Got My Mojo Working

Pure pleasure, no ambivalence — this is what separates it from most of the surrounding catalog. The tempo is fast and infectious, the piano rolling under everything with a boogie feel that moves the song away from blues gravity and toward something approaching party music. Waters' voice lightens accordingly, losing its usual authority for something more playful, almost teasing. The harmonica solo tears through the arrangement with joyful abandon, and the whole performance has a looseness that suggests a band having genuine fun rather than executing a predetermined arrangement. The subject is folk magic — the mojo, a charm or talisman in African American folk tradition, here deployed as both literal belief and sexual metaphor simultaneously without the ambiguity creating any confusion. Waters had been working this material on stage for years before the recording; the performance has the ease of something deeply rehearsed and also the freshness of something that still surprises the performers. It became one of the most covered songs in early rock and roll, adapted by everyone from Elvis-adjacent performers to British Invasion bands who were mining Chicago blues for the raw material their own culture hadn't produced. This is a record for movement — dancing, celebrating, filling a room with bodies and noise. There is nothing complicated here, and that simplicity is the achievement.