bluesman Adam Gussow to perform and sign his new book

RiverRun Bookstore will host a book signing and concert by memoirist and blues musician Adam Gussow this Saturday, June 9th.  “He’s going to perform and he’s going to hawk his book—hopefully outside if the weather’s nice,” said RiverRun owner Tom Holbrook. “It’s going to be great. (It) seems like he’s got a really interesting history.”
And indeed he does. 

Gussow is currently an assistant professor of English and southern studies at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, with a focus on blues literature. It’s a very specialized field, but if anyone is qualified for it, Gussow is. Growing up in the suburbs of New York City, he says his interest in the blues started after he saw B.B. King in Central Park. As for earning a place in the blues scene, Gussow credits other players more than himself. “You’re a suburban kid just hearing blues in records, you gotta get lucky,” he said in a recent interview with The Wire. “I ran into Sterling Magee in Harlem and we played together on the streets for three years.” Gussow practiced by himself and at the weekly jam sessions that were still popular in New York at the time, working his way through the musical hierarchy. 

Gussow and Magee joined forces to form the music duo Satan and Adam and played the blues in New York for 12 years. Gussow now has only good things to say about his longtime musical partner. “When I met him he was playing blues guitar. Before the nickname ‘Mr. Satan,’ he was known as ‘Five-Fingers Magee,’ ’cause he could play so fast,” Gussow said. “Then he recreated himself as a one-man band, and, as he evolved his one-man band sound, I was there along with him. He’s the greatest one-man blues band that America has ever produced.”

Lately, Gussow has been doing more writing than performing. He has written three memoirs to date, with the current book signing tour culminating his third collection of stories, “Journeyman’s Road”.

“The heart of the book is a rewritten series of columns for Blues Access, a blues magazine that I call the number three blues magazine in America. It’s also got some other chapters from the Satan and Adam story,” Gussow said. “But mostly it’s about the New York blues scene as a whole. It comes at the stuff that I’ve been doing as a college professor, teaching blues literature.”

Gussow said his new book attempts to dispel some of the preconceived notions he has encountered concerning race and the blues genre. “I think it’s important to tell a series of stories that complicate the question,” Gussow said. “When people say, ‘Blues is black music,’ I think they’re wrong. Then when they say ‘Black or white doesn’t matter, it’s all about the blues,’ that’s wrong too. Blues is a world music.” 

Responses to Gussow’s new instructional videos on YouTube support the notion of blues as world music. In response to “amateurs uploading themselves, and peers having a badass attitude,” Gussow decided to record his own harmonica lessons and post them online. “I’ve decided to pour out a whole lot of teachings. Now I’m sharing, and I have a lot of relationships with people who love the instrument,” he said. “It was interesting though, ’cause the response came more from outside the country than inside.” 

To catch Gussow in action this Saturday, guests should be at the bookstore on Congress Street a little before 2 p.m. But if you do happen to be late, Gussow promised to play later that day during Portsmouth’s Market Square Day celebration.