Book summary

From the observation in its opening pages that sharecropping, with its inequitable distribution of wealth, was good training for the music business, Robert Gordon's biography CAN'T BE SATISFIED demonstrates that the great blues musician Muddy Waters' background was inseparable from his music. Waters' Mississippi origins, the de facto slavery, and the grinding poverty, are made tangible, as are his early influences, from the bluesman Son House, who, in Gordon's words, sounded "like a lineman driving steel," to Waters' fond recollections of his visits to Memphis, which, as he notes, seemed as far away to a country boy as California. Waters' career was given a vital boost after he recorded for Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress in 1941; Gordon's description of this important event in both men's lives carries an immediacy and insight that is a hallmark of the best biographical writing. Though Waters' professional and personal life took the same rocky course as that of any blues performer worth his salt, at its end he had the respect of his public, his pupils, and his peers; CAN'T BE SATISFIED is a worthy tribute to this impressive and influential figure in 20th century popular music.