Muddy Waters Miss US 61 Blues Trail South Haven, MS

MISS. US 61

Muddy Waters 

Muddy Waters lived most of his first thirty years in a house on this site that was part of the Stovall Plantation. In 1996 the restored house was put on display at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale. Muddy Waters was first recorded here in 1941 by Alan Lomax, who was a complaining song for the Library of Congress.
Muddy Waters is known as the king of Chicago Blues. 

Muddy Waters 

Muddy Waters 

Muddy Waters 

Muddy Waters African American Music on the Stovall plantation was documented as early as 1901 when a Harvard archeologist heard local workers singing what he later described as “autochthonous music” and strains of apparently genius African music. 

Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield, 1913-1983) moved to Stovall with his grandmother from Rolling Fork, Mississippi c1915. The Stovall plantation remained his primary base until he moved to Chicago in 1943. 

In August 1941, on a field recording expedition sponsored by the Library of Congress and Fisk University, Alan Lomax and John Work set up portable equipment in Water’s house to record Muddy and other local musicians, including fiddler Henry “Son” Simmons. Lomax returned with Lewis Jones in 1942 for the second series of recordings. Two of Water’s recordings, “Burr Clover Farm Blues” and “Burr Clover Blues” paid tribute to plantation owner Colonel William Howard Stovall (1895-1970) and his crop. The Stovalls, one of the Delta’s most successful cotton-farming families, were pioneers of agricultural technology, and Colonel Stovall invented the burr clover seed harvester in 1935. Waters told Lomax that he wrote “Burr Clover Blues” at Stovall’s request. Waters entertained field hands at his house which serves as a juke joint and also played at social functions for the Stovalls, as did the Mississippi Sheiks, a popular black string band that Waters admired. 

Water’s cousin, The Reverend Willie Morganfield (1927-2003), was born on the Stovall plantation and turned down offers to sing the blues and devoted his talent to the church, becoming a popular gospel recording artist in the 1960s. He was the pastor of the Bell Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Clarksdale. Blues singer-pianist Eddie Boyd (1914-1994), who wrote the classic “Five Long Years,” a NO. 1 rhythm & blues in 1952, was also born on Stovall. Stovall resident and blues basis David “Pecan” Porter (1943-2003) later lived in the house that Muddy Waters had earlier occupied. Porter was active on the Clarksdale blues scene from the 1960s through the 1990s. 

Only in the 1980s after the vacant house was in disrepair, did tourists begin visiting it as a Muddy Waters shrine. In 1987m guitarist, Billy Gibbson of the rock group ZZ Top had “Muddywood” guitars crafted from plans of the house. ZZ Top subsequently used the guitars to promote a fund-fund-raising drive to benefit the Delta Blues Museum.

Well, now the reason I love that
ol' Stovall's Farm so well
Well, now you know, we have
a plenty of money
And we never be raisin' hell
"Burr Clover Blues" by Muddy Waters
The remains of Muddy Water's house from this spot as it appeared in the mid-1990s. Shortly after this photo was taken the cabin was removed from this site and sent on a five-year world tour that was sponsored by to House of Blues.

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