Who is that red-haired guy with glasses in the photo above?
That is me in the fall of 1986 at the age of 28, about two weeks after I’d first come down to Harlem and started sitting in with Mr. Satan and Professor Sixmillion. Mr. Satan’s name, I soon found out, was Sterling Magee. Born in Mississippi, he was an R&B legend who had played with King Curtis, Etta James, and many other big names, then gone off the deep end and come out the back end of it as a sort of street-prophet. He was just beginning his own one-man-band odyssey. The washtub-bass player was Bobby Bennett. I was the newbie. Within five years after this picture was taken, Sterling and I had big-time management (Talent Consultants International in midtown), a hit CD (HARLEM BLUES on Rounder Records); we had played the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, we’d opened for Buddy Guy in Central Park and toured the UK with Bo Diddley, and I had the right to call myself a touring pro. I lived that life from 1991 through 1998. I’ve written a book about all this called Mister Satan’s Appre
That is me in the fall of 1986 at the age of 28, about two weeks after I’d first come down to Harlem and started sitting in with Mr. Satan and Professor Sixmillion. Mr. Satan’s name, I soon found out, was Sterling Magee. Born in Mississippi, he was an R&B legend who had played with King Curtis, Etta James, and many other big names, then gone off the deep end and come out the back end of it as a sort of street-prophet. He was just beginning his own one-man-band odyssey. The washtub-bass player was Bobby Bennett. I was the newbie. Within five years after this picture was taken, Sterling and I had big-time management (Talent Consultants International in midtown), a hit CD (Harlem Blues on Rounder Records); we had played the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, we’d opened for Buddy Guy in Central Park and toured the UK with Bo Diddley, and I had the right to call myself a touring pro. I lived that life from 1991 through 1998.
