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Magic Slim (born Morris Holt, 7 August 1937 Grenada, Mississippi) is a blues singer and guitarist. Magic Slim was forced to give up playing the piano when he lost his little finger in a cotton gin mishap. He moved first to nearby Grenada. He first came to Chicago in 1955 with his friend and mentor Magic Sam. The elder Magic (Sam) let the younger Magic (Slim) play bass with his band, and gave him his nickname.
At first Slim was not rated very highly by his peers. He returned to Mississippi to work and got his younger brother Nick interested in playing bass. By 1965 he was back in Chicago and in 1970 Nick joined him in his group, the Teardrops. They played in the dim, smoke-filled juke joints popular in Chicago in the 1970s on band stands barely large enough to hold the band.
Slim's recording career began with the 1966, with the song "Scufflin'", followed by a number of singles into the mid 1970s. He recorded his first album in 1977, Born Under A Bad Sign, for the French MCM label. During the 1980s, Slim released titles on Alligator, Rooster Blues and Wolf Records and won his first W. C. Handy Award. In 1980 he recorded his cover version of Mustang Sally.
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Magic Slim • Magic Slim Discography |
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Blind Willie McTell
blues pioneer, Thomson -
(May 5, 1898 (sometimes reported as 1901 or 1903) – August 19, 1959) was an influential American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He was a twelve-string finger picking Piedmont blues guitarist, and recorded 149 songs between 1927 and 1956. Born William Samuel McTier (or McTear) in Thomson, Georgia, blind in one eye, McTell had lost his remaining vision by late childhood, but became an adept reader of Braille. He showed proficiency in music from an early age and learned to play the six-string guitar as soon as he could. His father left the family when McTell was still young, and when his mother died in the 1920s, he left his hometown and became a wandering busker. He began his recording career in 1927 for Victor Records in Atlanta. .
In the years before World War II, he traveled and performed widely, recording for a number of labels under a different name for each one, including Blind Willie McTell (Victor and Decca), Blind Sammie (Columbia), Georgia Bill (Okeh), Hot Shot Willie (Victor), Blind Willie (Vocalion),
Red Hot Willie Glaze (Bluebird), Barrelhouse Sammie (Atlantic) and Pig & Whistle
Red (Regal). His style was singular: a form of country blues, bridging the gap
between the raw blues of the early part of the 20th Century and the more refined
East Coast "Piedmont" sound.
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Blind Willie McTell • Blind Willie McTell Discography
• Blind Willie McTell Books
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