Satan and Adam

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Satan and Adam
Jazzfest in 2012
Background information
OriginNew York City, New York, United States
GenresBlues
Years active1980s–1998; 2005-2006; 2011; 2013
Members
Websitewww.modernbluesharmonica.com/satan_and_adam.html

Satan and Adam was an American

New York City, New York),[1] who were a fixture on Harlem's sidewalks in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[1]

Magee sang in a style that fuses blues with elements of

Rhino Records
release, Modern Blues of the 1990s.

History

Magee was raised in

Paul Winley and the Harlem Underground, a loose-knit unit that included George Benson.[3]

In the late 1970s, Magee gave up guitar, refused to be identified by his birth-name and demanded that his associates call him 'Satan'.

New York Telephone Company
office, sometimes accompanied by drummer Pancho Morales and other musicians.

Around this time Gussow, a

academic to a blues player was facilitated by lessons he took from his mentor, New York harmonica virtuoso Nat Riddles, who had performed and recorded with Larry Johnson, Odetta, and others, and by his acculturation into the jam session life at Dan Lynch, a storied East Village juke joint
.

In October 1986, Gussow encountered Magee again, purely by chance, this time at Magee's regular stretch of sidewalk near the Apollo Theater.[5] Gussow, a semi-seasoned street performer by this point, sat in.[1]

What began as a streetside encounter ended up blossoming into a twelve-year success story. The duo's initial notoriety accrued in the summer of 1987, when the members of U2 wandered by Magee and Gussow with a film crew in tow, capturing the Harlem duo at work. Thirty-nine seconds of Magee's original composition, "Freedom for My People" were ultimately included in the Rattle and Hum documentary and album.[1]

Gussow left New York several times over the next year to play harmonica with a touring production of

Halifax, Nova Scotia
and participated in the International Busker Fest. After three and a half years of relative anonymity, they finally had a calling card, and a name: Magee and Gussow were now "Satan and Adam."

In 1991, after being discovered during a steady gig at a woman's bar in

New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, told their manager, "I don't know where you found them, but I'm going to make them stars."[citation needed
]

Between 1991 and 1998, Satan and Adam toured widely, including Italy, Switzerland, Finland, and Australia and countless club gigs in the eastern half of the U.S. They recorded two more albums:

, and many other locations.

In 1996 they were the cover story in

interracial
act had ever been featured on the cover.

After a charmed rise, the duo's fortunes took a disastrous downward turn in 1998 when Magee, who had recently relocated from Harlem to

nervous breakdown
and, after briefly resurfacing, dropped completely out of sight. Satan and Adam effectively dissolved as a partnership.

After several years' silence, Magee slowly reemerged. Starting in 2000, he lived at the Boca Ciega Center, an adult care facility in Gulfport, Florida, a small community next to St. Petersburg. His guitar skills, which vanished with his breakdown, partially reconstituted themselves with the help of harpist T. C. Carr and other Tampa-area blues performers who had dedicated themselves to furthering his comeback. In late 2005 and early 2006, Satan and Adam played several comeback gigs in Gulfport and Oxford, Mississippi, where Gussow is currently a professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi.

Beginning in the summer of 2007, the duo began to play occasional road dates and added a drummer, Tampa resident David Laycock (a.k.a., "Dave on Drums"). A book by Gussow entitled Journeyman's Road, collecting magazine columns and other of his writings, was published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2007 and further detailed the Satan and Adam story. In 2008, Gussow released a double CD of early work by the duo entitled Word on the Street: Harlem Recordings, 1989, for download on his Modern Blues Harmonica website (see below).

In 2011, the duo released a new album, Back in the Game.[6]

On May 5, 2013, the duo performed at Jazzfest in New Orleans, their first appearance there since their debut in 1991.

A feature-length documentary on the duo entitled Satan & Adam, directed by award-winning filmmaker V. Scott Balcerek and featuring cameos by

Rev. Al Sharpton, journalist Peter Noel, and others, was as of June 2019 streaming on Netflix
.

On September 6, 2020, Magee died in hospice care of complications from COVID-19 in Gulfport, Florida.[2]

Discography

  • Harlem Blues (Flying Fish, 1991)
  • Mother Mojo (Flying Fish, 1993)
  • Living On The River (Rave On Productions, 1996)
  • Word On The Street (Modern Blues Harmonica, 2008)
  • Back In The Game (Modern Blues Harmonica, 2011)

References

  1. ^ .
  2. ^ a b Spata, Christopher (10 September 2020). "Sterling Magee, blues man known as 'Satan,' dies in Gulfport". Tampa Bay Times. Archived from the original on 18 November 2020. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
  3. ^ "Harlem Underground Band". Archived from the original on November 18, 2018.
  4. ^ Satan and Adam - New York profile (WNYC-TV, 1992). Modern Blues Harmonica. Archived from the original on May 6, 2019. Quote: "Produced and directed by Patricia Zur, first appearing on WNYC-TV in New York, this video portrait shows Sterling Magee (Mister Satan) on the streets of Harlem, at work in Dan Lynch on 10th (a short-lived NY bar) with harmonica player Adam Gussow, and in Bobby Robinson's "Happy House Records," a Harlem institution, where Sterling tells the story of learning the blues from a bird down in Mississippi."
  5. ^ "Satan & Adam - Movie Review". 11 May 2019. Archived from the original on February 10, 2020.
  6. ^ "Hill Country Harmonica". Hillcountryharmoinica.com. Retrieved 2011-05-20.

Other sources

External links