Feeling My Age

I Got My Mojo Working – Muddy Waters and his band ripping it up it the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960. The band is tightly drilled: only star instrumentalist Otis Spann at the piano is really cutting loose, but the whole thing rocks like a bastard. They must be playing really quietly by modern standards – look how far away from the mic Muddy is singing.

He was born in 1913. So the two facts that every British blues fan in the 60s knew about Muddy were that he was (a) immensely better and (b) immensely older than his skinny white imitators, who were mostly fresh out of their teens. As Jagger, Clapton & Plant in due course passed into their thirties, Muddy’s shining example offered hope that they too could age on stage with dignity in the decades to come. And then in 1983 he suddenly died at (what seemed to us back then) the immense age of 70.

In July this year Sir Mick will turn 68 – and suddenly following in Muddy’s footsteps doesn’t seem like such a great idea after all.