Muddy Waters & Eric Clapton
Sunday 26th November 1978
Manchester Apollo
Manchester
UK

I have a friend, who shall remain nameless (let's for the sake of this tale call him Colin) who 
attended this concert given by two legends at the Manchester Apollo in 1978. 'Colin' did not 
usually record concerts on audio then and indeed does not now but he bravely decided to take a 
punt with this one, much to the chagrin of his wife who was sitting next to him. Armed with a 
basic cassette deck and only one tape, he duly pressed the buttons and it recorded some stuff. 
When he got home, he put the cassette in a drawer and forgot about it. There it languished 
(languished I tells ya..) for some 45 years until he mentioned its existence to me in passing. 
After a quick search around I could not find any mention of a circulating recording of that night 
so I made him go and find it. On putting it into a ghetto blaster, it wasn't a happy little 
cassette at all. The intervening years had made the tape all sticky and the sound was slurring. So 
I borrowed it from him, opened it up and transferred the reels and tape to a new housing. Then 
swizzled a pencil round slowly in the reel to unstick it initially, followed by FFWD and RWD a few 
times to loosen the tape up. The tape head azimuth was right out so it was adjusted and I made a 
recording of each side of the tape.
He has captured the entire Muddy Waters set and the initial part of Eric Clapton's.
One channel was almost mud but there was some workable music in the other so I used some tools in 
my DAW as an attempt to balance and EQ it. 
The recording is listenable now, but I would say it's not for casual listeners, more for 
connoisseurs and anyone who was there that night.


Enjoy.


Muddy Waters
Pinetop Perkins – Piano
Jerry Portnoy – Harp
Bob Margolin – Guitar
Luther ‘Guitar’ Johnson – Guitar
Calvin ‘Fuzz’ Jones – Bass
Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith – Drums

1. Intro
2. Hoochie Coochie Man
3. Baby, Please Don’t Go
4. Call Me Muddy Waters
5. County Jail
6. Kansas City
7. Mannish Boy
8. Got My Mojo Working

Eric Clapton
George Terry – Guitar
Dick Sims – Keyboards
Carl Radle – Bass
Jamie Oldaker - Drums

1. Layla
2. Worried Life Blues
3. If I Don’t Be There By Morning
4. Wonderful Tonight
5. Tulsa Time
6. Early In The Morning
7. Badge
8. Crossroads (cut)