Muddy Waters was the blues innovator that paved the way for popular music today.

Born McKinley Morganfield, he was raised by his grandmother in Clarksdale after his mother died in their Mississippi home when Morganfield was three. During his early teen years, while he worked as a farm laborer, Muddy Waters (a nickname that was given to him at a young age and just stuck like mud) picked up the harmonica, and just a few years later, the guitar. Influenced by the great Delta-blues musicians like Charley Patton and Robert Johnson, Waters easily learned to jag and pulse the rhythmic styles of the guitar.

After moving to Chicago in the midst of the nation's turmoil, Waters was able to spearhead the new blues movement. He often played with guitarist Blue Smitt and pianists Eddie Boyd and Sunnyland Slim, who helped launch Waters career. Slim invited the blues guitarist to play with his Aristocrat session and together they created "Johnson Machine Gun." Several of the singles created that day made up Waters own debut 78. Waters formed a band who came to be known as "the Headhunters" as they were so well matched that they were known to "cut the heads" off their competitors.

Over the next few years Waters began to climb the R&B charts with his blues singles, but the work saw less of his slide guitar. By the mid-‘50s rock ‘n' roll started to engulf the veteran blues work of Waters and others. Though Waters had seen a plethora of hits just a few years prior to 1955, after rock ‘n' roll hit Waters sound began to change and his blues-home only saw one more chart topping single. He continued to record with fellow blues musicians until his death in 1983, dying as the figure who upturned the Chicago blues movement.