Muddy Waters: "After The Rain"

Gotta wrap it up with some blues, although we’re talking some very Cadet-style blues here.  This is the sequel to Muddy’s lauded and or derided (depending on who you’re talking to) “Electric Mud,” and the sound here is even more confrontational, more abstract, more metallic.  There are some more traditional blues numbers to be found amidst the madness—“Rollin’ And Tumblin’,” “Hurtin’ Soul,” “Screamin’ And Cryin’,”—but there are some sub-Stooges garage freakouts too, like “Bottom Of The Sea” and especially “Ramblin’ Mind,” which sounds like it was recorded inside of a tin can, the whole band scraping against the jagged, cheap metal within, frantically demanding to break free.  Yet another Chicago dream team forms the nucleus of the group, with Phil Upchurch and Pete Cosey on guitars, Otis Spann on piano, Louis Satterfield on bass, Morris Jennings on drums, and—who do you think I’m gonna say—Charles Stepney on organ.  This is primal, gut-level, gut-wrenching stuff that is only beginning to find its audience in our 21^st century chaos.  The blues…prescient as ever.