As well, it nearly took him that long to find his own style. Hiatt began his solo career in 1974, and over the next decade he ran through a number of different styles from rock & roll to new wave-esque pop before he finally settled on a rootsy fusion of rock, country, blues, and folk with his 1987 album 'Bring the Family'. Though the album didn't set the charts on fire, it became his first album to gain some major commercial success, and several of the songs on the record became hits for other artists, including the aforementioned Raitt and Milsap. Following its success, Hiatt became a reliable hit songwriter for other artists, and he developed a strong cult following that continued to gain strength into the mid-90s.
While he was growing up in his hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana, Hiatt played in a number of garage bands. Initially, he was inspired by the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, and the music of those two artists would echo strongly throughout his work. Out of all the bar bands he played with in the late 60s, a group called The White Ducks was the one that received the most attention. Following his high-school graduation, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee at the age of 18, where he landed a job as a songwriter for Tree Publishing.
For the next several years, he wrote and performed at local clubs and hotels. Within a few years, his songs were being recorded by several different artists, including Conway Twitty, Tracy Nelson, and Three Dog Night, who took Hiatt's "Sure as I'm Sittin' Here" to number 16 in the summer of 1974. Eventually, his manager secured him an audition at Epic Records, and the label signed him in 1974, releasing his debut album, Hangin' Around the Observatory, later that year. Despite their critical acclaim, neither Hangin' Around the Observatory nor its 1975 follow-up Overcoats sold many copies, and he was dropped by the label. By the end of the year, Tree Publishing had let him go as well.
Following his failure in Nashville, Hiatt moved out to California. By the summer of 1978 he had settled in Los Angeles, where began playing in clubs, opening for folk musicians including Leo Kottke. With Kottke's assistance, Hiatt hired a new manager, Denny Bruce, who helped him secure a record contract with MCA Records. Slug Line, his first record for MCA, was released in the summer of 1979. Where his first two records were straight-ahead rock & roll and folk-rock, Slug Line was in the new wave vein of angry English singer/songwriters like Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, and Joe Jackson, as if Hiatt was vying for the role of the American angry young man. The new approach earned some strong reviews, yet it failed to generate any sales. Two Bit Monsters, his second MCA album, faced the same situation. Although it was well-received critically upon its 1980 release, it made no impression on the charts, and the label dropped him.
Apart from working on Two Bit Monsters, Hiatt spent most of 1980 as a member of Ry Cooder's backing band, playing rhythm guitar on the Borderline album and touring with the guitarist. Hiatt stayed with Cooder throughout 1981, signing a new contract with Geffen Records by the end of the year. Produced by Tony Visconti (David Bowie, T. Rex), his Geffen debut All of A Sudden was released in 1982, followed by the Nick Lowe/Scott Matthews & Ron Nagel-produced Riding With the King in 1983. As with his previous records for Epic and MCA, neither of his first two Geffen releases sold well. By this time, Hiatt's personal life was beginning to spin out of control as he was sinking deep into alcoholism. Around the time he completed 1985's Warming Up to the Ice Age, his second wife committed suicide. Following the release of Warming Up to the Ice Age, Hiatt was dropped by Geffen. By the end of 1985, he had entered a rehabilitation program. During 1986, he remarried and signed a new deal with A&M Records.
For his A&M debut, Hiatt assembled a small band comprising his former associates Ry Cooder (guitar), Nick Lowe (bass), and Jim Keltner (drums). Recorded over the course of a handful of days, the resulting album, Bring the Family, had a direct, stripped-down rootsy sound that differed greatly from his earlier albums. Upon its summer 1987 release, Bring the Family received the best reviews of his career and, for once, the reviews began to pay off, as the album turned into a cult hit, peaking at 107 on the U.S. charts; it was his first charting album. Hiatt attempted to record a follow-up with Cooder, Lowe, and Keltner, but the musicians failed to agree on the financial terms for the sessions. Undaunted, he recorded an album with John Doe, David Lindley, and Dave Mattacks, but he scrapped the completed project, deciding that the result was too forced. Hiatt's final attempt at recording the follow-up to Bring the Family was orchestrated by veteran producer Glyn Johns, who had him record with his touring band, the Goners. Despite all of the behind-the-scenes troubles behind its recording, the follow-up album, Slow Turning, actually appeared rather quickly, appearing in the summer of 1988.
