CAN'T BE SATISFIED: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MUDDY WATERS (2002)

Born McKinley A. Morganfield and nicknamed for the Mississippi that irrigated the fields he sharecropped, Waters absorbed the acoustic blues of Robert Johnson and Son House, then, in 1943, moved to Chicago, plugged in, and became a star. The primal, lust-drenched electric blues he created with bandmates Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers, and Otis Spann fed directly into countless waves of white rock: Without his 1950 ''Rolling Stone'' there would be no British band, no U.S. magazine, and no Dylan single. Gordon tells the tale with deeply researched hellaciousness; he doesn't let Muddy off the hook for bad behavior, and he nails the sound of men beating on the devil with guitars.