Hard Again

CTL-E-5260 · Work · album · 1977

VERIFIED evidence grade of this record

Hard Again is the 1977 comeback album by Chicago blues master Muddy Waters, released on Blue Sky Records on January 10, 1977. After Chess Records — Waters' label home for a quarter-century — folded in 1975, the Texas guitarist Johnny Winter, a lifelong Waters admirer, brought him back into the studio, producing the album and playing guitar alongside members of Waters' road band: James Cotton on harmonica, Pinetop Perkins on piano, Bob Margolin on guitar and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith on drums. Winter set out to recreate the raw force of Waters' 1950s Chess recordings, and the album — opening with a thunderous re-recording of “Mannish Boy” — was hailed by AllMusic as one of the finest Waters ever made. It won the Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording and opened a late-career renaissance that produced two more Winter-produced studio albums.

Notes

Staged 2026-10-15 under CTL-GOV-006 (Next Slate C); Gate A clear; Gate B met (2 independent sources). CTL treatment: subject of the CTL cited-photo feature “Muddy Waters — Chicago Blues” (2026-10-14), which discusses the Johnny Winter-produced comeback; named in 15 distinct CTL corpus files (19 mentions) per the 2026-10-15 corpus gap scan. Statistics carried: Billboard 200 peak No. 143 (Wikipedia, Johnny Winter discography, checked 2026-10-15); Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording, awarded at the February 1978 ceremony (AllMusic; Johnny Winter discography). Photo slot: CLEARED CANDIDATE (artist portrait from November 1976, weeks before release; album cover art NOT proposed) — see packet §Photo Slots.

Relationships

• Muddy Waters — authored by
  Hard Again is Muddy Waters' (CTL-E-0001) album (Blue Sky Records, January 10, 1977), produced by Johnny Winter; it won the Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording.

Sources

• AllMusic, “Muddy Waters — Biography, Discography, Albums & Expert Reviews” — http://www.allmusic.com/artist/muddy-waters-mn0000608701 (primary source)
• Wikipedia, “Johnny Winter” and “Johnny Winter discography” (production credits, Blue Sky catalogue data and chart peak) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Winter

Record CTL-E-5260 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: VERIFIED · 2 sources (1 primary) · 1 mapped relationship · CTL research: PPL-001.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

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