Born into an area rife with poverty and racism in the Mississippi Delta, Muddy Waters could count on two things in his life: his Grandma Della, and music. Muddy loved the music he heard in church on Sundays, but his favorite was “fish-fry music,” “shake off the dust / and wring out your worries / and laugh and cry and feel alive music.” Muddy loved the blues. After leaving his “back- busting, soul-breaking” job as a sharecropper, Muddy moved to Chicago to make music. He was told he needed to incorporate more jazz into his style, but he stuck with what he knew and brought “the sound of the Delta” to the big city. As it turned out, people in Chicago couldn’t get enough of Muddy’s blues. After a few false starts in the recording business, a record producer gave Muddy a chance to record his own music, his own way, and it was a hit. Muddy was on his way to becoming one of the greatest blues musicians the world has ever known. Bright, bold illustrations against a black background, and an inventive, evocative choice of descriptive words, set the tone and conjure up the sound of the blues in this picture book biography. (Ages 7-10)