Plays Marine Band

ADAM GUSSOW comes at the contemporary blues world with a singular combination of talents–an ability to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.  An award-winning scholar and memoirist, Associate Professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, Gussow spent more than a decade working the streets of Harlem and the international club and festival circuit with Mississippi-born bluesman Sterling Magee as the duo Satan and Adam.  He currently performs with both Satan and Adam (recently reformed as a trio) and the guitarist Charlie Hilbert.

Along with Carlos del Junco, Gussow was one of the first amplified blues players, in the late 1980s, to make overblows a key element of his stylistic approach, adapting Howard Levy’s innovations in a way that helped usher in a new generation of overblow masters such as Jason Ricci and Chris Michalek.  According to a reviewer for American Harmonica Newsletter, Gussow's harmonica playing is characterized by "technical mastery and innovative brilliance that comes along but once in a generation."  When Satan and Adam were honored with a cover story in Living Blues magazine in 1996, Gussow was, according to editor David Nelson, "the first white blues musician to be so prominently spotlighted in the magazine's 26-year history."

Raised in suburban Congers, NY, educated at Princeton and Columbia, Gussow has an unusual pedigree for a blues performer.  In his memoir, Mister Satan's Apprentice (1998), he credits his career to the mentorship of two older African American bluesmen: Nat Riddles, a Bronx-born harmonicist who had worked with Odetta, Larry Johnson, and others; and Magee, a guitarist-percussionist with whom Gussow teamed up after a chance afternoon jam session on Harlem's 125th Street. As Satan and Adam, Magee and Gussow have released four albums: Harlem Blues (1991), which was nominated for a W. C. Handy Award as "Traditional Blues Album of the Year"; Mother Mojo (1993); Living on the River (1996); and Word On the Street:  Harlem Recordings, 1989 (2008). A brief extract of Magee and Gussow performing on 125th Street was included in U2's Rattle & Hum documentary (1988).  Together, Satan and Adam have, as journalist Richard Skelley noted, "redefined and shaped the sound of modern blues so much that 'I Want You' from their Harlem Blues debut was included on a Rhino Records release, Modern Blues of the 1990s."

Gussow's other musical credits include a stint with the bus-and-truck tour of Big River; several decades as a blues harmonica instructor at The Guitar Study Center in New York and in private practice; and an eight-time coach at Jon Gindick's blues harmonica jam camps.  He's also headlined the Mundharmonika-Live festival in Klingenthal, Germany (2008) and has taught at Blues Week in the UK (2008).  Long an advocate for the New York City blues scene, Gussow has jammed and gigged with many of the city's national touring acts, including Shemekia Copeland, The Holmes Brothers, Michael Hill and the Blues Mob, Bill Perry, and Popa Chubby.

Most recently, Gussow's ongoing series of instructional videos posted at YouTube—more than 175 to date--has drawn international acclaim.  His website, ModernBluesHarmonica.com, offers players of all levels a series of skill-graded video tutorials and tabs for immediate download, as well as the “Dirty South Blues Harp Forum,” one of the most popular harmonica chat-spaces on the web.

Website: www.modernbluesharmonica.com