167-458: McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983), known professionally 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 Delta beatitude". Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi , and by age 17
334-592: A psychedelic soul band that Chess had put together. The album proved controversial; although it reached number 127 on the Billboard 200 album chart, it was scorned by many critics, and eventually disowned by Waters himself: That Electric Mud record I did, that one was dogshit. But when it first came out, it started selling like wild, and then they started sending them back. They said, "This can't be Muddy Waters with all this shit going on – all this wow-wow and fuzztone ." Nonetheless, six months later he recorded
501-412: A "special committee" to explore the sale of Kenmore. On September 24, 2018, the retailer's CEO warned that the company was "running out of time" to salvage its business. Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018, ahead of a $ 134 million debt payment due that day. On November 23, 2018, Sears Holdings released a list of 505 stores, including 266 Sears stores, that were for sale in
668-507: A Chicago thing. We opened up in Leeds, England. I was definitely too loud for them. The next morning we were in the headlines of the paper, 'Screaming Guitar and Howling Piano'. Although his performances alienated the old guard, some younger musicians, including Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies from Barber's band, were inspired to go in the more modern, electric blues direction. Korner and Davies' own groups included musicians who would later form
835-403: A Florida hotel; Eric Clapton served as best man at their wedding in 1979. He had at least six children, including illegitimate children. Two of his sons Larry "Mud" Morganfield and Big Bill Morganfield are also blues singers and musicians. In 2017, his youngest son, Joseph "Mojo" Morganfield, began publicly performing the blues, and played occasionally with his brothers; he died in 2020 at
1002-484: A banjo or guitar. Regional styles of country blues varied widely in the early 20th century. The (Mississippi) Delta blues was a rootsy sparse style with passionate vocals accompanied by slide guitar. The little-recorded Robert Johnson combined elements of urban and rural blues. In addition to Robert Johnson, influential performers of this style included his predecessors Charley Patton and Son House . Singers such as Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller performed in
1169-415: A break; the harmony of this two-bar break, the turnaround, can be extremely complex, sometimes consisting of single notes that defy analysis in terms of chords. Much of the time, some or all of these chords are played in the harmonic seventh (7th) form. The use of the harmonic seventh interval is characteristic of blues and is popularly called the "blues seven". Blues seven chords add to the harmonic chord
1336-586: A center for electric blues from 1948 on, when Muddy Waters recorded his first success, "I Can't Be Satisfied". Chicago blues is influenced to a large extent by Delta blues , because many performers had migrated from the Mississippi region. Howlin' Wolf , Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and Jimmy Reed were all born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. Their style
1503-781: A coming of age, financially, of the consumer sector. The company traded under the ticker symbol S and was a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1924 to 1999. In 1906, Sears opened its catalog plant and the Sears Merchandise Building Tower in Chicago's West Side . The building was the anchor of what would become the massive 40-acre (16 ha) Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex of offices, laboratories, and mail-order operations at Homan Avenue and Arthington Street. The complex served as corporate headquarters until 1973 when
1670-399: A component of R&B. After World War II, new styles of electric blues became popular in cities such as Chicago , Memphis , Detroit and St. Louis . Electric blues used electric guitars , double bass (gradually replaced by bass guitar ), drums , and harmonica (or "blues harp") played through a microphone and a PA system or an overdriven guitar amplifier . Chicago became
1837-401: A farm household could desire. Sales continued to proliferate, and the prosperity of the company and their vision for more significant expansion led Sears and Rosenwald to take the company public in 1906, with a stock placement of $ 40 million ($ 1.4 billion today). They had to incorporate a new company to bring the operation public; Sears and Rosenwald established Sears, Roebuck and Company with
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#17327811749212004-463: A follow-up album, After the Rain , which had a similar sound and featured many of the same musicians. Later in 1969, he recorded and released the album Fathers and Sons , where he returned to his classic Chicago sound. Fathers and Sons had an all-star backing band that included Michael Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield , longtime fans whose desire to play with him was the impetus for the album. It
2171-513: A friend, produced four albums for him, all on the Blue Sky Records label: the studio albums Hard Again (1977), I'm Ready (1978) and King Bee (1981), and the live album, Muddy "Mississippi" Waters – Live (1979). The albums were critical and commercial successes, with all but King Bee winning a Grammy. Hard Again has been especially praised by critics, who have tended to describe it as his comeback album. In 1981, Waters
2338-694: A ground bass overlaid with complex treble patterns, while vocal supplies a third rhythmic layer. Similar techniques can be found in hundreds of blues records". The lyrics often relate troubles experienced within African American society. For instance Blind Lemon Jefferson 's "Rising High Water Blues" (1927) tells of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 : Backwater rising, Southern peoples can't make no time I said, backwater rising, Southern peoples can't make no time And I can't get no hearing from that Memphis girl of mine Although
2505-752: A hit that year. Initially, the Chess brothers would not allow Waters to use his working band in the recording studio; instead, they provided him with bass backing by Ernest "Big" Crawford or by musicians assembled specifically for the recording session, including "Baby Face" Leroy Foster and Johnny Jones . Gradually, Chess relented, and by September 1953 he was recording with one of the most acclaimed blues groups in history: Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds (also known as Elgin Evans) on drums, Otis Spann on piano and sometimes, bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon . The band recorded
2672-635: A movement known as the Great Migration . The long boom following World War II induced another massive migration of the African-American population, the Second Great Migration , which was accompanied by a significant increase of the real income of the urban blacks. The new migrants constituted a new market for the music industry. The term race record , initially used by the music industry for African-American music,
2839-424: A mumber of blues songs which have become classics including " Hoochie Coochie Man ", " I Just Want to Make Love to You ", and " I'm Ready ". Waters's band became a proving ground for some of the city's best blues talent, with members of the ensemble going on to successful careers of their own. In 1952, Little Walter left when his single " Juke " became a hit, although he continued working with Muddy long after he left
3006-470: A new concept store called Sears Grand. Sears Grand stores carried everything that a regular Sears carries, and more. Sears Grand stores were about 175,000 to 225,000 square feet (16,300 to 20,900 m ). On November 17, 2004, Kmart Holdings Corporation announced it would acquire Sears, Roebuck, and Co. for $ 11 billion after Kmart completed its recovery from bankruptcy. As a part of the acquisition, Kmart Holding Corporation, along with Sears, Roebuck, and Co.,
3173-548: A new mail-order firm, again selling watches and jewelry, with Roebuck as his partner, operating as the A. C. Roebuck watch company. On September 16, 1893, they renamed the company Sears, Roebuck, and Co. and began to diversify the product lines offered in their catalogs. Before the Sears catalog, farmers near small rural towns usually purchased supplies, often at high prices and on credit, from local general stores with narrow selections of goods. Prices were negotiated and relied on