Slow Turning, like Bring the Family before it, received nearly unanimous positive reviews and it was fairly well-received commercially, spending 31 weeks on the U.S. charts and peaking at 98. Within the next year, Hiatt successfully toured throughout America and Europe, strengthening his fan base along the way. Inspired by the success of Hiatt's two A&M albums, Geffen released the compilation Y' All Caught? The Ones That Got Away 1979-85 in 1989. That same year, other artists began digging through Hiatt's catalog of songs, most notably Bonnie Raitt, who covered "Thing Called Love" for her multi-platinum comeback album, Nick of Time.
In 1990, Hiatt returned with Stolen Moments, which was nearly as successful as Slow Turning, both critically and commercially. "Bring Back Your Love to Me," an album track from Stolen Moments that was also recorded by Earl Thomas Conley, won BMI's 1991 Country Music Award. By the time "Bring Back Your Love to Me" won that award, it had become a standard practice for artists to cover Hiatt's songs, as artists as diverse as Bob Dylan, Ronnie Milsap, Suzy Bogguss, and Iggy Pop all covered his songs in the early '90s. In 1993, Rhino Records released Love Gets Strange: The Songs of John Hiatt, which collected many of the cover versions that were recorded during the '80s and '90s.
During 1991, the group that recorded Bring the Family — Hiatt, Cooder, Lowe, and Keltner — re-formed as a band called Little Village, releasing their eponymous debut in early 1992. Based on the success of Bring the Family and Hiatt's A&M albums, expectations for Little Village were quite high, yet the record and its supporting tour were considered a major disappointment. Later, the individual members would agree that the band was a failure, mainly due to conflicting egos.
Hiatt decided to back away from the superstar nature of Little Village for his next album, 1993's Perfectly Good Guitar. Recorded in just two weeks with a backing band comprised of members of alternative rock bands School of Fish and Wire Train, the album was looser than any record since Bring the Family, but it didn't quite have the staying power of its two predecessors, spending only 11 weeks on the charts and peaking at number 47. The following year, he released his first live album, Hiatt Comes Alive at Budokan? Hiatt left A&M Records after the release of the record, signing with Capitol Records the following year.
Walk On, Hiatt's first Capitol album, was recorded during his supporting tour for Perfectly Good Guitar and featured guest appearances by the Jayhawks and Bonnie Raitt. Walk On entered the charts at 48, but slipped off the charts in nine weeks, indicating that his audience had settled into a dedicated cult following. Fittingly, after 1997's Little Head quickly came and went in the marketplace, Hiatt parted ways with Capitol, and his next album, 2000's Crossing Muddy Waters was released on the established independent imprint Vanguard Records. After a second album with Vanguard, The Tiki Bar Is Open, Hiatt alligned himself with another independent label, New West, for the release of his 2003 set Beneath This Gruff Exterior. Master of Disaster, along with CD and DVD versions of Live from Austin, TX followed in 2005.
Same Old Man followed in 2008; then The Open Road in 2010.
Crossing Muddy Waters
John Hiatt Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
She let out this morning
Like a rusty shot in a hollow sky
She left me without warning
Sooner than the dogs could bark
And faster than the sun rose
Down to the banks in an old mule car
She took a flatboat across the shallow
Left me in my tears to drown
She left a baby daughter
Now the river's wide and deep and brown
She's crossing muddy waters
Tobacco standing in the fields
Be rotten come November
And a bitter heart will not reveal
A spring that love remembers
When that sweet brown girl of mine
Her black eyes are ravens
We broke the bread and drank the wine
From a jug that she'd been saving
Left me in my tears to drown
She left a baby daughter
Now the river's wide and deep and brown
She's crossing muddy waters
Baby's crying and the daylight's gone
That big oak tree is groaning
In a rush of wind and river of song
I can hear my true love moaning
Crying for her baby child
Or crying for her husband
Crying for that river's wild
To take her from her loved ones
Left me in my tears to drown
She left a baby daughter
Now the river's wide and deep and brown
And she's crossing muddy waters
Now the river's wide and deep and brown
And she's crossing muddy waters
In “Crossing Muddy Waters,” John Hiatt sings about a woman who leaves him, taking their baby daughter with her, and crosses the river to start anew. Hiatt uses vivid imagery to help listeners envision the emotional turmoil he is experiencing. The opening line, “My baby’s gone and I don’t know why,” sets a sad and disorienting tone. Hiatt goes on to describe how she left without warning, leaving him to “drown” in a river of tears as she used an old mule car to reach the banks and cross the water on a “flatboat.” He seems to be imagining her journey and suggests that it is difficult, with the river being “wide and deep and brown” and her crossing “muddy waters.”
