Tribeca ’18: Satan & Adam

For a musical art form to survive, it must be performed live, for real people, so it can actively engage with the world around it. Starting in 1986, the veteran bluesman known as Satan (born Sterling Magee, not a fan of organized religion) and Adam Gussow very definitely kept the blues alive. Playing on the streets of Harlem undeniably strengthened their attacks and gave them ample opportunity to pick-up on all the life going on around them. Satan’s vocals started to incorporate rap elements, while Gussow developed jazz saxophone influences on his mouth harp. V. Scott Balcerek chronicles the duo’s life and times in his twenty-three-years-in-the-making documentary, Satan & Adam, which screens during the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival.

It is probably the second most famous creation story in blues, after Robert Johnson’s meeting at the crossroads. On that fateful day, Gussow asked to sit in with Satan, who was already quite recognizable for playing solo electric guitar, while accompanying himself on drums with the foot pedals. Satan was curious enough to agree and was pleasantly surprised when the kid managed to keep up. They started playing together so often, they became a regular act: Satan & Adam.

Initially, they busked on the streets, but they started to get respectable, recording an album, holding down a regular weekly bar gig, and signing with a manager. Frankly, their story was so attractive, it was probably inevitable they would get at least fifteen minutes of fame. They were after all the first interracial performers to appear together on the cover of Living Blues magazine. However, the music was so good and so honest, they maintained a loyal (and rather sizable, by blues standards) fan base, even after the music media moved on.

Balcerek managed to capture a fair amount of those glory days and he was also there for the quiet years of separation. Balcerek’s treatment is somewhat vague on the particulars, but Satan had something like a nervous breakdown and moved to Florida, where his Evangelical family forced him to temporarily give up the blues and the “Satan” moniker. In his nonfiction collection, Journeyman’s Road, Gussow more-or-less suggests he had to learn to let Satan go and get on with his own life.

As poignant as those sentiments were, it turned out the music wasn’t ready to let them go. In fact, S&A has the best third act of any music doc since Searching for Sugar Man. It was maybe more like a fourth or fifth act, but for their fans, it was utterly shocking good news, sort of like Harper Lee publishing Go Set a Watchman, but more satisfying.

It is that combination of pain and joy that makes Balcerek’s film such an immediately indispensable document of modern Americana. This film is blues to the bone, including the clear-eyed manner it addresses issues of race. As is often the case with jazz, the music we call the blues is frequently intertwined with racially charged questions of authenticity. Yet, without white (and increasingly foreign) audiences, there would be little market for the music. Of course, the first listeners Satan & Adam won over were “pre-gentrification” Harlem residents, who just responded to what they heard. If you respect the music, you also have to respect young players keeping it alive, regardless what they look like. (That is why it is so odd to see Al Sharpton turn up as a talking head in the film, because probably nobody else who has done more to foster racial tension in New York, through his involvement in the Tawana Brawley hoax and the Crown Heights Riots.)

Regardless, it is impossible to miss the appealing symbolism of Satan & Adam for music journalists and fans alike. Fortunately, Balcerek delves even deeper, really getting at the essence of friendship and music. The blues is rooted in the African American Delta experience, but it speaks to us on a universally accessible level. Balcerek presents Satan and Gussow in a way that we can similarly relate to. Satan & Adam is a terrific film that will move your feet and your soul. Very highly recommended, it screens this Wednesday (4/25) and Saturday (4/28), as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

IFP: Satan and Adam

In the October issue of Downbeat, James Blood Ulmer rejects the “Devil Blues” vision of the music, stating: “when I made this record I was trying to make sure that I had the stories I was talking about be pleasing to God. My songs aren’t about the devil at all.” The blues artist born Sterling Magee, who performed under the moniker Mr. Satan obviously tacked a different course. Together with harpist Adam Gussow they formed the biblical duo Satan and Adam, whose careers will be documented in an eponymously titled documentary.

