Williams You’re one of the great innovators of slide guitar. There’s a gunfighter tradition in Texas-you gotta be better than the other guy, or else you’re finished. When you come from a place where there are a lot of great players, it forces you to get good real fast. Was it something in the water? - Charles Whitehouse Most people think John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd made that up, but bands played behind chicken wire all the time.įreddie King, Albert Collins, T-Bone Walker and so many other great blues players have come from Texas. There’s a scene in the Blues Brothers movie that shows what that was like. Even if they liked what you were playing, they’d still throw bottles at you just for the fun of it. My band had to play behind chicken wire, because people used to throw things at us. I spent a lot of time playing the Louisiana club circuit, and in many ways it was rougher than Texas. He said, “Well, I didn’t hear it, and if you don’t play it I’m gonna rush the bandstand and tear up everything!” True to his word, he started charging me, so I took off my guitar, grabbed it by the neck and swung it like a baseball bat and hit him in the head and knocked him completely out! It was a good thing, too, because he was big. This huge drunk guy kept staggering over to me and demanding that I play “Midnight Hour.” I told him, “Man, we already played it twice.” We played a lot of bad places, but I remember this club in Galveston, Texas, back in ’65 that was particularly nasty. What was the roughest or worst club you ever played? - Billy Houston Before you signed your first major record deal, you spent quite a few years playing clubs. ![]()
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