3340-492: A newly formed label run by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess . In the early 1950s, Waters and his band— Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds (also known as Elgin Evans) on drums and Otis Spann on piano—recorded several songs that became blues classics, some with the bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon . These songs included " Hoochie Coochie Man ," " I Just Want to Make Love to You " and " I'm Ready ". In 1958, he traveled to England, laying
3507-456: A note with a frequency in a 7:4 ratio to the fundamental note. At a 7:4 ratio, it is not close to any interval on the conventional Western diatonic scale . For convenience or by necessity it is often approximated by a minor seventh interval or a dominant seventh chord . In melody , blues is distinguished by the use of the flattened third , fifth and seventh of the associated major scale . Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce
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#17327811749213674-456: A number of songs, such as "Poor Rosy", that were popular among the slaves. Although she admitted being unable to describe the manner of singing she heard, Forten wrote that the songs "can't be sung without a full heart and a troubled spirit", conditions that have inspired countless blues songs. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, when Hart Wand 's " Dallas Blues " became
3841-599: A part in early blues, citing Robert Johnson 's " Cross Road Blues " as a "thinly veiled reference to Eleggua , the orisha in charge of the crossroads". However, the Christian influence was far more obvious. The repertoires of many seminal blues artists, such as Charley Patton and Skip James , included religious songs or spirituals. Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Willie Johnson are examples of artists often categorized as blues musicians for their music, although their lyrics clearly belong to spirituals. The blues form
4008-569: A part of ragtime; Handy's signature work was the " Saint Louis Blues ". In the 1920s, the blues became a major element of African American and American popular music, also reaching white audiences via Handy's arrangements and the classic female blues performers. These female performers became perhaps the first African American "superstars", and their recording sales demonstrated "a huge appetite for records made by and for black people." The blues evolved from informal performances in bars to entertainment in theaters. Blues performances were organized by
4175-466: A publicity role. Sears offered Roebuck's half of the company to Chicago businessman Aaron Nusbaum , who in turn brought in his brother-in-law Julius Rosenwald , to whom Sears owed money. In August 1895, they bought Roebuck's half of the company for $ 75,000 ($ 2.7 million today), and that month the company was reincorporated in Illinois with a capital stock of $ 150,000 ($ 5.5 million today). The transaction
4342-419: A recording career that began in 1926 and spanned forty years. These recordings were typically labeled " race records " to distinguish them from records sold to white audiences. Nonetheless, the recordings of some of the classic female blues singers were purchased by white buyers as well. These blueswomen's contributions to the genre included "increased improvisation on melodic lines, unusual phrasing which altered
4509-462: A rock audience. The Super Super Blues Band united Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, who had a long-standing rivalry. It was, as Ken Chang wrote in his AllMusic review, flooded with "contentious studio banter [...] more entertaining than the otherwise unmemorable music from this stylistic train wreck". In 1968, at the insistance of Marshall Chess , he recorded Electric Mud , an album intended to revive his career by backing him with Rotary Connection ,
4676-406: A separate genre arose during the black migration from the countryside to urban areas in the 1920s and the simultaneous development of the recording industry. Blues became a code word for a record designed to sell to black listeners. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of Afro-American community, the spirituals . The origins of spirituals go back much further than
4843-407: A sideline until that time. In the mid-1950s, Waters' singles were frequently on Billboard magazine's various Rhythm & Blues charts including "Sugar Sweet" in 1955 and " Trouble No More ", " Forty Days and Forty Nights ", and "Don't Go No Farther" in 1956. 1956 also saw the release of one of his best-known numbers, " Got My Mojo Working ", although it did not appear on the charts. However, by
5010-735: A then-unknown Buddy Guy on acoustic guitar. Folk Singer was not a commercial success, but it was lauded by critic Joe Kane , and in 2003 Rolling Stone magazine placed it at number 280 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time . In October 1963, Waters participated in the first of several annual European tours, organized as the American Folk Blues Festival , during which he also performed more acoustic-oriented numbers. In 1967, he re-recorded several blues standards with Bo Diddley , Little Walter, and Howlin' Wolf, which were marketed as Super Blues and The Super Super Blues Band albums in Chess' attempt to reach
5177-581: A wide variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues , Delta blues and Piedmont blues , as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues and West Coast blues . World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues rock developed, which blended blues styles with rock music . The term 'Blues' may have originated from "blue devils", meaning melancholy and sadness. An early use of
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5344-454: Is a cyclic musical form in which a repeating progression of chords mirrors the call and response scheme commonly found in African and African-American music. During the first decades of the 20th century blues music was not clearly defined in terms of a particular chord progression. With the popularity of early performers, such as Bessie Smith , use of the twelve-bar blues spread across
5511-560: Is a sly wordplay with the double meaning of being " tight " with someone, coupled with a more salacious physical familiarity. Blues songs with sexually explicit lyrics were known as dirty blues . The lyrical content became slightly simpler in postwar blues, which tended to focus on relationship woes or sexual worries. Lyrical themes that frequently appeared in prewar blues, such as economic depression, farming, devils, gambling, magic, floods and drought, were less common in postwar blues. The writer Ed Morales claimed that Yoruba mythology played
5678-462: Is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald , with what began as a mail ordering catalog company migrating to opening retail locations in 1925, the first in Chicago . Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States. In 2005, the company
5845-427: Is buried next to his wife, Geneva. After his death, a decades-long court battle ensued between his heirs and Scott Cameron, his manager at the time. In 2010, his heirs were petitioning the courts to appoint Mercy Morganfield, his daughter, as administrator who would then control the assets of his estate which were mainly copyrights to his music. The petition to reopen the estate was successful. Following Cameron's death,
6012-453: Is characterized by its lyrics , bass lines , and instrumentation . Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the AAB pattern , consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over
6179-425: Is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale , and specific chord progressions , of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch , are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove . Blues music
6346-433: Is characterized by the use of electric guitar, sometimes slide guitar, harmonica, and a rhythm section of bass and drums. The saxophonist J. T. Brown played in bands led by Elmore James and by J. B. Lenoir , but the saxophone was used as a backing instrument for rhythmic support more than as a lead instrument. Sears-Roebuck Sears, Roebuck and Co. , commonly known as Sears ( / s ɪər z / SEERZ ),
6513-418: Is little evidence of Sub-Sahelian influence in the blues as "elaborate polyrhythm, percussion on African drums (as opposed to European drums), [and] collective participation" which are characteristic of West-Central African music below the savannah, are conspicuously absent. According to the historian Paul Oliver , "the roots of the blues were not to be found in the coastal and forest regions of Africa. Rather...
