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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
early Satan & Adam track
early Satan & Adam track
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kudzurunner
4570 posts
Feb 28, 2014
4:18 PM
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Some people here purchased BACK IN THE GAME and therefore know the track "Listen to the Music," but some of you surely don't. I rarely upload our recorded tracks to YouTube--I don't like giving away music I'm trying to sell elsewhere--but I made an exception here, and happily.
I'm not sure why we didn't include this track on our debut release, HARLEM BLUES, since it is probably the highest-energy track we ever recorded. I believe the producer and I thought that with "I Want You" and "C. C. Rider" already on the album, another over-the-top cut wasn't needed. The track ended up going unreleased for 20 more years, until BOTG.
I'm sharing here just to remind harp players of how singular a talent Sterling Magee was back then. Playing with him was like opening the door to a blast furnace, or clinging to the neck of a saddle-less thoroughbred as he careens through the woods. I could count on the groove being there, in spades, and we evolved a reasonably solid working sense of how the songs were structured, but the possibility of falling off, big-time, was always right there. As you'll hear if you stick with this track to the bitter end, I hit a clam right near the end--not a big one, just a note that everybody here will recognize AS a clam.
That one note may be the reason we didn't release this track for so many years. But if I had only one track to remember Sterling by, this would be it. The drumming, guitar playing, and singing: all crazy, and crazy-good. Once he gets rolling on those vocals, he becomes the missing link between blues and rap. This was the superman I stood next to for so many afternoons, out on the street, inwardly and sometimes outwardly shaking my head at the firestorms he was throwing off. I still don't know how he did it. The percussion alone, all foot-driven, sounds impossible to me now. This guy is un-copyable in the extreme. A great gig. It shaped most of what I do these days, in one way or another.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Feb 28, 2014 4:20 PM
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DukeBerryman
197 posts
Feb 28, 2014
4:27 PM
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This is wild! Like a combo of Richie Havens and Sly & Family Stone. Have no idea how you were able to keep up, Adam.
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Jim Rumbaugh
956 posts
Feb 28, 2014
5:36 PM
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It was clam free by my standards.
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theharmonicaclub.com (of Huntington, WV)
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laurent2015
615 posts
Feb 28, 2014
6:51 PM
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A gem!
But 5 or 5.30 minutes would have been enough to be satisfied, there's a "taste" of just little too much.
Last note? Oh yes, heard it somewhere before, but don't remember really where.
Especially for the voice, and not for the music, nor for harp playing I stumbled over this:
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1847
1525 posts
Feb 28, 2014
7:41 PM
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casual observation
you have a one man band...... with two people
you have a all time top ten list with eleven people
i am starting to see a pattern
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i get a lot of request when i play my harmonica
"but i play it anyway"
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Mirco
124 posts
Feb 28, 2014
9:05 PM
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What is a "claim"?
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easyreeder
446 posts
Feb 28, 2014
11:40 PM
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That was shmokin'!
@ Micro: A "claim" is a clam with an eye where it shouldn't be. ;-)
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wolfkristiansen
264 posts
Mar 01, 2014
4:21 AM
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I came, I listened, I loved. This is great, rhythmic music. Blues-funk, funk-blues, whatever you want to call it-- good stuff! The vocals and drumming inspired the harp, and vice versa.
I shall probably regret saying this, but will equally regret not saying it: Adam, you would not have played as brilliantly, or as funkily, had you been backing a white vocalist, because he would not have brought this level of funk to the occasion.
Funk is not the holy grail in music, but I love it. Thanks for sharing this song with us.
Cheers,
wolf kristiansen
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kudzurunner
4571 posts
Mar 01, 2014
5:05 AM
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@Mirco: a clam is a bad note that sticks out and says "I'm a bad note and this idiot just played me."
@laurent: On the matter of length--too long, or not too long--I'll tell you that I often got angry with Sterling, at least internally, over this particular issue. I often felt that he played songs too long, sometimes way too long, beating them into the ground. But at a certain point I began questioning my own judgments about why music should be a certain way. And I had an ephiphany of sorts. I realized that he had come from the church, where the point was to catch or create a certain feeling WITH music and then keep it going for a long time, giving an entire congregation a chance to be reborn. In the studio, when properly coached, Sterling was amazingly adaptable. Although we never, ever used lead sheets, much less a click track (!!), he could play "shorter" rather than longer when needed. But his natural tendency was to play long, and it's because he grew up in the black southern church and was in fact a piano and organ player before he was a guitar player. Once I had that realization about where his aesthetics were sourced, I stopped making the sort of judgment that you venture. I understood that "long," "too long," was, from his perspective, exactly right, and I let things flow on
Here's the other thing: If you listen to this track with an ear purely on the development of the lyrics, you might decide that the song is exactly the right length.
I remember when we recorded "Mother Mojo" in 1993. He played for thirteen and a half minutes. That was the length of the unedited studio track. I remember hanging with him to the bitter end, full energy the whole way, making no attempt to catch his eye and pull the plug. I'd learned by that point not to try and hold back the surging waters of his creativity. But later, in the studio, Rachel Faro and I trimmed it to six and a half minutes. I've always wondered what happened to that unedited track.
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Goldbrick
319 posts
Mar 01, 2014
8:05 AM
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Just beautiful-sweet and dirty at the same time.
I guess part of it is I am such a fan ( and participant ) in outsider art.
About the length- when u busk you gotta put the energy out there-thats what stops people in the street and gets them dancing. This jam made me pick up the drum stix to groove along
I busk every week and a bone of contention with my partner is the groove versus the finished song.
I am a groove guy and he is a pro song writer so the two sevens clash every now and then but between the two of us the balance is usually pretty good.
Groove on Mr Satan-uh huh-perfect ending
Last Edited by Goldbrick on Mar 01, 2014 8:08 AM
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laurent2015
616 posts
Mar 01, 2014
9:01 AM
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"I'm a bad note and this idiot just played me."
Ha ha! That kind of humor I like!!!!
Like the blonde woman who sees a banana peel on the ground: "shit, I'll again slip over it!"
Thanks for your deeply-thought explanation about the length; the understanding of the lyrics- sometimes not easy for me- was actually the only thing that made me hesitate weighing in with my remark.
Satan is a righteous-minded person, a pure.
Last Edited by laurent2015 on Mar 01, 2014 10:42 AM
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Mirco
125 posts
Mar 01, 2014
9:20 AM
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Thanks for answering my question, kudzu. If I had to guess, I would have said a claim is some player trying to overplay and assert themselves in the song, "claiming" it.
Thank you for clearing it up. There should somewhere be a glossary of terms for new players.
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Mirco
126 posts
Mar 01, 2014
9:24 AM
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@Goldbrick:
Every time you finish a song in a busking setting, it gives the listeners a clear break. It's a clear chance for them to move on. I think that by playing long, you can keep the audience around.
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