Newport Jazz Festival : Muddy Waters/Sonny Rollins/McCoy Tyner, New Victoria Theatre, London (GB) - 30 oct. 1976

An amazing bill. The great Muddy Waters with his band, the great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins and Coltrane’s pianist McCoy Tyner. Muddy’s slot began with the band playing the lovely rolling boogie beat that we associate with the Chicago blues while Muddy made his entrance. He sang a lot of familiar numbers, slow blues, rocking blues, blues with male swagger. He played slide guitar as expressively as he ever did. His musicians were: Jerry Portnoy harmonica, Luther Johnson guitar, Bob Margolin guitar, Pinetop Perkins piano, Calvin Jones bass guitar and Willie Smith drums. Then came the Rollins set, long tenor solos teasing out variations on melody perhaps a bit more than other bop practitioners who, of course, leaned more towards improvisation based on chord changes. But elements of fusion too, and Caribbean/Latin rhythms. His band were: Aurell Ray guitar, Michael Wolff electric and acoustic piano, Donald Pate bass guitar, Ed Moore drums. McCoy Tyner, master pianist, played his crystalline right-hand runs and even treated us to an Appalachian dulcimer. His band were: James Ford alto/tenor sax/flute, Ron Bridgewater tenor sax/flute, Charles Fambrough bass, Eric Gravati drums, Guilherme Franco congas/tabla/percussion. Reviewed in Melody Maker 6 November 1976 by Steve Lake.