PinnedThe Test: Your Trayvon, My Trayvon, Our Trayvonby Adam Gussow Life is not about good vs. evil, but about good and evil eaten off the same plate. — Kalamu ya Salaam, What is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self I. As the father of a biracial teenager in Mississippi, I want to be able to give our…Trayvon Martin41 min readTrayvon Martin41 min read
PinnedI’m Calling You Son: The Early Days of a Harlem Blues Partnershipin memory of Sterling Magee (May 20, 1936 — September 6, 2020) In 1991, when my blues duo Satan and Adam first began to break into the national market with the release of our debut album, Harlem Blues, journalists and DJs were curious about how we’d met. What they were…Blues Music20 min readBlues Music20 min read
Jan 21, 2022Blues Heard Around the World: A Micro-Memoir1974: A 16-year old high school senior in downstate Congers, NY, I buy my first harmonica, a Hohner Marine Band made in Germany, and a cheap electric guitar. In hot pursuit of “Whammer Jammer,” a harmonica instrumental by Magic Dick of the J. Geils Band that is popular with my…Blues Music22 min readBlues Music22 min read
Mar 26, 2021Don’t Start Me Talkin’: Muddy Waters’s Daughter, the Good Ol’ Boy, and the Blues Foundation“The blues world — the contemporary American mainstream scene and its discussants — has a race problem.” Several years ago, when I wrote that opening sentence for my new book, Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of the Music (2020), I’d already seen signs of serious discontent…Kenny Wayne Shepherd7 min readKenny Wayne Shepherd7 min read
Oct 17, 2020Satan & Adam Chronicles: The Ballad of the Blue Bomber (Part One)Between March 2002, when I purchased the Honda from Max Tarnishovsky in New York City, and May 2013, when I sold it to Stacey Boone in Oxford, Mississippi with 372,000 miles on the odometer, I racked up a total of 210,000 miles. …Satan And Adam17 min readSatan And Adam17 min read
Sep 20, 2020Keep On With It: A Young White Musician’s Harlem DebutHarlem broke open for me in the spring of 1986. This was six months before I first jammed with Mr. Satan on 125th Street, but it’s the key to that whole period. Without John Spruill, Tippy Larkin, Jimmy “Preacher” Robins, Phil Young, and the other musicians who welcomed me, without…17 min read17 min read
Sep 20, 2020The Donald Trump Archives — Prophetic Musing #1 [12/22/15]The question on the minds of everybody who follows politics right now is: Why would Donald Trump stoop so low as to insult Hillary Clinton for her bathroom breaks during a recent Democratic Presidential debate? Isn’t that so far beyond the pale that it’s just….un-Presidential in the extreme? …4 min read4 min read
Sep 18, 2020The Straw that Broke: Michael Brown, Darren Wilson, and Two True Tales Told by Obama’s DOJ.When an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown was shot dead on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri by a white cop, Darren Wilson, on August 9, 2014, and when angry protests sponsored by Black Lives Matter poured onto the streets and rocked Ferguson for a full week, drawing live feeds…Racial Justice34 min readRacial Justice34 min read
Sep 16, 2020Trump or Biden? An Appeal to the Genuinely UndecidedDear Fellow Citizen: You’re not supposed to exist, but you do. Politically, you might locate yourself somewhere on the line that runs from center-right to flag-waving conservative. You may be evangelical, or you may be a crusty atheist. I wouldn’t be surprised if you described yourself as an independent. (I…Donald Trump8 min readDonald Trump8 min read
![The Donald Trump Archives — Prophetic Musing #1 [12/22/15]](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fill:224:224/1*tPHyOjh_AoutWYZKjliZNA.jpeg)
![The Donald Trump Archives — Prophetic Musing #1 [12/22/15]](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fill:160:112/1*tPHyOjh_AoutWYZKjliZNA.jpeg)