6680-728: Is often associated with solo piano, boogie-woogie was also used to accompany singers and, as a solo part, in bands and small combos. Boogie-woogie style was characterized by a regular bass figure, an ostinato or riff and shifts of level in the left hand, elaborating each chord and trills and decorations in the right hand. Boogie-woogie was pioneered by the Chicago-based Jimmy Yancey and the Boogie-Woogie Trio ( Albert Ammons , Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis ). Chicago boogie-woogie performers included Clarence "Pine Top" Smith and Earl Hines , who "linked
6847-497: Is often associated with the California blues style, performed a successful transition from the early urban blues à la Lonnie Johnson and Leroy Carr to the jump blues style and dominated the blues-jazz scene at Los Angeles during the 1940s. The transition from country blues to urban blues that began in the 1920s was driven by the successive waves of economic crisis and booms that led many rural blacks to move to urban areas, in
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7014-482: The American South sometimes referred to as a jitterbug or a one-string in the early twentieth century) and the banjo are African-derived instruments that may have helped in the transfer of African performance techniques into the early blues instrumental vocabulary. The banjo seems to be directly imported from West African music. It is similar to the musical instrument that griots and other Africans such as
7181-726: The Checkerboard Lounge , a blues club in Bronzeville , on the South Side of Chicago , which Buddy Guy and L.C. Thurman opened in 1972. A DVD of the performance, Live at the Checkerboard Lounge, Chicago 1981 , was released in 2012. In 1982, he cut way back on performing due to declining health. His last public performance took place when he sat in with Eric Clapton 's band at a concert in Florida in
7348-600: The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico . In 1997, Sears sold 85% of its Mexico affiliate to Grupo Carso . Sears Holdings continued to produce specialty catalogs and reintroduced a smaller version of the Holiday Wish Book in 2007. In 2003, Sears sold its U.S. retail credit card operation to Citibank . The remaining card operations for Sears Canada were sold to JPMorgan Chase in August 2005. In 2003, Sears opened
7515-608: The Count Basie Orchestra were also concentrating on the blues, with 12-bar blues instrumentals such as Basie's " One O'Clock Jump " and " Jumpin' at the Woodside " and boisterous " blues shouting " by Jimmy Rushing on songs such as "Going to Chicago" and " Sent for You Yesterday ". A well-known big band blues tune is Glenn Miller 's " In the Mood ". In the 1940s, the jump blues style developed. Jump blues grew up from
7682-919: The Discover credit card in 1985. However, these actions have been said to have distracted management's attention from the core retail business and allowed competing retailers to gain significant ground, culminating with Walmart surpassing Sears as the largest retailer in the United States in 1990. In the 1990s, the company began divesting itself of many non-retail entities, which were detrimental to its bottom line. Sears spun off its financial services arm, which included brokerage business Dean Witter Reynolds and Discover Card. It sold its mall building subsidiary Homart to General Growth Properties in 1995. Sears later acquired hardware chain Orchard Supply Hardware in 1996 and started home improvement store The Great Indoors in 1997. The cost of distributing
7849-587: The Igbo played (called halam or akonting by African peoples such as the Wolof , Fula and Mandinka ). However, in the 1920s, when country blues began to be recorded, the use of the banjo in blues music was quite marginal and limited to individuals such as Papa Charlie Jackson and later Gus Cannon . Blues music also adopted elements from the "Ethiopian airs", minstrel shows and Negro spirituals , including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment. The style also
8016-689: The Sears Archer 600 typewriter as a rebranded Silverette model, manufactured by Silver Seiko Ltd. of Japan. The success of Sears outdoor products raised the attention of the Federal Government and the antitrust laws. Sears purchased David Bradley to manufacture farm and lawn equipment. Its success was broken up in 1962 as they sold more plows than John Deere. Sears sold half of the David Bradley factory in Bradley, Illinois to
8183-495: The Sears Tower was completed and served as the base of the mail-order catalog business until 1995. By 1907, under Rosenwald's leadership as vice president and treasurer, annual sales of the company climbed to roughly $ 50 million ($ 1.6 billion today). Sears resigned from the presidency in 1908 due to declining health, with Rosenwald named president and chairman of the board and taking on full control. In 1910, Sears acquired
8350-606: The Social Security card application submitted after his move to Chicago in the mid-1940s, lists him as being born April 4, 1913. His gravestone gives his birth year as 1915. His grandmother, Della Grant, raised him after his mother died shortly after his birth. Grant gave him the nickname "Muddy" at an early age because he loved to play in the muddy water of nearby Deer Creek . "Waters" was added years later, as he began to play harmonica and perform locally in his early teens. He taught himself to play harmonica. The remains of
8517-777: The Theater Owners Booking Association in nightclubs such as the Cotton Club and juke joints such as the bars along Beale Street in Memphis. Several record companies, such as the American Record Corporation , Okeh Records , and Paramount Records , began to record African-American music. As the recording industry grew, country blues performers like Bo Carter , Jimmie Rodgers , Blind Lemon Jefferson , Lonnie Johnson , Tampa Red and Blind Blake became more popular in
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#17327811749218684-409: The degrees of the progression. For instance, for a blues in the key of C, C is the tonic chord (I) and F is the subdominant (IV). The last chord is the dominant (V) turnaround , marking the transition to the beginning of the next progression. The lyrics generally end on the last beat of the tenth bar or the first beat of the 11th bar, and the final two bars are given to the instrumentalist as
8851-451: The spirituals . The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery , with the development of juke joints occurring later. It is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century. The first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into
9018-533: The 1920s to the 1950s, Sears built many urban department stores in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico (apart from, but not far from, existing central business districts ), and they overshadowed the mail-order business. Following World War II, the company expanded into suburban markets and malls. In 1959, it had formed the Homart Development Company for developing malls. Many of the company's stores have undergone major renovations or replacements since
9185-438: The 1920s, among them "the big three"— Gertrude "Ma" Rainey , Bessie Smith , and Lucille Bogan . Mamie Smith , more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, was the first African American to record a blues song, in 1920; her second record, "Crazy Blues", sold 75,000 copies in its first month. Ma Rainey, the "Mother of Blues", and Bessie Smith each "[sang] around center tones, perhaps in order to project her voice more easily to
9352-428: The 1920s, when the record industry created the marketing categories " race music " and " hillbilly music " to sell music by blacks for blacks and by whites for whites, respectively. At the time, there was no clear musical division between "blues" and "country", except for the ethnicity of the performer, and even that was sometimes documented incorrectly by record companies. Though musicologists can now attempt to define
9519-460: The 1980s. Sears began to diversify in the 1930s, creating Allstate Insurance Company in 1931 and placing Allstate representatives in its stores in 1934 (Allstate was also used as a house brand on a range of motorized vehicles sold by Sears). Over the decades, it established major national brands, such as Kenmore , Craftsman , DieHard , Silvertone , Supertone , and Toughskins — and marketed widely under its private labels , e.g., marketing
9686-415: The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. The British band The Rolling Stones named themselves after Muddy Waters' 1950 song, "Rollin' Stone" . Jimi Hendrix recalled that "I first heard him as a little boy and it scared me to death". Eric Clapton was a big fan of Muddy Waters growing up and his band Cream covered " Rollin' and Tumblin' " on their 1966 debut album, Fresh Cream . Canned Heat also covered
9853-455: The 9-bar progression in " Sitting on Top of the World ", by Walter Vinson . The basic 12-bar lyric framework of many blues compositions is reflected by a standard harmonic progression of 12 bars in a 4/4 time signature . The blues chords associated to a twelve-bar blues are typically a set of three different chords played over a 12-bar scheme. They are labeled by Roman numbers referring to
10020-600: The AC/DC song " You Shook Me All Night Long " came from lyrics of Waters' song " You Shook Me ", written by Dixon and J. B. Lenoir . In 1981 ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons went to visit the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale with The Blues magazine founder, Jim O'Neal. The museum's director, Sid Graves, brought Gibbons to visit Waters original house, and encouraged him to pick up a piece of scrap lumber that