Satan/Magee in his prime was an elemental force who dominated the duo with his sheer energy. However, recent years have been troubled, leaving his continued musical career in question. These episodes have been detailed in articles collected in Gussow’s latest book, Journeyman Blues (reviewed here), following up his hit memoir of life with his fearsome mentor, Mister Satan’s Apprentice. The third act of the film remains to be shot (an extended trailer was screened at IFP, a shorter one can be found here), but Satan and Adam presents great dramatic potential.

Satan and Adam are actually one of the better known blues combos, as a result of Gussow’s books, performances at international festivals, and their original chance breakthrough appearing in U2’s Rattle and Hum, in their full street performance glory. Satan and Adam the documentary ought to find an audience, particularly if it includes a triumphant second coming of Satan (Magee).

Journeyman’s Road

Journeyman’s Road: Modern Blues Lives from Faulkner’s Mississippi to Post 9/11 New York
By Adam Gussow
University of Tennessee
1-57233-569-6

It has sometimes been said that as bad as the commercial outlook for jazz looks, it is positively robust when compared to that for the contemporary blues scene. As the apprentice to a senior African-American blues musician, music writer, and scholar of Southern literature, Adam Gussow is well positioned to evaluate the sources for both optimism and pessimism in Journeyman’s Road, his new collection surveying the contemporary blues scene.

Gussow is best known as a musician for his work as the junior partner in the duo of Satan and Adam and best known as a writer for his memoir of his time with Mister Satan (or Sterling Magee), Mister Satan’s Apprentice. In fact, the most interesting selections of Journeyman, both emotionally and commercially, pick up the story of their partnership after publication of Apprentice. In “Life with Mister Satan,” Gussow describes his mentor’s primal force:

“Even with perfect intonation Mister Satan is an earful; with six wimpy rock strings melting under his onslaught, not to mention cymbals and tambourines, he sounds like a street-rodding TransAm blowing itself out, losing muffler, tailpipe, and manifold in a screeching clatter of metal rubbed raw against macadam. Something terrifying and impressive is careening past you with great conviction, but it’s hard to say precisely what. He remains a miracle, which is why I do this.” (p. 12)

Sadly, the Satan and Adam collaboration would largely be put on hold due to what is eventually referred to as Mister Satan’s breakdown. Presumably, under the influence of evangelical family members he gave up the Satan moniker and for a while, the blues that went with it. At various points in the collection Gussow’s articles provide intermittent updates on Magee as he is now known, that are heartbreaking, but at times hopeful.

Journeyman illustrates the question of identity that reoccurs throughout blues history. Many blues artists’ original names are remain unknown or subject of conjecture. Rice Miller, if that was actually his name, could become the second Sonny Boy Williamson, even as the original was still actively performing. It seems toward the end of Journeyman that the individual now known as Magee is not the same musician as when he was known as Mister Satan. Of course, age and life had intervened.

Blues is not the only music heard in Journeyman. Gussow also covers a Great Night in Harlem, courtesy of the Jazz Foundation of America. The executive director of JFA, Wendy Oxenhorn is a fellow blues harpist who clearly had made quite an impression on Gussow:

“Perfect fit between Wendy and job. She has endless compassion for their [musicians in need] sad tales and bottomless respect for their creative artistry. The musicians adore here.” (p. 85)

Wendy is one of my heroes too, and Gussow gives an entertaining account of the first annual Foundation fundraising concert at the Apollo Theater. Gussow is at his best when writing of his mentor and his friends like Wendy and other bluesman who deserve a greater share of limelight, like Frankie Paris (a regular at Arthur’s Tavern) and Irving Louis Lattin, who was the voice of Viagra during the first year of its commercial campaign. There is probably a little too much of Gussow’s analysis of blues in the work of William Faulkner, but to his credit, “Plaintive Reinteration and Meaningless Strains: Faulkner’s Blues Understandings” is fairly readable for a conference paper.

Ultimately, it is the continuing chronicle of Satan and Adam that will draw readers to Journeyman. When discussing those who live the blues life, Gussow writes with sensitivity and experience. Despite an occasional academic or New Age excess here and there, Journeyman often makes for compelling reading and ultimately gives one hope for the future of the music.

(Note: Satan and Adam will be the subject of an upcoming documentary mentioned in Journeyman. See the trailer here.)