The blues duo of guitarist, singer and songwriter Sterling Magee and harmonica player Adam Gussow have paid their dues. They began their career on the street. On the corner of Seventh Avenue and 125th Street, to be exact, and within a matter of weeks, they were drawing crowds to their corner, people pausing on their way home from work to stop and listen. For five years, nearly every afternoon that weather permitted, the pair would meet on the corner and Magee would set up his simple stool, drum kit, guitar and amplifier. Using a combination of foot stomps, tambourines, hi-hat cymbals and his guitar, Magee gives the duo a full sound.
Magee and Gussow specialize in funky, gritty, electric urban blues, and there are few groups or artists anywhere who sound anything remotely like them. Gussow's exquisite harmonica solos complement the driving, open-toned guitar playing of Magee, who prefers to be called Mr. Satan, and who frequently refers to Gussow in live performances as Mr. Gussow. Satan and Adam have redefined and shaped the sound of modern blues so much that their track, "I Want You" from their Harlem Blues debut is included on a Rhino Records release, Modern Blues of the 1990s.
Magee, born May 20, 1936 in Mississippi and raised in Florida, began his career playing piano in churches in both states. Since the early '80s, he's played on Harlem streets, but in the 1960s he was a key session guitarist, playing on recordings by James Brown, King Curtis, George Benson and others. Adam Gussow, born April 3, 1958 and raised in Rockland County, N.Y., was a Princeton-educated harmonica player who had a little uptown apartment, and in passing Magee one day on the street in 1985, he asked if he could sit in on harmonica. That was the start of a musical and social relationship between the two that continues to this day.
The pair have recorded several critically acclaimed albums for the now-defunct Flying Fish label, and they include Harlem Blues (1991) and Mother Mojo (1993). Satan and Adam also performed in U2's Rattle and Hum movie. On their Mother Mojo, the group reinterprets and funkifies well-known songs like Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" and Joe Turner's "Crawdad Hole." In 1996 the duo released Living on the River (1996) on the New York State-based Rave On Records label. Since then they have not recorded and play together only sporadically as Satan moved out of Harlem to Lynchburg, Virginia. In 1998, Adam Gussow published a memoir, Mister Satan's Apprentice, telling of his years playing with Sterling Magee. ~ Richard Skelly, All Music Guide
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