The Muddy Waters Band at the Zanzibar, 1954 Frank Driggs Collection
Left to right: Muddy Waters, Henry Armstrong, Otis Spann, Henry "Pot" Strong, Elgin Evans, and Jimmy Rogers.
If you're into Muddy or Jimmy Rogers, you probably know this photo -- it gets around. I'm not exactly sure when I first saw it. Maybe in the liner notes for Chicago Bound, which I first heard in the mid-’90s. Or I might have seen it in a book before that. (The best version in print is probably the one in Robert Gordon's Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters.)
Sometimes I think every band that has covered "Hoochie Coochie Man" or "That's All Right" ought to have a promo kit photo in which they reenact this shot -- as a kind of inside joke among blues fans. If you're playing and singing Muddy's parts, you sit on the left with the gold-top Les Paul. If you're playing harp, you're in the center, leaning back with your knees up against the amp. And if you're playing those Jimmy Rogers parts, you sit on the right, with your guitar aimed at the camera.
As for me, my role has always been peripheral. You see the dude holding the maracas behind Spann? That's where I'd be in this photo.
bQ • here's my picture 011