Magic Tyding

The Avant Garde was a coffeehouse in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that played host to a variety of rock, blues, and folk performers in the '60s, and Windy City guitar wizard Magic Sam (aka Sam Maghett) rolled in to play a few sets in June 1968. A local kid with an interest in recording named Jim Charne showed up with a reel-to-reel machine and a couple of microphones, and he captured Magic Sam's show on tape; 45 years later, those tapes have finally been made public on the album Live at the Avant Garde, and given the relatively small amount of material that's surfaced on the late blues legend (who succumbed to a heart attack when he was just 32), this set is a very welcome find. Live at the Avant Garde has a decidedly different feel than Magic Sam Live, which preserved radio broadcasts from 1963 and 1964 and a 1969 appearance at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival; while those recordings blazed with intensity, this captures Magic Sam and his band in more laid-back form, playing a small, booze-free venue rather than a rowdy bar or a festival audience in the thousands.

The ten 1963-1964 sides that make up the majority of this set have sort of fallen through the historical cracks over the years. They didn't deserve such shoddy treatment - Sam didn't record "Back Door Friend" or "Hi-Heel Sneakers" anywhere else, and he's in top shape throughout The Late Great Magic Sam. Two live tracks at the set's close from 1969 don't add much to the overall package.

The Wolf record label has served Magic Slim & the Teardrops well, producing eight CDs between 1986 and 1992, when the band was emerging from Chicago to tour the world. They are deserving on many fronts as the self-proclaimed "best blues band on the planet," and these tracks, marketed as "Magic Slim's best 14 songs," certainly go a long way to proving that assertion. Of the album's 14 tracks, 11 come from the studio and three are previously unissued live concert sessions in Austria, all with Slim, the remarkable second guitarist John Primer, brother and bassist Nick Holt, and different drummers. Only one of the tunes was written by Slim, the others taken from classic blues songwriters and heroes of the lead vocalist and guitarist, whose distinctive sound comes shining through from start to finish. Albert King for sure is a favorite of Magic Slim…

Magic Slim (Morris Holt) is best known for carrying on the Windy City tradition of back-to-the-basics blues bar bands, blasting out a quintessential sound that the music's legends would appreciate and that its newest fans can still enjoy. With Blue Magic, Holt and the Teardrops take a few steps outside their home turf for a New York City session with several surprises. Although most of the material is Holt's, the new album features several conspicuous exceptions, such as an intriguing attempt at country legend Merle Haggard's "I Started Loving You Again." But it's producer Popa Chubby's updating of the Bobby Rush gem "Chickenheads," popularized by Holt's fellow Chicago stalwart Mighty Joe Young, that is the most adventurous experiment. With the band sitting out, Popa Chubby takes over all the rhythm duties and adds sampled loops to the mix.