The second verse widens the scope of the lyrics and introduces themes of death, love, and renewal. The music is mournful, melancholic, and the lyrics only add to the feeling of sadness, as Hiatt mentions the tobacco fields that will rot soon and a person whose heart is so bitter, they cannot recognize or appreciate love when it comes. But the song also talks about how love will rise again as it mentions the woman with raven-black eyes who shared a jug of wine with Hiatt. The use of the metaphor of spring, when flowers bloom again and nature renews, is a nod to the idea of hope - that life continues, and love will eventually find a way.
Line by Line Meaning
My baby's gone and I don't know why
I'm confused about why my partner left me
She let out this morning
She left this morning
Like a rusty shot in a hollow sky
Her departure felt sudden and jarring
She left me without warning
She didn't give me any indication or explanation for leaving
Sooner than the dogs could bark
She left very quickly
And faster than the sun rose
She left very early in the morning
Down to the banks in an old mule car
She left in a simple, rural manner
She took a flatboat across the shallow
She crossed the river by boat
Left me in my tears to drown
She left me feeling sad and alone
She left a baby daughter
She also abandoned our child
Now the river's wide and deep and brown
The river seems daunting and difficult to cross
She's crossing muddy waters
She's leaving behind everything in pursuit of something better
Tobacco standing in the fields
The tobacco is in the fields for harvest
Be rotten come November
The tobacco will become useless if not harvested in time
And a bitter heart will not reveal
A person who is bitter won't show their emotions
A spring that love remembers
A memory of a past romance
When that sweet brown girl of mine
Referring to his former partner
Her black eyes are ravens
Her dark eyes are like black birds
We broke the bread and drank the wine
We shared a meal together
From a jug that she'd been saving
The wine was being saved for a special occasion
Baby's crying and the daylight's gone
It's nighttime and the baby is crying
That big oak tree is groaning
The tree is making noise in the wind
In a rush of wind and river of song
The wind and river are making a lot of noise
I can hear my true love moaning
He can hear his former partner in anguish
Crying for her baby child
She's upset about leaving her child
Or crying for her husband
She may also be upset about leaving her partner
Crying for that river's wild
She may also be upset about what lies ahead
To take her from her loved ones
She's leaving to get away from the people she loves
And she's crossing muddy waters
She's leaving everything behind and starting anew
Now the river's wide and deep and brown
The river is still intimidating and challenging
And she's crossing muddy waters
She's determined to move forward despite the obstacles
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: JOHN HIATT
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@thescrivener8516
A brilliant, under-appreciated singer/songwriter/musician. Cant wait to see him in 2024!
@ThatSeventiesRockFan
Wonderful musician and always brilliant live.
@richardblock2458
Hiatt is one of America's best writers and performers. This is proof.
@ThatSeventiesRockFan
He is a national treasure!
@joelfortenberry7865
Is there any one group of people that realize together as one that John should be understood for what he is- one of the finest - songwriter first, but also singer; acoustic ; performers; players
@ThatSeventiesRockFan
He's a special artist, very few like him. Very underappreciated. the nearest equivalent would be Nick Lowe and of course they have worked together!
@Kaleidoscope369
John Hiatt has the magic touch here…both in his singing and beautiful playing. ❤️
@ThatSeventiesRockFan
He is a treasure.
@Kaleidoscope369
You bet!!
@clifforddeintje5438
A song writer and storyteller of the highest order. And don't forget that voice!! Unique in the greatest sense of the word. Go Johnny go......