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MIDWEST BLUES BEAT |
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MUDDY WATERS SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT |
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by Eric Steiner
There have been several popular self-help books on management
over the past few years. You
might have seen “The Pursuit of
Wow!” by Tom Peters, “The
One Minute Manager” by Ken
Blanchard and Dr. Spencer
Johnson, or “Who Moved My
Cheese?” by Dr. Spencer
Johnson. Each of these
deceptively short books tries to simplify one of the most difficult
subjects on the planet: management.
Tom Peters has rewritten the book on management, and his “Work
Matters Movement” is truly reinventing the business world of
business one leader at a time. Ken
Blanchard and Dr. Spencer Johnson have helped people realize the
importance of learning on the job, and their insights have helped
redefine work as we know it in very uncertain times.
Whether you’re a single mother balancing a household budget
with more month than money, or an executive managing the bottom line of
a Fortune 500 company, I’m confident that you will learn from the life
lessons of McKinley Morganfield,
better known as Muddy Waters.
Muddy Waters was a true giant of the blues, and this year, I’m
honoring his birth and death in the month of April.
Muddy was born on April 4, 1915 in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, and
died in his sleep on April 30, 1983 at his home in Westmont, Illinois,
near Chicago next to his wife Marva. So, let’s get started. Class is in session.
Today, we’ll consider Muddy’s views on the importance of
determination, persistence, and risk-taking. Each of these life lessons
can be applied to life and work, whether you are an aspiring bluesman or
blueswoman.
Our textbooks for today’s session are Robert
Gordon’s “Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters”,
(published last year by Little, Brown) and Sandra
Tooze’s “Muddy Waters: The Mojo Man”, from Canada’s ECW Press.
Determination is a key trait shared by successful people in
business and in life. Growing
up in a sharecropper’s family, Muddy was motivated to leave the
plantation from an early age, using his skills as a preacher or a
bluesman.
“I had it in mind, even then, to either play music or preach or
do something that I would be known... I kept that on my mind. I wanted
to be a known person,” is how Muddy described his desire to James
Rooney as quoted in Tooze’s excellent book (Tooze,
p. 29). So, the first
lesson today is determination. If
you, as Muddy did, want to be a “known person,” develop your skills
the best you can, and focus on that dream.
Secondly, Muddy modeled the behavior of successful people.
Anthony “Personal
Power” Robbins has
acknowledged that this skill is an important one, and his star turn in
the movie “Shallow Hal”
aside, Robbins’ is quite an inspiring figure on many levels.
However, coming up, Muddy looked up to Big
Bill Broonzy and Broonzy’s observation goes a long way to explain
the importance of persistence. In
Gordon’s book, Muddy recalled in the 1970’s that “Big Bill, he
don’t care where you from. He didn’t look you over ‘cause he been on records a long
time. ‘Do your thing, stay with it, man.
If you stay with it, you going to make it.’
That’s what Big Bill told me. Mostly I try to be like him.” (Gordon,
p. 73).
So, it’s not enough just to have a dream.
You’ve got to stay with that dream and be persistent.
Finally, Muddy realized the importance of taking risks.
In the Delta, Muddy played harp and acoustic guitar.
Folklorist Alan Lomax captured Muddy on the Stovall Plantation in
1941 and 1942 with the assistance of noted Fisk University scholar John
Work III, and in 1994, The Complete Plantation Recordings (MCA) received the 1994 W.C.
Handy Award for “Reissue Album
of the Year.”
When Muddy added the electric guitar to his blues tool box, it
was more complicated than just plugging in an axe.
As Robert Gordon relays in “Can’t
Be Satisfied,” Muddy was well aware that any mistake would be
amplified, but that was a risk Muddy was prepared to take.
“That loud sound would tell everything you were doing,” he
explained. “On acoustic
you could mess up a lot of stuff and no one would know that you ever
missed.” (Gordon, p. 79).
These three lessons in determination, persistence and risk-taking
just skim the surface of the potential of Muddy Waters as a management
guru. In future classes,
we’ll look at how Muddy the bandleader helped launch the careers of
many bluesmen, from Jimmy Rogers,
to sidemen like Pinetop Perkins
and James Cotton. Muddy knew blues talent when he saw it. Or, more accurately, when he felt it. For Muddy, the blues was a feeling, and this feeling helped
propel him, or his protégées, to the top of the blues charts for more
than four decades of the last century.
Few bluesmen have the power and passion of Muddy Waters, and
I’d like to recall the words inscribed on a plaque honoring his memory
that’s nestled in the cotton fields where he once lived and worked.
With legends like The Rolling Stones (whose name came from a Muddy song), The
Beatles, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan,
and Jimi Hendrix
acknowledging his influence, his position as a godfather of rock is
secure. As his friend and protégé Eric
Clapton said, “Muddy
Waters’ music changed my life, and whether you know it or not, and
like it or not, it probably changed yours, too.”
I’m going to bring this class to a close with just one
assignment. Listen to the
blues, particularly the blues of the King Bee himself. Whether you
choose his later GRAMMY-winning work produced by Johnny
Winter on Blue Sky, Muddy’s salad days on Chess, or Lomax’
plantation recordings, you’ll discover a true giant of American music. In honor of the 20th anniversary of Muddy’s death, let’s play his blues. For more information on Muddy Waters, go to the official website of the Estate of McKinley Morganfield: |
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