One of the most profound and beautiful things about the blues is its acknowledgment of the synergy between opposites. At its best, the blues celebrates and understands that pain and joy, violent aggression and expressions of love (especially sexual love), and hopelessness and faith complement one another as elements of a single whole. An artist or an art form committed to exploring one of these polarities will inevitably end up contemplating its opposite as well.
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Primer was second guitarist in Muddy Waters’s last working band, and before that he worked in the house band at Theresa’s Lounge, under the leadership of the erratic guitar genius Sammy Lawhorn. His years with Lawhorn left him with a deeply intuitive melodic imagination and an exceptionally sensitive approach to tone. His solos are developed with crispness and a sense of musical logic sadly lacking in the work of many other, better-known players. Primer’s voice, imbued with nuances picked up from Waters, is expressive and versatile as well, capable of doing justice to traditional blues standards and soulful pop alike.
With the added musical dimension of Primer and new drummer Michael Scott, Magic Slim’s music has grown into full maturity. Slim has always been a powerful source of raw, unfettered blues passion. A whiff of violence continually lurks at the fringes of his music: his lyrics sing of anger, vengeance, sexual conquest, and betrayal, and he wrenches screaming notes from his guitar with a majestic fury, physically looming over the instrument like a colossus, channeling all the power and energy of his immense 300-pound frame into his music.
Slim refuses to open things up all the way for the first couple of sets. He asserts control first, taunting the audience with glimpses of what’s to come, occasionally firing off a series of riffs that burn into a listener’s ears like lava, then steps back a bit and settles into a medium-tempo groove. Finally, during the third or fourth set, he signals the band and things suddenly get quiet.
The overall effect is the closest thing to an aural orgasm one is likely to experience, and it cuts directly to the savage heart of Magic Slim’s music. Whether he’s shouting out the tale of “Bad Avenue” (“where the men carry shotguns and the children, they got pistols, too”) or jauntily offering up his version of the traditional “Dirty Dozens,” reincarnated here as “Dirty Mother for You” and featuring a riotously obscene retelling of the Creation guaranteed to give pause to both feminists and Christians, Magic Slim’s music shatters barriers and violates taboos. The very room seems assaulted by the force of his music.
