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Magic Sam
West Side Soul
Delmark DE 615

West Side Soul is one of the greatest blues albums of all time! It was chosen by Living Blues magazine as Top Ten Desert Island Blues Disc. Stu Black was the recording engineer for many of Delmark classic 1960s jazz and blues albums. Stu's original 1967 analog mix was the source used for the mastering of this CD. Complete original 1967 notes by Bob Koester and Bill Lindemann enclosed.

1. That's All I Need 3:13
2. I Need You So Bad 4:51
3. Feelin' Good 4:36
4. All Your Love 3:41
5. Don't Want No Woman 3:33
6. Sweet Home Chicago 4:11
7. I Found Me A New Love 4:04
8. Every Night And Every Day 2:18
9. Lookin' Good 3:11
10. My Love Will Never Die 4:08
11. Mama Talk To Your Daughter 2:41
12. I Don't Want No Woman (alternate) 3:32

Magic Sam, vocals, guitar
Mighty Joe Young, guitar
Stockholm Slim, piano
Earnest Johnson, bass
Odie Payne, Jr. drums

On tracks 1,3,8 Mack Thompson replaces Johnson
and Odie Payne III replaces Payne, Jr.
Recorded July 12 and October 25, 1967

Delmark Records, 4121 N. Rockwell,
Chicago, IL 60618
www.delmark.com
CP 2010 Delmark Records

1. That's All I Need 3:13
(Samuel Maghett, Conrad Music/Leric Music, BMI)
2. I Need You So Bad 4:51
(King/Ling, Universal Music Careers, BMI)
3. Feelin' Good 4:36 (Herman Parker, Blues Man Music, BMI)
4. All Your Love 3:41
(Samuel Maghett, Conrad Music/Leric Music, BMI)
5. Don't Want No Woman 3:33
(Don Robey, Songs of Universal Inc., BMI)
6. Sweet Home Chicago 4:11 (Traditional, P.D.)
7. I Found Me A New Love 4:04
(Campbell/Lyons, Conrad Music, BMI)
8. Every Night And Every Day 2:18 (Jimmy McCracklin)
9. Lookin' Good 3:11
(Samuel Maghett, Conrad Music/Leric Music, BMI)
10. My Love Will Never Die 4:08
(Willie Dixon, Arc Music/Hoochie Coochie Music, BMI)
11. Mama Talk To Your Daughter 2:41
(Lenoir/Atkins, Arc Music/Ghana Music, BMI)
12. I Don't Want No Woman 3:32 (alternate)

Other Delmark albums of interest:
Magic Sam, Black Magic (620) with Mighty Joe Young, Eddie Shaw
Live (645) at Alex Club and Ann Arbor with Eddie Shaw, A.C. Reed, Sam Lay
Magic Sam Legacy (651) with Shakey Jake, Eddie Shaw
Give Me Time (654) solo private tapes
Rockin' Wild In Chicago (765) with Eddie Shaw
Sweet Home Chicago (618) with Magic Sam, Luther Allison, Louis Myers
West Side Blues (906) with Magic Sam, Otis Rush, Luther Allison, Jimmy Dawkins
Blues Guitar Greats (697) with Magic Sam, Otis Rush, Luther Allison
This Is The Blues Harmonica, Volume Two (780) with Magic Sam & Shakey Jake, Big Walter, Little Walter
Mighty Joe Young, Blues With A Touch Of Soul (629)
Eddie Shaw & The Wolf Gang, Can't Stop Now! (698) with Detroit Jr.
It Ain't Over, Delmark Celebrates 55 Years of Blues (800, DVD 1800) with Eddie Shaw, Zora Young, Tail Dragger, Jimmy Johnson

Album Production and Supervision: Robert G. Koester
Recorded and mixed by Stu Black, Sound Studios
CD Production, mastering and mix of alternate take: Steve Wagner
Original Cover Design: Z. Jastrzebski
Digipak design: Kate Moss, Moonshine Design
Photo: Jack Bradley





Previous issues in Delmark's ROOTS OF JAZZ series have presented the rural blues of Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas and Georgia; the relatively modern piano style of St. Louisan Roosevelt Sykes, and the contemporary South-Side blues of Junior Wells with Buddy Guy. WEST SIDE SOUL is the LP debut of an artist well-known to the clientele of blues clubs on Chicago's West Side for the past ten or twelve years but whose recordings have only rarely been heard outside the Chicago R&B record market. Our previous album by Junior Wells (Hoodoo Man Blues, Delmark 612) has been exceptionally well received by the new and youthful blues audience and, we feel, presented a difficult standard by which to measure further explorations into the modern blues field. However, we feel this initial album by Magic Sam not only measures up to Hoodoo Man Blues but also goes a step further in bringing our documentation of the contemporary blues scene right up to date. The blues scene now includes the "soul" sound of Memphis and the Gospel-influenced Detroit school of pop-soul, for better or worse. The interaction of these schools of thought is having a profound effect on the development of blues forms and broadening the idiom beyond the traditional 12-bar scheme. But the inclusion of 16 bar material in the repertory of the modern bluesman brings new depth to soul material and artists using such material (Wells, Guy, Sam) still consider themselves bluesmen. Therefore we are not excluding song material from our Roots Of Jazz Series because it is not 12-bar-to do so would have meant exclusion of some outstanding Sleepy John Estes tunes!
We have asked Bill Lindemann, partner of Shakey jake in a blues record firm, to inform you of Magic Sam's background.
-Bob Koester

