Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters in Concert 1971
Vestapol 13085 (1999)

This video features Muddy Waters with a great lineup of sidemen, including George "Harmonica" Smith, who is in top form in this performance. Waters and band perform exceptionally nice versions of "Walking Through the Park" and "Nineteen Years Old" along with six other common songs from Waters' repertoire that are all well-performed.

The production is very similar to many rock documentary style videos of this era in format and camera work. The video opens up with a kind of rambling interview conducted on a bus, which doesn't really convey a lot of information, but does give one a sense of Waters' somewhat reserved personality. The camera work is sometimes a bit odd: It often seems to miss whomever is performing a solo and focuses on Waters or some other member of the band. On the whole though, the video is a valuable document which gives a good sense of Waters' stage presence and the quality of the performance makes it easy to ignore the production idiosyncracies. — Andy Allen (Towson, MD)