A professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Adam Gussow is also a professional blues harmonica player and teacher. He is best known for his long partnership with Sterling "Mr. Satan" Magee, a Mississippi-born bluesman with whom Gussow began busking on the sidewalks of Harlem in 1986. As Satan and Adam, the duo released six CDs--including, most recently, Throw Down! (2015)--and worked a wide range of festivals and clubs, including the International BuskerFest in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has also recorded several solo albums, including Kick and Stomp (2010), and a pair of albums with his Blues Doctors duo, Roosters Happy Hour (2013) and Same Old Blues Again (2018).
Gussow's books include Mister Satan's Apprentice: A Blues Memoir (1998), Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition (2002), Journeyman's Road: Modern Blues Lives from Faulkner's Mississippi to Post-9/11 New York (2007), Busker's Holiday (2015), Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition (2017), which won the Reader's Choice award from Living Blues magazine, and Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of the Music (2020). His newest book, My Family and I: A Mississippi Memoir, will be published by Post Hill Press in 2025.
In 2018, the documentary "Satan & Adam," an inspiring exploration of Magee's and Gussow's partnership, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and spent the next year winning awards at dozens of festivals around the world before moving to Netflix. "Satan & Adam" is currently streamable on Amazon and available as a DVD.
Gussow's latest musical endeavor is a trio, Sir Rod & The Blues Doctors, featuring frontman Rod Patterson. A singer/dancer and motivational speaker, Patterson is the nephew of Sterling Magee. The trio's albums include "Come Together" (2020) and "Keeping It In the Family" (2022).
For the record: Gussow was born in New York City on April 3, 1958, but he grew up in the downstate hamlet of Congers, NY.