10187-546: The African American community. Kentucky-born Sylvester Weaver was in 1923 the first to record the slide guitar style, in which a guitar is fretted with a knife blade or the sawed-off neck of a bottle. The slide guitar became an important part of the Delta blues . The first blues recordings from the 1920s are categorized as a traditional, rural country blues and a more polished city or urban blues. Country blues performers often improvised, either without accompaniment or with only
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#173278117492110354-533: The African call-and-response tradition that transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar, the blues form itself bears no resemblance to the melodic styles of the West African griots . Additionally, there are theories that the four-beats-per-measure structure of the blues might have its origins in the Native American tradition of pow wow drumming. Some scholars identify strong influences on
10521-931: The Band on drums, organ, accordion and saxophone. In November 1976, he appeared as a featured special guest at the Band's Last Waltz farewell concert, and in the subsequent 1978 feature film documentary of the event. Waters performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1972, 1974 and 1977. An album, CD, and streaming release featuring many of his best known songs from these performances was compiled in 2021 as Muddy Waters: The Montreux Years . In 1974, his backing musicians in Montreux included Buddy Guy, Pinetop Perkins, Junior Wells , and Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman. Wyman and Perkins also performed with him in 1977. From 1977 to 1981, blues musician Johnny Winter , who idolized Waters since childhood and who had become
10688-764: The David Bradley Plow company. This acquisition would lead to the manufacturing of riding mowers, chainsaws, tillers, etc., in the Bradley Illinois factory. The company was badly hurt during 1919–21 as a severe depression hit the nation's farms after farmers had over-expanded their holdings. To bail out the company, Rosenwald pledged $ 21 million ($ 358.7 million today) of his personal wealth in 1921. By 1922, Sears regained financial stability. Rosenwald decided to shift emphasis to urban America and brought in Robert E. Wood to take charge. Rosenwald oversaw
10855-524: The Delta, playing harmonica. Williams recounted to Blewett Thomas that he eventually dropped Muddy "because he was takin' away my women [fans]". In August 1941, Alan Lomax went to Stovall, Mississippi , on behalf of the Library of Congress to record various country blues musicians. "He brought his stuff down and recorded me right in my house," Muddy told Rolling Stone magazine, "and when he played back
11022-841: The Mississippi Blues Commission marked the site of his cabin with a marker as part of the Mississippi Blues Trail in Clarksdale, Mississippi . He also received a plaque on the Clarksdale Walk of Fame . Muddy Waters' Chicago Home in the Kenwood neighborhood is in the process of being named a Chicago Landmark. A crater on Mercury was named in his honor in 2016 by the IAU . In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Waters at number 72 on its list of
11189-714: The Newark Ohio Company that was shortly acquired by Roper Industries. Sears reached its pinnacle in the 1970s. In 1974, Sears completed the 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago, which became the world's tallest building , a title it took from the former Twin Towers in New York. Upon moving out of Chicago, Sears sold the Sears Tower in 1988. In the sale contract of the tower, Sears retained its naming rights to
11356-733: The Prairie Stone campus. The Sears catalog became known in the industry as "the Consumers' Bible". The company began selling to foreign customers after the American occupation of Greenland in World War II and the Philippines, among others, when locals ordered from catalogs left by soldiers. Novelists and story writers often portrayed the importance of the catalog in the emotional lives of rural folk. The catalog also entered
11523-440: The R.W. Sears Watch Company. That year, he met Alvah Curtis Roebuck , a watch repairman. In 1887, Sears and Roebuck relocated the business to Chicago, and the company published Richard Sears's first mail-order catalog, offering watches, diamonds, and jewelry. In 1889, Sears sold his business for $ 100,000 ($ 3 million in 2021 dollars) and relocated to Iowa, planning to be a rural banker. He returned to Chicago in 1892 and established
11690-715: The Rolling Stones (named after Waters's 1950 hit "Rollin' Stone"), Cream , and the original Fleetwood Mac . In the 1960s, Waters' performances continued to introduce a new generation to Chicago blues. At the Newport Jazz Festival , he recorded one of the first live blues albums, At Newport 1960 , and his performance of "Got My Mojo Working" was nominated for a Grammy award . In September 1963, in Chess' attempt to connect with folk music audiences, he recorded Folk Singer , which replaced his trademark electric guitar sound with an acoustic band, including
11857-584: The Sears Essentials format, only to change them later to Sears Grands. The combined company's profits peaked at $ 1.5 billion in 2006. By 2010, the company was no longer profitable; from 2011 to 2016, the company lost $ 10.4 billion. In 2014, its total debt ($ 4.2 billion at the end of January 2017) exceeded its market capitalization ($ 974.1 million as of March 21, 2017). Sears declined from more than 3,500 physical stores to 695 U.S. stores from 2010 to 2017. Sales at Sears stores dropped 10.3 percent in
12024-639: The age of 56. Muddy Waters died in his sleep at his home in Westmont, Illinois , on April 30, 1983 from heart failure and cancer-related complications. He was taken from his Westmont home, where he lived for the last decade of his life, to Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, Illinois , where he was pronounced dead. His funeral was held on May 4, 1983. Throngs of blues musicians and fans attended his funeral at Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois . He
12191-486: The album The London Muddy Waters Sessions . The album was a follow-up to the previous year's The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions . Both albums were the brainchild of Chess Records producer Norman Dayron, and were intended to showcase Chicago blues musicians playing with the younger British rock musicians whom they had inspired. Waters brought with him two American musicians, harmonica player Carey Bell and guitarist Sammy Lawhorn . The British and Irish musicians who played on
12358-551: The album included Rory Gallagher , Steve Winwood , Rick Grech , and Mitch Mitchell . Muddy was dissatisfied by the results, due to the British musicians' more rock-oriented sound. "These boys are top musicians. They can play with me, put the book before 'em and play it, you know," he told Guralnick. "But that ain't what I need to sell my people. It ain't the Muddy Waters sound. An' if you change my sound, then you gonna change
12525-420: The back of a room". Smith would "sing a song in an unusual key, and her artistry in bending and stretching notes with her beautiful, powerful contralto to accommodate her own interpretation was unsurpassed". In 1920, the vaudeville singer Lucille Hegamin became the second black woman to record blues when she recorded "The Jazz Me Blues", and Victoria Spivey , sometimes called Queen Victoria or Za Zu Girl, had
12692-552: The band, appearing on most of the Muddy's classic recordings in the 1950s. In 1954, Howlin' Wolf moved to Chicago with money that he earned through the success of the singles he recorded at Sun Records which Chess released, and the legendary rivalry with Waters began. The rivalry was, in part, stoked by Willie Dixon providing songs to both artists, with Wolf suspecting that Waters was getting Dixon's best songs. In 1955, Jimmy Rogers left to work exclusively with his own band which had been
12859-519: The bankruptcy process, while all others would hold liquidation sales. On January 16, 2019, Sears Holdings announced it would remain open after Lampert won a bankruptcy auction for the company with an offer to keep about 400 stores open. On February 7, 2019, a bankruptcy judge approved a $ 5.2 billion plan by Sears's chairman and biggest shareholder to keep the business going. The approval meant roughly 425 stores, including 223 Sears stores, and 45,000 jobs would be preserved. In April 2019, Sears announced
13026-554: The beginning of the 20th century. They are now lost. Other recordings that are still available were made in 1924 by Lawrence Gellert . Later, several recordings were made by Robert W. Gordon , who became head of the Archive of American Folk Songs of the Library of Congress . Gordon's successor at the library was John Lomax . In the 1930s, Lomax and his son Alan made a large number of non-commercial blues recordings that testify to
13193-662: The blues from the melodic structures of certain West African musical styles of the savanna and sahel. Lucy Durran finds similarities with the melodies of the Bambara people , and to a lesser degree, the Soninke people and Wolof people , but not as much of the Mandinka people . Gerard Kubik finds similarities to the melodic styles of both the west African savanna and central Africa, both of which were sources of enslaved people. No specific African musical form can be identified as
13360-443: The blues gained an association with misery and oppression, the lyrics could also be humorous and raunchy: Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me, Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me, It may be sending you baby, but it's worrying the hell out of me. Hokum blues celebrated both comedic lyrical content and a boisterous, farcical performance style. Tampa Red and Georgia Tom 's " It's Tight Like That " (1928)
13527-578: The blues in the same year in Missouri ; and W.C. Handy , who first heard the blues in Tutwiler, Mississippi , in 1903. The first extensive research in the field was performed by Howard W. Odum , who published an anthology of folk songs from Lafayette County, Mississippi , and Newton County, Georgia , between 1905 and 1908. The first non-commercial recordings of blues music, termed proto-blues by Paul Oliver , were made by Odum for research purposes at
