Shining a clear light on Muddy Waters

There have been too many great blues musicians over the last century to elevate any one to the top of the heap. But Muddy Waters, who’s profiled tonight in the latest installment of PBS’ “American Masters” series (8 p.m., KCET, KVCR), is as good a starting point as any, so monumentally influential was he as a singer, guitarist, songwriter and bandleader.

The hourlong show chronicles a life that was archetypal of the Southern black musician: Born a sharecropper’s son in 1915 in Mississippi, Waters quickly discovered two career choices available to him -- picking cotton or singing the blues.

“Muddy Waters: Can’t Be Satisfied” presents a fairly well-rounded look at the man born McKinley Morganfield through interviews with Waters himself and more recent interviews with such peers as B.B. King; disciples including Keith Richards and Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones, which took its name from one of Waters’ songs, and Bonnie Raitt; family members; and a couple of Waters’ many girlfriends.

It took nerve for Waters to walk off his job on the Stovall Farm near Clarksdale, Miss., and head to Chicago in the early 1940s. Yet there was little choice after mechanized picking machines eliminated the one grueling job available down South.

Once in Chicago, he connected with Leonard and Phil Chess, founders of Chess Records, which became a nexus for urban blues after they started recording Waters, Willie Dixon, Sonny Boy Williamson and dozens of others.

Waters laid the foundation for urban blues, with stinging electric guitar work, throbbing electric bass and propulsive drums providing dramatic counterpoint to the rural acoustic blues of the Mississippi Delta.

That sound made him an icon to young fans black and white, American and European, and was particularly galvanizing to ‘60s British musicians, from the Beatles and the Stones to Eric Clapton and John Mayall.

The show’s producers step lightly over the Chess brothers’ exploitation of many of the acts they recorded, but they are forthright about Waters’ legendary womanizing and the impact it had on his family.

“Can’t Be Satisfied” provides about as much depth as can be expected in 60 minutes. Waters’ music is well served in performance snippets that illustrate Raitt’s assessment of him as “the most sexy blues man that I’ve ever encountered.... When he sings out ‘I’m a man,’ I mean, those [other] guys can’t even compare to what he’s got.”