A sharecropper on a Mississippi plantation, a bootlegger, gambler, ladies" man, and dynamic blues singer and guitarist-Muddy Waters"s life is traced in this original biography of the legendary blues man from the early twentieth century to his death in 1983. Interviews with key industry figures such as James Cotton, Willie Smith, Junior Wells, Jimmy Rogers, B. B. King, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, and Marshall Chess prove to be a source of priceless anecdotes and lend substance and texture to this compelling portrait of a blues pioneer.