Muddy Waters' House and the MOJO Museum, Chicago

The Muddy Waters MOJO Museum in Chicago is working to preserve Muddy Waters' house, a Chicago Landmark, and to turn it into a museum of the blues. It joined the African American Civil Rights Network in 2023.

The blues and Chicago

The blues is a distinctly American music, created by African Americans in the South after the Civil War. In the 1940s Chicago became the center of a new style, Chicago blues: amplified and electric, rooted in the music of the Mississippi Delta but shaped by city life. Muddy Waters was one of its main creators and became known as "the father of Chicago blues."

An open house

Waters bought the house in 1956, the first home he ever owned. He kept an open door, and it became a gathering place for blues musicians, welcome at any hour:

• The basement: a rehearsal space where jam sessions ran.
• The porch and yard: on warm days the sessions spilled outside, entertaining the neighbors.

His reach

• Rock and roll: his electric Chicago sound shaped early rock and roll in the 1950s and 60s, and helped drive the British blues-rock movement.
• Hard rock: his guitar playing and sound kept influencing hard rock through the 1970s, as rock became America's dominant popular music.
• The blues: he stayed a popular, influential bluesman, and a critical and commercial success, until his death in 1983.

About the Network

The African American Civil Rights Network recognizes the civil rights movement and the sacrifices of those who fought discrimination and segregation. Created by the African American Civil Rights Act of 2017 and coordinated by the National Park Service, it tells the movement's stories through public and private places and resources.

Sources

Based on "Muddy Waters MOJO Museum (Chicago, Illinois)," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.