Say what you will about him, but Satan knows how to work a room.
On a warm evening in May, he makes his way through the green neon glow at Rooster’s Blues House in Oxford, Miss., and the crowd welcomes him like royalty. It’s a crowded, second-floor bar on the town square, the kind of place that still has a cigarette machine. Satan accepts compliments and pats on the back, shaking every hand with a respectful, “Thank you, sir.” Walking a step or two behind him is Adam, his longtime sideman, partner, and acolyte. Satan and Adam: the fallen angel and the first man. They will be signing autographs in the back.
Adam Gussow, left, and his partner in music, Sterling Magee, known as Satan, perform at the Hill Country Harmonica festival in May.
Satan — Mr. Satan to you and me — is Sterling Magee, a guitarist, backup player for musicians from James Brown to George Benson, and one-man band. And practically a force of nature — which you’d know if you spent any time around him in the old days. Adam is Adam Gussow, who leads something of a double life as an associate professor of English and Southern studies at the University of Mississippi by day and one of the best blues-harmonica players in the world — whenever time permits. The gathering at Rooster’s is a launch party for the duo’s new CD, Back in the Game, their first recorded collaboration in 13 years. It also happens to be Mr. Satan’s 75th birthday.
Magee crosses Rooster’s with a shuffle as Gussow hovers like an attentive son. In their brief time on stage, Magee shows he still can play a mean guitar, and his rasping voice retains much of its old force. As he used to do when the two were sidewalk regulars on 125th Street in Harlem back in the ’80s and early ’90s, Gussow is by Mr. Satan’s side, hands and harmonica cupped over his microphone, eyes closed, bobbing and jumping, feeling it as they jam on the blues song “Big Boss Man.”
Twelve hours later, Gussow and Magee meet up again in blinding sunlight at the opening of an event called Hill Country Harmonica. Gussow is the organizer and driving force behind what the psychedelic posters bill as “A North Mississippi Blues Harp Homecoming.” It is a festival/conference/seminar/jamboree held on a ranch about 20 miles north of Oxford. In this, its second year, Hill Country Harmonica has drawn more than 140 participants from 36 states and as far away as Russia, along with a documentary film crew and a blogger for The Huffington Post. Everyone sits at picnic benches in what is essentially a huge, open-walled shed, with a concession stand along one side and a stage at the end. For two days they will eat and play here, most of them sleeping in tents pitched out in the surrounding fields. [Read more...]
