Magic Slim, Blues Singer and Guitarist Who Blazed Onstage, Dies at 75
By PETER KEEPNEWS
Published: February 22, 2013
Magic Slim, a singer and guitarist acclaimed as a keeper of the flame of electrified Chicago blues, died on Thursday in Philadelphia. He was 75.
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Magic Slim leading his band, the Teardrops, in 2007.
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His death was announced by Blind Pig Records, the label for which he had recorded since 1990. No cause was given, but he was known to have been dealing with a variety of health problems and had been hospitalized a few weeks ago while on tour.
Magic Slim was one of the last in a long line of musicians who grew up in the Deep South and then moved to Chicago, where the blues evolved in the years after World War II from a folk music played primarily on acoustic guitars to a loud, raucous, distinctly urban music, played on electric instruments by the likes of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, that was a precursor of rock ’n’ roll.
He was known not just for his musicianship but also forthe intensity of his live performances. The music magazine No Depression once described his music as “the in-your-face variety” of blues, noting, “Magic Slim doesn’t just play the blues, he body slams his audiences with a vicious guitar attack that pins them to the floor.”
His mentor was Sam Maghett, known professionally asMagic Sam, a Chicago blues star in the 1960s, whom he knew as a child in Mississippi and who offered early encouragement and instruction. “Magic Sam told me don’t try to play like him, don’t try to play like nobody,” he once recalled. “Get a sound of your own.”
It was also Magic Sam who gave a teenager named Morris Holt the stage name Magic Slim when the two performed together in Chicago in the 1950s.
Morris Holt was born in Torrance, Miss., on Aug. 7, 1937, and began playing the guitar as a child. He made his first trip to Chicago in 1955 but was unable to gain a foothold in the competitive local blues scene and returned to Mississippi, where he spent the next several years honing his craft.
Back in Chicago in the 1960s, he began developing a following and formed a group, Magic Slim and the Teardrops, that eventually became the house band at a local nightclub, Florence’s. They went on to tour and record regularly, headlining blues festivals all over the world, and to win numerous awards, including the 2003 Blues Music Award as band of the year.
Magic Slim lived in Lincoln, Neb. Survivors include his wife, Ann; seven children; and four stepchildren. His son Shawn had recently joined his band.
Magic Slim and the Teardrops’ last album, “Bad Boy,” was released in 2012.
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Blues guitarist Magic Slim dies in Pa. at age 75
Chicago-style blues guitarist Magic Slim dies in Philadelphia at 75; got sick while on tour.
Magic Slim, a younger contemporary of blues greats Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf who helped shape the sound of Chicago’s electric blues, died Thursday. He was 75.
He died shortly after midnight Thursday at a Philadelphia hospital, said his manager, Marty Salzman. The musician had health problems that worsened while he was on tour several weeks ago in Pennsylvania, Salzman said.
Magic Slim and his backing band, the Teardrops, performed a no-holds-barred brand of Chicago-style electric blues, led by his singing and guitar playing, and were regulars on the music festival circuit.
Slim’s given name was Morris Holt. The Mississippi native established himself in Chicago’s thriving blues community in the 1960s, but more recently lived in Lincoln, Neb.
Holt’s story was one of persistence. Like many bluesmen from rural Mississippi, he left a life that revolved around cotton fields and moved to Chicago in 1955. But competition on the South Side was fierce in those days, and he moved back home after failing to establish himself.
Playing plantation parties and small gigs, he honed his skills to a fine edge and enlisted his brothers, Nick and Douglas, as his backing band. They returned to Chicago, where they formed the Teardrops and refused to be dismissed.
Younger than many of the renowned bluesmen in Chicago, he maintained a career well into the 21st century. Holt and the Teardrops won blues band of the year at the 2003 Blues Music Award, and he released a record last year.
“If you were going to take somebody who’d never seen blues to one of their shows, it would be like putting them in a time machine and putting them in 1962,” Salzman said. “No frills, no rock ‘n’ roll. It was just straight-ahead, real-deal blues.”
Holt came by the sound authentically. Born in Torrance, Miss., in 1937, he grew up in the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. His first love was piano, but he lost the little finger on his right hand to a cotton gin and switched to guitar. Like many of his contemporaries, he started out on a one-string instrument he made by nailing a piece of wire stolen from a broom to the wall.
He moved to Grenada at age 11 and met Magic Sam, an older guitarist and influential blues figure. Sam taught him about the instrument and gave him his first job as a bass player years later when he first moved to Chicago.
He didn’t make his first recordings until 1966. He released his first album, “Born Under A Bad Sign,” on a French label in 1977 and put out an album of original songs and covers, “Bad Boy,” last year.
Salzman said that bleeding ulcers sent Holt to the hospital, but that he also suffered from heart, lung and kidney ailments.
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