Dancing with Muddy: Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, and My Lucky Life In and Out of the Blues
By (Author) Jerry Portnoy
Chicago Review Press
Chicago Review Press
20th August 2025
United States
General
Non Fiction
Memoirs
Musicians, singers, bands and groups
Composers and songwriters
Biography: arts and entertainment
Paperback
282
Width 152mm, Height 228mm, Spine 17mm
471g
Jerry Portnoy grew up in Chicago hearing the blues being played outside his father's rug store on famed Maxwell Street during the late 1940s and early '50s.
After dropping out of college, he became immersed in the colorful world of pool hustlers like Cornbread Red, and Minnesota Fats as he managed the largest pool hall in Chicago. During a stint as a paratrooper early in the Vietnam war, he applied for discharge as a conscientious objector, and lived in San Francisco during 1967's "summer of love." While bumming around Europe the following year, Portnoy heard the blues again on a record by Sonny Boy Williamson and instantly became obsessed with mastering blues harmonica.
He returned to Chicago and in 1974 he was playing in small Black clubs at night when Muddy Waters plucked him from his day job at Cook County Jail to fill the historic harmonica chair in his fabled band. Eric Clapton followed suit in 1991. In a career that took him from ghetto taverns to the White House and the Royal Albert Hall, he went from the raggedy vans and cheap roadside motels of the blues world to the private jets and five-star hotels of the rock world. Between those two very different gigs was a struggle to survive the vagaries of the music business and the pressures of life on the road. In a remarkable life, he also assisted in surgery, lodged in a Moroccan house of ill repute, and dined at Giorgio Armani's.
Dancing with Muddydetails the surprising, lively, and sometimes bumpy ride of a blues harmonica legend.
"Jerry Portnoy has written an extraordinary and wildly readable account of his myriad adventures, including his apprenticeship to some of the most famous bluesmen in history. His account of the Chicago blues scene and behind-the-curtain tales as Muddy's harp player fill a crucial hole in the history of the blues. Portnoy is an exceptionally fine writer. . . . His book was a great pleasure to read." --Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm
"A lighthearted and mostly affectionate accounting of a remarkable career." -- Library Journal
"[A] lively and entertaining memoir" -- Booklist
"Portnoy is a skilled, engaging writer and his book is a personal journey through postwar America, filled with anecdotes, personalities, and examinations of twentieth century American cultural phenomena -- baseball, pool, army service, hippie culture, and the brief, shining moment when Americans listened to the blues." -- Jewish Book Council
"Jerry Portnoy, having worked the best two jobs a blues harp player could have, captivated me with his detailed recollections of the ups, downs, and adventures of a professional musician. I couldn't put it down." --Joe Filisko, master harmonica player, designer, and consultant to the Hohner harmonica company
Jerry Portnoy is a Grammy nominated musician whose career has taken him to all fifty states and over thirty countries on six continents. He makes his home on Cape Cod.