Muddy Waters Blues Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Andrew Staples - Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, Nov/4-6/1966

The Vienna Secession influence was on full display in this Wes Wilson poster advertising Chicago blues master Muddy Waters. Andrew Staples had no relation to the Staples Singers and in fact was not even a person, just an obscure garage band from Davis CA. You can buy the November 5th sets by Quicksilver Messenger Service – one of many bootlegs that are now available from that era. Along with his former harmonica player Little Walter Jacobs and recent southern transplant Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters reigned over the early 1950s Chicago blues scene, his band becoming a proving ground for some of the city's best blues talent. In 1967, he re-recorded several blues standards with Bo Diddley, Little Walter, and Howlin' Wolf, which were marketed as Super Blues and The Super Blues Band albums in Chess' attempt to reach a rock audience. Fathers and Sons is the seventh studio album by the American blues musician Muddy Waters, released as a double LP by Chess Records in August 1969. The album contains both studio and live recordings recorded in April 1969 in Chicago, Illinois, with an all-star band, including Michael Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Donald "Duck" Dunn of Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Otis Spann, and Sam Lay. According to Marshall Chess, Fathers and Sons came about when Mike Bloomfield said that he and Paul Butterfield wanted to do an album with Muddy Waters while in Chicago for a charity concert. Chess rounded up Donald "Duck" Dunn, Otis Spann, and Sam Lay for the studio sessions. While some blues purists criticized Waters's "psychedelic" album Electric Mud, Fathers and Sons was received more favorably since it avoided psychedelia, instead showcasing his "classic" sound of the 1950s.