13694-468: The blues is usually dated after the Emancipation Act of 1863 , between 1860s and 1890s, a period that coincides with post- emancipation and later, the establishment of juke joints as places where African-Americans went to listen to music, dance, or gamble after a hard day's work. This period corresponds to the transition from slavery to sharecropping, small-scale agricultural production, and
13861-530: The blues narrowly in terms of certain chord structures and lyric forms thought to have originated in West Africa, audiences originally heard the music in a far more general way: it was simply the music of the rural south, notably the Mississippi Delta . Black and white musicians shared the same repertoire and thought of themselves as " songsters " rather than blues musicians. The notion of blues as
14028-459: The blues was rooted in ... the savanna hinterland, from Senegambia through Mali, Burkina Faso, Northern Ghana, Niger, and northern Nigeria". Additionally, ethnomusicologist John Storm Roberts has argued that "The parallels between African savanna-belt string-playing and the techniques of many blues guitarists are remarkable. The big kora of Senegal and Guinea are played in a rhythmic-melodic style that uses constantly changing rhythms, often providing
14195-411: The blues, usually dating back to the middle of the 18th century, when the slaves were Christianized and began to sing and play Christian hymns , in particular those of Isaac Watts , which were very popular. Before the blues gained its formal definition in terms of chord progressions, it was defined as the secular counterpart of spirituals. It was the low-down music played by rural blacks. Depending on
14362-485: The boogie-woogie wave and was strongly influenced by big band music. It uses saxophone or other brass instruments and the guitar in the rhythm section to create a jazzy, up-tempo sound with declamatory vocals. Jump blues tunes by Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner , based in Kansas City, Missouri , influenced the development of later styles such as rock and roll and rhythm and blues. Dallas-born T-Bone Walker , who
14529-400: The brand's huge popularity helped attract customers. Sears retail stores were pioneering and broke the conventions of the time in three ways: Many stores at this time were designed by architect George C. Nimmons and his firms. The architecture was driven by merchandising needs rather than the desired outer appearance. This made the stores excellent examples of the modern architecture of
14696-483: The building until 2003, but the Sears Tower retained the name until early 2009, when London-based insurer Willis Group Holdings, Ltd. was given the building's naming rights to encourage them to occupy the building. Sears moved to the new Prairie Stone Business Park in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, between 1993 and 1995. The Sears Centre is a 10,001-seat multi-purpose arena located in Hoffman Estates adjacent to
14863-414: The cabin on Stovall Plantation where he lived in his youth are now at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi . He had his first introduction to music in church: "I used to belong to church. I was a good Baptist, singing in the church. So I got all of my good moaning and trembling going on for me right out of church," he recalled. By the time he was 17, he had purchased his first guitar. "I sold
15030-666: The company announced that Transform Holdco would acquire Sears Hometown & Outlet Stores . As per deal, it might need to divest its Sears Outlet division to gain approval. On August 6, 2019, it was announced that 26 stores would close that October, including 21 Sears stores, among them the last Sears stores in Alabama and West Virginia , at Riverchase Galleria in Hoover and at Huntington Mall in Barboursville , respectively. The announcement also included plans to "accelerate
15197-417: The company was looking to focus on becoming a more tech-driven retailer. Sears's CEO and top shareholder said the sell-off of key assets in the last year had given the retailer the money it needs to speed up its transformation. Sears Holdings had lost a total of US$ 7 billion in the four years to 2015. In part, the retailer was trying to curb losses by using a loyalty program called Shop Your Way. Sears believed
15364-507: The current Ford line ]). By 1895, the company was producing a 532-page catalog. Sales were over $ 400,000 ($ 12 million in 2021 dollars) in 1893 and over $ 750,000 ($ 20 million in 2021 dollars) two years later. By 1896, dolls, stoves, and groceries were added to the catalog. Despite the strong and growing sales, the national Panic of 1893 led to a full-scale economic depression , causing a cash squeeze and large quantities of unsold merchandise by 1895. Roebuck decided to quit, returning later in
15531-520: The design and construction of the firm's first department store, built on land within the Sears, Roebuck, and Company Complex. The store opened in 1925. In 1924, Rosenwald resigned the presidency but remained as chair until he died in 1932; his goal was to devote more time to philanthropy. The first store opened on February 2, 1925, as an experiment in the North Lawndale Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex . Despite its remote location on
15698-479: The emphasis and impact of the lyrics, and vocal dramatics using shouts, groans, moans, and wails. The blues women thus effected changes in other types of popular singing that had spin-offs in jazz, Broadway musicals , torch songs of the 1930s and 1940s, gospel , rhythm and blues , and eventually rock and roll ." Urban male performers included popular black musicians of the era, such as Tampa Red , Big Bill Broonzy and Leroy Carr . An important label of this era
15865-733: The expansion of our smaller store formats which includes opening additional Home & Life stores and adding several hundred Sears Hometown stores after the Sears Hometown and Outlet transaction closes." On August 31, 2019, management announced that Transform would close an additional 92 stores, including 15 Sears stores, by the end of 2019. Near the end of 2019, Sears sold the brand name DieHard to Advance Auto Parts for $ 200 million. A total of 100 more stores closed by January 2020. 51 Sears stores were closed in February 2020. More stores continued to close throughout 2020 and 2021, including
16032-429: The expansion of railroads in the southern United States. Several scholars characterize the development of blues music in the early 1900s as a move from group performance to individualized performance. They argue that the development of the blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the enslaved people. According to Lawrence Levine, "there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon
16199-588: The family fortune in a speculative stock deal. Sears moved across the state to work as a railroad station agent in North Redwood , then Minneapolis . While he was in North Redwood, a jeweler refused delivery on a shipment of watches. Sears purchased them and sold them at a low price to the station agents, making a profit. He started a mail-order watch business in Minneapolis in 1886, calling it
16366-690: The final Sears in Maine at The Maine Mall. In September 2021, the company's website listed 35 Sears stores. That month, Sears announced that it would close more stores, including the last Sears store in New York City. The New York City Sears closed by November 24, 2021, with the potential to be redeveloped. Transformco announced in December 2021 its plans to sell the 2.3 million-square-foot Sears headquarters in Hoffman Estates, which includes 100 acres of undeveloped land. On January 19, 2022, Sears shut
16533-530: The final quarter of 2016 when compared to the same period in 2015. Sears spent much of 2014 and 2015 selling off portions of its balance sheet; namely, Lands' End and its stake in Sears Canada , one of the biggest e-commerce players in Canada, with Can$ 505 million in sales in 2015—more than Walmart and others who had begun pushing aggressively into online sales, such as Canadian Tire . Sears stated that
16700-430: The first copyrighted blues composition. In lyrics, the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. Early traditional blues verses often consisted of a single line repeated four times. However, the most common structure of blues lyrics today was established in the first few decades of the 20th century, known as the "AAB" pattern. This structure consists of a line sung over the first four bars, its repetition over
16867-1050: The first of its Christmas catalogs known as the " Sears Wishbook ", a catalog featuring toys and gifts, separate from the annual Christmas Catalog. From 1908 to 1940, it included ready-to-assemble Sears Catalog Home kit houses. Sears opened a small store in Downtown Havana , Cuba in 1942. Sears opened its first store in Mexico City in 1947; the Mexican stores would later spin off into Sears Mexico , now owned by billionaire Carlos Slim 's Grupo Sanborns , which in 2020 operated more than 75 stores across Mexico. Sears had sales of US$ 78 million in other territories in 1953. Over time, Sears expanded into all Central American countries, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Spain. Currently Sears operates in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Puerto Rico. From
17034-817: The first song I sounded just like anybody's records. Man, you don't know how I felt that Saturday afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice. Later on he sent me two copies of the pressing and a check for twenty bucks, and I carried that record up to the corner and put it on the jukebox. Just played it and played it and said, 'I can do it, I can do it'." Lomax came back in July 1942 to record him again. Both sessions were eventually released by Testament Records as Down on Stovall's Plantation . The complete recordings were reissued by Chess Records on CD as Muddy Waters: The Complete Plantation Recordings. The Historic 1941–42 Library of Congress Field Recordings in 1993 and remastered in 1997. In 1943, Waters headed to Chicago with
