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Artist
Adam Gussow
12+ albums
bluesharmonicaharmonica bluesharpblues harp
about
As a blues harmonica player and teacher, Adam Gussow (b. 1958) has few peers in the business. Currently an Associate Professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi with a specialty in blues literature and culture, Gussow has for many years performed and recorded with Mississippi-born guitarist and one-man-band Sterling "Mr. Satan" Magee as the duo Satan and Adam. After working the streets of Harlem from 1986 to 1991, Gussow and Magee duo toured internationally between 1991 and 1998. Their performing credits include the Chicago Blues Festival, the Newport Jazz Festival, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, The King Biscuit Blues Festival, the Kansas City Jazz & Blues Festival, the Philadelphia Folk Festival and RiverBlues Festival, and more, along with hundreds of club gigs. They released two albums on Flying Fish Records, including the W. C. Handy-nominated Harlem Blues (1991) and Mother Mojo (1993). Later releases include Living on the River (1996) and, on the Modern Blues Harmonica label, Word on the Street: Harlem Recordings, 1989 (2008). In 1996 Satan and Adam were the cover story in Living Blues magazine; Gussow was, according to editor David Nelson, "the first white blues musician to be so prominently spotlighted in the magazine's 26-year history." Gussow was one of the first amplified blues harp players, in the late 1980s to make overblows a key element of his stylistic approach, adapting Howard Levy's innovations in a way that
