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A History of the BLUES - Muddy Waters - Forty Days And Forty Nights
"Forty Days and Forty Nights" is a blues song recorded by Muddy Waters in 1956. Called "a big, bold record", it was a hit, spending six weeks in the Billboard R&B chart, where it reached number seven. "Forty Days and Forty Nights" has been interpreted and recorded by a variety of artists.
"Forty Days and Forty Nights" is a midtempo blues song with an irregular number of bars written by Bernard Roth (who also wrote Muddy Waters' "Just to Be with You"). An early review called it "a dramatic piece of material with effective lyrics".
Forty days and forty nights, since my baby left this town
Sun shinin' all day long, but the rain keep falling down
She's my life I need her so, why she left I just don't know
Backing Muddy Waters (vocals) are Little Walter (harmonica), Willie Dixon (bass), possibly Fred Below or Francis Clay (drums), Pat Hare (guitar), and Jimmy Rogers or Hubert Sumlin (second guitar). The song was recorded during Pat Hare's first recording session with Waters and "Hare's crunching power chords rippled with distortion that was well suited for blues in the rock and roll explosion".
The song was one of Waters' last charting singles and appears on several of his compilation albums, including the 1965 album The Real Folk Blues. He later recorded "Forty Days and Forty Nights" for the 1969 Fathers and Sons album and the Authorized Bootleg: Live at the Fillmore Auditorium November 4–6, 1966 album released in 2009.
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Who was Muddy Waters?
McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983), better known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer-songwriter and musician who was an important figure in the post-World War II blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago blues".
Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by the age of 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, copying local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson. In 1941, Alan Lomax and Professor John W. Work III of Fisk University recorded him in Mississippi for the Library of Congress.
In 1943, he moved to Chicago to become a full-time professional musician. In 1946, he recorded his first records for Columbia Records and then for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess.
In the early 1950s, Muddy Waters and his band—Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds (also known as Elgin Evans) on drums and Otis Spann on piano—recorded several songs that became blues classics, some with the bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon. These songs included "Hoochie Coochie Man", "I Just Want to Make Love to You" and "I'm Ready". In 1958, he traveled to England, laying the foundations of the resurgence of interest in the blues there. His performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960 was recorded and released as his first live album, At Newport 1960.
Muddy Waters' music laid the foundation for various American music genres, including rock and roll and subsequently rock.