17201-540: The form of a loose narrative. African-American singers voiced their "personal woes in a world of harsh reality: a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, oppression at the hands of white folk, [and] hard times". This melancholy has led to the suggestion of an Igbo origin for blues, because of the reputation the Igbo had throughout plantations in the Americas for their melancholic music and outlook on life when they were enslaved. Other historians have argued that there
17368-556: The foundations of the resurgence of interest in the blues there. His performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960 was recorded and released as his first live album, At Newport 1960 . Waters' music has influenced various American music genres, including rock and roll and subsequently rock . Waters' place and date of birth are not conclusively known. He stated that he was born in 1915 at Rolling Fork in Sharkey County, Mississippi , but other evidence suggests that he
17535-417: The genre took its shape from the idiosyncrasies of individual performers. However, there are some characteristics that were present long before the creation of the modern blues. Call-and-response shouts were an early form of blues-like music; they were a "functional expression ... style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure". A form of this pre-blues
17702-511: The heirs' lawyers, in May 2018, sought to hold Scott Cameron's wife in contempt for allegedly diverting royalty income. The heirs, however, asked for that citation not to be pursued. The last court date was held on July 10, 2018, and, as of 2023, the disputed arrangement remained unchanged. Two years after his death, the city of Chicago paid tribute to him by designating the one-block section between 900 and 1000 East 43rd Street near his former home on
17869-403: The hope of becoming a full-time professional musician. He recalled arriving in Chicago as the single most momentous event in his life. He lived with a relative for a short period while driving a truck and working in a factory by day and performing at night. Big Bill Broonzy , then one of the leading bluesmen in Chicago, had Muddy open his shows in the rowdy clubs where Broonzy played. This gave him
18036-454: The huge variety of proto-blues styles, such as field hollers and ring shouts . A record of blues music as it existed before 1920 can also be found in the recordings of artists such as Lead Belly and Henry Thomas . All these sources show the existence of many different structures distinct from twelve- , eight- , or sixteen-bar . The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are not fully known. The first appearance of
18203-434: The individual, the popularity of Booker T. Washington's teachings, and the rise of the blues." Levine stated that "psychologically, socially, and economically, African-Americans were being acculturated in a way that would have been impossible during slavery, and it is hardly surprising that their secular music reflected this as much as their religious music did." There are few characteristics common to all blues music, because
18370-439: The language, particularly of rural dwellers, as a euphemism for toilet paper, as its pages could be torn out and used as such. In addition, for many rural African-Americans, especially in areas dominated by Jim Crow racial segregation , the Sears catalog was a vital retail alternative to local white-population-dominated stores, bypassing the stores' frequent intention to deny them fair access to their merchandise. However, as
18537-408: The last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the racial discrimination and other challenges experienced by African-Americans. Many elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa . The origins of the blues are also closely related to the religious music of the African-American community,
18704-448: The last horse that we had. Made about fifteen dollars for him, gave my grandmother seven dollars and fifty cents, I kept seven-fifty and paid about two-fifty for that guitar. It was a Stella . The people ordered them from Sears-Roebuck in Chicago." He started playing his songs in joints near his hometown, mostly on a plantation owned by Colonel William Howard Stovall . In the early 1930s, Waters accompanied Big Joe Williams on tours of
18871-420: The late 1950s, his singles success had come to an end, with only "Close to You" reaching the chart in 1958. Also in 1958, Chess released his first compilation album, The Best of Muddy Waters , which collected twelve of his singles up to 1956. Muddy toured England with Spann in 1958 where they were backed by local Dixieland -style or " trad jazz " musicians, including Chris Barber and members of his band. At
19038-419: The legal name Sears, Roebuck and Co. , in the state of New York, which effectively replaced the original company. The current company inherits the history of the old company, celebrating the original 1892 incorporation, rather than the 1906 revision, as the start of the company. Sears's successful 1906 initial public offering (IPO) marks the first major retail IPO in American financial history and represented
19205-462: The liquidation of the 115 largely owner-operated Hometown stores. As of November 2024, there are nine Sears stores remaining, with eight in the mainland U.S. and one location in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. Richard Warren Sears was born in 1863 in Stewartville, Minnesota , to a wealthy family which moved to nearby Spring Valley . In 1879, his father died shortly after losing
19372-650: The low rate of literacy among rural African Americans at the time. Reports of blues music in southern Texas and the Deep South were written at the dawn of the 20th century. Charles Peabody mentioned the appearance of blues music at Clarksdale, Mississippi , and Gate Thomas reported similar songs in southern Texas around 1901–1902. These observations coincide more or less with the recollections of Jelly Roll Morton , who said he first heard blues music in New Orleans in 1902; Ma Rainey , who remembered first hearing
19539-572: The membership scheme would enhance repeat business and customer loyalty in the long term. CEO Eddie Lampert also concluded an arrangement that sold the Craftsman brand to Stanley Black & Decker Inc. for approximately US$ 900 million. In October 2017, Sears and appliance manufacturer Whirlpool Corporation ended their 101-year-old association, reportedly due to pricing issues, although Whirlpool continued supplying Sears with Kenmore -branded appliances. In May 2018, Sears announced it had formed
19706-521: The movie soundtrack. Grammy Awards Blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated amongst African-Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spirituals , work songs , field hollers , shouts , chants , and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture . The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz , rhythm and blues , and rock and roll , and
19873-525: The music industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Other chord progressions, such as 8-bar forms, are still considered blues; examples include " How Long Blues ", " Trouble in Mind ", and Big Bill Broonzy 's " Key to the Highway ". There are also 16-bar blues , such as Ray Charles 's instrumental "Sweet 16 Bars" and Herbie Hancock 's " Watermelon Man ". Idiosyncratic numbers of bars are occasionally used, such as
20040-404: The nation urbanized, Sears's catalog business faced competition from city department stores. Rural America's population was slow-growing and possessed far less spending power than urban America. In the 1980s, the company began to diversify into non-retail entities such as buying Dean Witter and Coldwell Banker in 1981. In 1984, it launched Prodigy as a joint venture with IBM , and introduced
20207-452: The next four, and a longer concluding line over the last bars. This pattern can be heard in some of the first published blues songs, such as " Dallas Blues " (1912) and " Saint Louis Blues " (1914). According to W.C. Handy , the "AAB" pattern was adopted to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times. The lyrics are often sung in a rhythmic talk style rather than a melody, resembling a form of talking blues . Early blues frequently took
20374-515: The once highly influential general merchandise catalog became prohibitive; sales and profits had declined. The company discontinued the catalog in 1993. It dismissed 50,000 workers who had filled the orders. In 1992, the company posted a $ 3.9 billion loss, the largest ever from an American retailer. In 1992, California successfully sued the company for falsely finding things wrong with automobiles in for repair for other reasons. In 1997, criminal charges were made. In 1998, Sears announced it had sold
20541-519: The opening of three new stores with a limited set of merchandise under the name Sears Home & Life. Also that month, Sears closed its store at Windward Mall in Kaneohe, Hawaii , and its store at Oakbrook Center in Oak Brook, Illinois (which was razed and already rebuilt as a 1-story store), making it the first post-bankruptcy closure for the brand since being bought by ESL. On June 3, 2019,
20708-419: The opportunity to play in front of a large audience. In 1944, he bought his first electric guitar and then formed his first electric combo. He felt obliged to electrify his sound in Chicago because, he said, "When I went into the clubs, the first thing I wanted was an amplifier. Couldn't nobody hear you with an acoustic." His sound reflected the optimism of postwar African Americans. Willie Dixon said that "There
20875-513: The outskirts of Chicago, its success led to dozens of further openings across the country, many in conjunction with the company's mail-order offices, typically in lower-middle-class and working-class neighborhoods, far from the main downtown shopping district. This was considered highly unconventional at a time when shopping was concentrated in city centers, but through World War II , there was an extensive streetcar network in Chicago and other U.S. cities. However, rapidly increasing car ownership and
21042-495: The propulsive left-hand rhythms of the ragtime pianists with melodic figures similar to those of Armstrong's trumpet in the right hand". The smooth Louisiana style of Professor Longhair and, more recently, Dr. John blends classic rhythm and blues with blues styles. Another development in this period was big band blues. The " territory bands " operating out of Kansas City , the Bennie Moten orchestra, Jay McShann , and
21209-458: The religious community a musician belonged to, it was more or less considered a sin to play this low-down music: blues was the devil's music. Musicians were therefore segregated into two categories: gospel singers and blues singers, guitar preachers and songsters. However, when rural black music began to be recorded in the 1920s, both categories of musicians used similar techniques: call-and-response patterns, blue notes, and slide guitars. Gospel music
21376-625: The remaining 15 Sears Auto Centers in the United States with a message on the Sears Auto Center website stating: "Auto Centers have closed for business. We appreciate your patronage over the years. If you have any questions concerning warranty claims, please visit us at Sears Help." In May 2022, it was announced that roughly 100 more Sears Hometown stores, including the last four in Michigan, would close permanently. On December 13, 2022, Sears Hometown filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It
21543-648: The remnants of Western Auto (which it had acquired in 1998) to Roanoke -based Advance Auto Parts . The business deal was not what experts in the after-market automotive industry expected: Sears, Roebuck became "one of the largest shareholders" after obtaining a 40% stake in Advance Auto Parts and merging their two store networks, which included Western Auto's wholesale and retail operations. The existing store network of Advance Auto Parts, comprising 915 stores in 17 U.S. states, merged with 590 U.S.-based Parts America Stores in addition to 40 Western Auto stores in
21710-515: The single direct ancestor of the blues. However the call-and-response format can be traced back to the music of Africa . That blue notes predate their use in blues and have an African origin is attested to by "A Negro Love Song", by the English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor , from his African Suite for Piano , written in 1898, which contains blue third and seventh notes . The Diddley bow (a homemade one-stringed instrument found in parts of
21877-519: The song at the Monterey Pop Festival and later Bob Dylan played it on his album Modern Times . Many bands recorded " Hoochie Coochie Man " including The Allman Brothers Band , Humble Pie , Steppenwolf , Supertramp and Fear . The Led Zeppelin hit " Whole Lotta Love has lyrics and a melody heavily influenced by the Muddy Waters hit " You Need Love " (written by Willie Dixon ). Angus Young has cited Muddy as an influences and
22044-526: The south side "Honorary Muddy Waters Drive". In 2017, a ten stories-mural commissioned as a part of the Chicago Blues Festival and designed by Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra was painted on the side of the building at 17 North State Street, at the corner of State and Washington Streets. The Chicago suburb of Westmont, where he lived the last decade of his life, named a section of Cass Avenue near his home "Honorary Muddy Waters Way". In 2008,
22211-406: The southeastern "delicate and lyrical" Piedmont blues tradition, which used an elaborate ragtime-based fingerpicking guitar technique. Georgia also had an early slide tradition, with Curley Weaver , Tampa Red , "Barbecue Bob" Hicks and James "Kokomo" Arnold as representatives of this style. The lively Memphis blues style, which developed in the 1920s and 1930s near Memphis, Tennessee ,
22378-422: The storekeeper's estimate of a customer's creditworthiness. Sears built an opposite business model by offering in their catalogs a larger selection of products at published prices. By 1894, the Sears catalog had grown to 322 pages, including many new items, such as sewing machines, bicycles, sporting goods and automobiles (later produced, from 1905 to 1915, by Lincoln Motor Car Works of Chicago [no relation to
22545-427: The summer of 1982. Muddy Waters was married to his first wife, Mabel Berry, from 1932 to 1935. Muddy Waters' second wife, whom he married in the 1940s, Geneva Wade, died of cancer on March 15, 1973. Gaining custody of three of his children, Joseph, Renee, and Rosalind, he moved them into his home, eventually buying a new house in Westmont, Illinois . In 1977, he met Marva Jean Brooks, whom he nicknamed "Sunshine", at
22712-466: The term "blues" was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase ' blue law ', which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. In 1827, it was in the sense of a sad state of mind that John James Audubon wrote to his wife that he "had the blues". In Henry David Thoreau 's book Walden , he mentions "the blues" in the chapter reflecting on his time in solitude. He wrote his account of his personal quest in 1845, although it
22879-472: The term in this sense is in George Colman 's one-act farce Blue Devils (1798). The phrase 'blue devils' may also have been derived from a British usage of the 1600s referring to the "intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal". As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils and came to mean a state of agitation or depression. By the 1800s in the United States,
23046-402: The time, English audiences had only been exposed to acoustic folk blues, as performed by artists such as Sonny Terry , Brownie McGhee , and Big Bill Broonzy . Both the musicians and audiences were unprepared for his performance, which included electric slide guitar playing. He recalled: They thought I was a Big Bill Broonzy [but] I wasn't. I had my amplifier and Spann and I was going to do
23213-493: The time—styles made famous by Bertram Goodhue and Eliel Saarinen . Its stores were oriented to motorists. Set apart from existing business districts amid residential areas occupied by their target audience, they had ample, free, off-street parking and communicated a clear corporate identity. In the 1930s, the company designed fully air-conditioned, "windowless" stores, such as Sears-Pico in 1939 in Los Angeles , which
23380-450: The trance-like rhythm and call-and-response, and they form a repetitive effect called a groove . Characteristic of the blues since its Afro-American origins, the shuffles played a central role in swing music . The simplest shuffles, which were the clearest signature of the R&;B wave that started in the mid-1940s, were a three-note riff on the bass strings of the guitar. When this riff
23547-488: The whole man." He stated, "My blues look so simple, so easy to do, but it's not. They say my blues is the hardest blues in the world to play." Nevertheless, the album won another Grammy, again for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording. He won another Grammy for his last LP on Chess, The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album , recorded in 1975 with a new band, guitarist Bob Margolin ; [pianist, [Pinetop Perkins]] and Paul Butterfield on harmonica with Levon Helm and Garth Hudson of
23714-540: Was a formally trained musician, composer and arranger who helped to popularize the blues by transcribing and orchestrating blues in an almost symphonic style, with bands and singers. He became a popular and prolific composer, and billed himself as the "Father of the Blues"; however, his compositions can be described as a fusion of blues with ragtime and jazz, a merger facilitated using the Cuban habanera rhythm that had long been
23881-433: Was a master of just the right notes. It was profound guitar playing, deep and simple ... more country blues transposed to the electric guitar, the kind of playing that enhanced the lyrics, gave profundity to the words themselves." In 2003, Rolling Stone included The Anthology: 1947-1972 on its list of greatest albums. They ranked Waters seventeenth on their list of the greatest artists of all time. Gibbons wrote: It
24048-810: Was all supposed to be disposable. Just noise on a shellac disc. And here we are in the 21st century still trying to figure out how such a simple art form could be so complicated and subtle. It's still firing brain synapses around the world. You've got the Japanese Muddy Waters Society corresponding with fans in Sweden and England, and his music can still propel a party in the U.S. He made three chords sound deep, and they are. Muddy Waters' songs have been featured in long-time fan Martin Scorsese 's movies, including The Color of Money , Goodfellas , and Casino . A 1970s recording of "Mannish Boy"
24215-482: Was based in the Sears Tower in Chicago from 1973 until 1995, and was later headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois from 1993 until 2021, the year when it announced that it would be selling its Hoffman Estates headquarters complex. On December 12, 2022, Sears Authorized Hometown Stores, LLC, and affiliated debtor Sears Hometown, Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and on December 26 announced
24382-621: Was born in the unincorporated community of Jug's Corner, in neighboring Issaquena County , in 1913. In the 1930s and 1940s, before his rise to fame, the year of his birth was reported as 1913 on his marriage license, recording notes, and musicians' union card. A 1955 interview in the Chicago Defender is the earliest in which he stated 1915 as the year of his birth, and he continued to state that year in interviews from that point onward. The 1920 census lists him as five years old as of March 6, 1920. The Social Security Death Index, relying on
24549-518: Was bought by the management of the American big box discount chain Kmart , which upon completion of the merger, formed Sears Holdings . In 2018, it was the 31st-largest. After several years of declining sales, Sears's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. It announced on January 16, 2019, that it had won its bankruptcy auction, and that a reduced number of 425 stores would remain open, including 223 Sears stores. Sears
24716-399: Was closely related to ragtime , which developed at about the same time, though the blues better preserved "the original melodic patterns of African music". The musical forms and styles that are now considered the blues as well as modern country music arose in the same regions of the southern United States during the 19th century. Recorded blues and country music can be found as far back as
24883-518: Was handled by Albert Henry Loeb of Chicago law firm Loeb & Adler (now Arnstein & Lehr ); copies of the transaction are still displayed on the firm's walls. Sears and Rosenwald got along well with each other, but not with Nusbaum; they bought his interest in the firm for $ 1.3 million in 1903 ($ 44.1 million today). Rosenwald brought to the mail-order firm a rational management philosophy and diversified product lines: dry goods, consumer durables, drugs, hardware, furniture, and nearly anything else
25050-457: Was heard in slave ring shouts and field hollers , expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content". Blues has evolved from the unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves imported from West Africa and rural blacks into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the United States. Although blues (as it is now known) can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and
25217-581: Was influenced by jug bands such as the Memphis Jug Band or the Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers . Performers such as Frank Stokes , Sleepy John Estes , Robert Wilkins , Kansas Joe McCoy , Casey Bill Weldon and Memphis Minnie used a variety of unusual instruments such as washboard , fiddle , kazoo or mandolin . Memphis Minnie was famous for her virtuoso guitar style. Pianist Memphis Slim began his career in Memphis, but his distinct style
25384-442: Was invited to perform at Chicago Fest , the city's top outdoor music festival. He was joined onstage by Johnny Winter and Buddy Miles , and played classics like "Mannish Boy", "Trouble No More", and "Mojo Working" to a new generation of fans. Shout! Factory made the performances available on DVD in 2009. On November 22, he performed live with three members of the Rolling Stones ( Mick Jagger , Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood ) at
25551-670: Was nevertheless using musical forms that were compatible with Christian hymns and therefore less marked by the blues form than its secular counterpart. The American sheet music publishing industry produced a great deal of ragtime music. By 1912, the sheet music industry had published three popular blues-like compositions, precipitating the Tin Pan Alley adoption of blues elements: "Baby Seals' Blues", by Baby Franklin Seals (arranged by Artie Matthews ); "Dallas Blues", by Hart Wand ; and " The Memphis Blues ", by W.C. Handy . Handy
25718-532: Was not mentioned on the label. Later that year, he began recording for Aristocrat Records , a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess . In 1947, he played guitar with Sunnyland Slim on piano on the cuts "Gypsy Woman" and "Little Anna Mae". These were also shelved, but in 1948, "I Can't Be Satisfied" and "I Feel Like Going Home" became hits, and his popularity in clubs began to take off. Soon after, Aristocrat changed its name to Chess Records . Waters's signature tune " Rollin' Stone " also became
25885-481: Was not published until 1854. The phrase "the blues" was written by Charlotte Forten , then aged 25, in her diary on December 14, 1862. She was a free-born black woman from Pennsylvania who was working as a schoolteacher in South Carolina, instructing both slaves and freedmen, and wrote that she "came home with the blues" because she felt lonesome and pitied herself. She overcame her depression and later noted
26052-790: Was originally part of the roof. Gibbons eventually converted the wood into a guitar. Named Muddywood, the instrument is now exhibited at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale. In 1993, Paul Rodgers released the album Muddy Water Blues: A Tribute to Muddy Waters , on which he covered a number of his songs, including "Louisiana Blues", "Rollin' Stone", "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "I'm Ready" in collaboration with guitarists Gary Moore , Brian May and Jeff Beck . Following Waters' death, fellow blues musician B.B. King told Guitar World , "It's going to be years and years before most people realize how greatly he contributed to American music." The bluesman John Hammond Jr. told Guitar World , "Muddy
26219-420: Was played over the bass and the drums, the groove "feel" was created. Shuffle rhythm is often vocalized as " dow , da dow , da dow , da" or " dump , da dump , da dump , da": it consists of uneven, or "swung", eighth notes. On a guitar this may be played as a simple steady bass or it may add to that stepwise quarter note motion from the fifth to the sixth of the chord and back. Hart Wand 's " Dallas Blues "
26386-405: 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 ,
26553-430: Was published in 1912; W.C. Handy 's " The Memphis Blues " followed in the same year. The first recording by an African American singer was Mamie Smith 's 1920 rendition of Perry Bradford 's " Crazy Blues ". But the origins of the blues were some decades earlier, probably around 1890. This music is poorly documented, partly because of racial discrimination in U.S. society, including academic circles, and partly because of
26720-452: Was quite a few people around singing the blues but most of them was singing all sad blues. Muddy was giving his blues a little pep." In 1946, Waters recorded some songs for Mayo Williams at Columbia Records , with an old-fashioned combo consisting of clarinet, saxophone and piano; they were released a year later with Ivan Ballen's Philadelphia-based 20th Century label, billed as James "Sweet Lucy" Carter and his Orchestra – Muddy Waters' name
26887-507: Was replaced by the term rhythm and blues . This rapidly evolving market was mirrored by Billboard magazine's Rhythm & Blues chart . This marketing strategy reinforced trends in urban blues music such as the use of electric instruments and amplification and the generalization of the blues beat, the blues shuffle , which became ubiquitous in rhythm and blues (R&B). This commercial stream had important consequences for blues music, which, together with jazz and gospel music , became
27054-444: Was smoother and had some swing elements. Many blues musicians based in Memphis moved to Chicago in the late 1930s or early 1940s and became part of the urban blues movement. City or urban blues styles were more codified and elaborate, as a performer was no longer within their local, immediate community, and had to adapt to a larger, more varied audience's aesthetic. Classic female urban and vaudeville blues singers were popular in
27221-555: Was the Chicago-based Bluebird Records . Before World War II, Tampa Red was sometimes referred to as "the Guitar Wizard". Carr accompanied himself on the piano with Scrapper Blackwell on guitar, a format that continued well into the 1950s with artists such as Charles Brown and even Nat "King" Cole . Boogie-woogie was another important style of 1930s and early 1940s urban blues. While the style
27388-428: Was the first to have an open plan selling floor (instead of breaking up the floor into discrete sections). Sears was also a pioneer in creating department stores that catered to men and women. The stores included hardware and building materials. It de-emphasized the latest clothing fashions in favor of practical and durable clothing and allowed customers to select goods without the aid of a clerk. In 1933, Sears issued
27555-497: Was the most successful album of Muddy Waters' career, reaching number 70 on the Billboard 200 . In 1971, Chess recorded a show at Mister Kelly's , an upscale Chicago nightclub. The album signaled Waters's return to form and cemented his appeal with white audiences. In 1972, he won his first Grammy Award , for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording for They Call Me Muddy Waters , a 1971 album of old but previously unreleased recordings. Later in 1972, he flew to England to record
27722-579: Was transformed into the new Sears Holdings Corporation . The new company started trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange as SHLD; Sears sold its single-letter ticker symbol 'S' in the New York Stock Exchange that it had held since 1910 to Sprint Corporation . The new corporation announced that it would continue to operate stores under both the Sears and Kmart brands. In 2005, the company began renovating some Kmart stores and converting them to
27889-581: Was used in Goodfellas , Better Off Dead , Risky Business , and the rockumentary The Last Waltz . In 1988 "Mannish Boy" was also used in a Levi's 501 commercial and re-released in Europe as a single with "Hoochie Coochie Man" on the flip side. Waters is a central character in the 2008 American biographical drama film Cadillac Records . The role of Muddy Waters is played by Jeffrey Wright . Wright recorded " (I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man " for
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