Chicago Fest ’81

Muddy Waters performs with his band at the 1981 Chicago Fest featuring special guest Johnny Winter.

In August of 1981, when the undisputed king of Chicago blues Muddy Waters headlined “Chicago Fest”, then the Windy City’s top outdoor music festival, for two nights. His loyal subjects mobbed Navy Pier on the lakefront to hear one of the greatest innovators the idiom had ever produced.

In the midst of his rollicking “Walking Thru The Park,” Muddy brings out fleet-fingered guitar wizard Johnny Winter, producer of his 1977 “comeback” album Hard Again. “We met back in the ’60s in Austin, Texas,” recalled Muddy. “He was one of the young white kids who was really deep into it.” Johnny then sings “Going Down Slow” before accompanying Waters for the swaggering “She’s Nineteen Years Old.”

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