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The rest were ringers, seasoned jazz and blues sidemen affiliated with Chess and brought in to beef up Rotary Connection’s sound. Only producer Stepney, who played keyboards at the sessions, was in any way, shape, or form a real member of Rotary Connection. Most of the members of Rotary Connection at the sessions weren’t hippies, honkies, or even real members of Rotary Connection at all. In reality, the white core of Rotary Connection never played at the May 1968 sessions. So into the studio went Waters, without so much as his trusty guitar, to make God knows what manner of hippie din with a hopped-up human be-in of hirsute honkies. I have listened to their music, and it is god awful-dreamy in a way that makes you afraid to ever fall asleep again.īut Muddy was desperate enough to try anything-he’d have probably recorded an album with The Chipmunks had Chess suggested it-so if it was Blind Lemon Jefferson Airplane Chess wanted, that’s exactly what Chess would get. The psychedelic sound was all the rage, so why not dose the waters of Muddy’s blues with some far-out acid rock? And it just so happened Marshall had some spare long hairs around, in the form of Rotary Connection, a second-rate psychedelic soul/jazz fusion band put together Monkees-style by Marshall and producer Charles Stepney. Then young Marshall Chess, scion of Phil Chess, founder of Water’s label Chess Records, had a Eureka moment. At times it must have seemed to Waters that the only person not getting rich off Muddy Waters was Muddy Waters. Poor Muddy while black audiences ignored him (or so he claimed), white musicians like Eric Clapton were copping his shtick and making hay. “The Father of Modern Chicago Blues” hadn’t had a hit since 1956’s “I’m Ready,” this despite a 1958 tour of England that electrified audiences and played an instrumental role in the British blues revival. And by that I mean a couple of good jolts from a pair of electric defibrillation paddles, because it was flatlining. By 1967, Muddy Waters’ career was in dire need of cardiac resuscitation.