McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983), better known as Muddy Waters was an American blues singer-songwriter and musician who was an important figure in the post-World War II blues scene, and is often cited as the “father of modern Chicago blues“. His style of playing has been described as “raining down Deltabeatitude”.

Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by age 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, copying local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson. In 1941, Alan Lomax and Professor John W. Work III of Fisk University recorded him in Mississippi for the Library of Congress. In 1943, he moved to Chicago to become a full-time professional musician. In 1946, he recorded his first records for Columbia Records and then for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess.