Muddy Waters

In his new autobiography, Eric Clapton tells the story of his professional rise and his personal battles with substance abuse. In the first of a two-part interview, Clapton remembers the blues greats that influenced him as a young guitarist.

Muddy Waters' 1968 blues-rock hybrid Electric Mud works as an intermittently spirited experiment, a loosely structured attempt at moving an icon beyond the traditional. The legend sounds like a lost soul from the Delta who's wandered into the exaggerated druggy debauchery of a hippie movie.

Take Five takes a detour with jazz's older cousin, the blues, as well as one of its most recognizable techniques: slide guitar. Gliding a bottleneck up and down the strings, the guitarist creates a world-weary sound. Muddy Waters sits at the center of this decades-spanning list.

Valentine's Day wouldn't be complete without a soundtrack, but finding the right love songs can be a chore. In the hopes of turning up something for every romantic playlist, five experts in the world of public radio offer their opinions on all-time great Valentine's Day songs.

When it came out as a single in 1954, the Muddy Waters song hovered near the top of the rhythm-and-blues charts for 13 weeks. Over the course of his long career, Waters re-interpreted the song numerous times, each one capturing the changes in the blues. "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man" is one of the NPR 100. NPR's David Welna reports.