Muddy Waters – The Best of Muddy Waters

When Muddy Waters plugged his guitar into an amplifier on Chicago's South Side, he invented the sonic template for modern rock guitar. Collecting his essential Chess 78s into a 1958 LP, this album sounds like heavy machinery grinding through delta mud. Little Walter's distorted, cupped harmonica and Otis Spann's rumbling piano support Muddy's ferocious slide guitar and imperious baritone on Rollin' Stone and I'm Ready. It is music with dirt under its fingernails and peerless physical punch.