Samuel Maghett was born February 14, 1937 on a farm in central Mississippi, eight miles east of Granada. By the time he was thirteen, like most other kids his age, he was doing a full day's work, but found time to start learning how to play the guitar by stretching strings tied to nails driven into a wall in a manner similar to Big Joe Williams' primitive one-string guitar (described in the notes of Delmark's Piney Woods Blues (Delmark 602).
The Maghett family got its first taste of big-city life when they moved to Chicago in 1950. Sam decided he never wanted to live again in the South-the relative freedom of city life changed his mind once and for all. When he attended Drake elementary school on Chicago's South Side he often took his guitar with him. His classmates used to tease him about it but one morning Sam played before all the students at assembly, caught the fancy of the girls and "went home with a pocketful of telephone numbers."
A year later, while playing his guitar under a tree in his backyard at 27th and Calumet, Sam attracted the attention of a gambler names Cadillac Jake who happened to be walking by. Jake encouraged Sam and they were to meet again years later when the gambler had himself become a blues-singer and harmonica-player. By that time Sam had already formed his first band with Syl Johnson (most recently noted for his recording of Sock It To Me) and Mack Thompson who still plays with Sam on a lot of jobs. It was Thompson who nicknamed Magic Sam by rhyming his last name.
Even when still a gambler, Shakey Jake "followed Muddy Waters around" and when he again met magic Sam in 1954, encouraged him to sing as well as play. Up to that time Sam was more interested in playing guitar but, after he overcame the usual initial shyness, he was good enough to make it as an R&B-singer in the commercial music world. However, he took great pride in the blues heritage and "decided to stick to the blues." He continued to practice with Shakey Jake and another harp-blower named Blues King and developed his vocal style by singing with a family gospel group, the Morning View Special.
By 1955 Sam was ready to play the blues clubs. One night Jake took him to the 708 Club on East 47th Street where Muddy Waters was playing. Jake persuaded Muddy to let Sam sit in for one set after which the owner of the club hired him to follow Muddy's engagement. In 1957 he made his first recordings for the Cobra label. Sam recalls that Eli Toscano, the label's owner, had a way of sending the sound through some pipes in a back room and back again to get just the right amount of reverberation.
After a hitch in the army Sam again recorded for the Chief label in 1960 and 1961, playing in clubs on the West and Near North sides. His guitar-playing matured and his voice steadily improved in depth as he concentrated in his singing. He later moved to the Club Alex on West Roosevelt Road where he sometimes doubled with the Muddy Waters band. He also broadcast frequently opposite Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf at Sylvio's famous blues club at Lake and Kedzie and doing off-nights occasionally at Mother Blues on Wells Street. His most recent 45s were for Al Benson's Crash label in 1966. More recently he has begun toi appear in concert before student audiences.
Enough work is now available for Sam that he has recently spent a great deal of his time as a blues composer. He will begin a song when he is feeling down, singing and playing it over and over again as it undergoes subtle transformations until he is satisfied with it. His most recent work is often in the sixteen-bar frame but it's still the basic blues in feeling, chord structure, and in its secular communication of Negro life in the West Side ghetto.
Chicago's West Side is not a gentle area. It's recent history bespeaks the overlong hold of a white political and economic structure. The recent revelation that several policemen were members of the Ku Klux Klan (indeed, one turned out to be the state leader) came as no surprise to even the most recent arrivals from Mississippi. Most of the West Side ghetto is a depressing slum where the only escape from the violence, disorganization and repression can be found in vice, gambling, the frequent house parties and surprisingly gaudy night life. West Side clubs tend to go in for floor-shows with dancers, female impersonators, comedians, etc. and the blues bands working these spots must be able to play behind such acts as well as offer their own specialties and the current blues hits. It's a tough school and explains the technical excellence of such bands. Blues clubs as a rule come and go but most of the West Side clubs have held on. The Zanzibar and Curley's are gone but Sylvio's, Key Largo, Alex, Avenue usually sport a blues band and are known by name rather than by location to bluesmen used to an annual turnover in names of blues clubs.
For all its faults, the West Side remains a place where you can make all the noise you want and this is just fine for Magic Sam, who is often at his best while entertaining a handful of friends in his living room - or sitting on the back porch playing and singing while the whole neighborhood crowds alley and porches to hear him. Is it any wonder that he felt perfectly at home when he began appearing before a new audience in such places as the University of Chicago Folk Festival? In the Fall of 1967 he brought the blues to the Johnson Foundation's famous Wingspread where the Frank Lloyd Wright building resounded to his music. At a recent dance at the University of Wisconsin, half of the audience squatted on the floor by the bandstand and grooved all night. His usually small group generates a fantastic degree of excitement because Sam gauges the mood of an audience and is able to pace his performance accordingly. That's his natural voice on those high pitches. Perhaps it is his natural attitude that keeps him from using a guitar pick.
Sam's singing and playing have their own roots deeply implanted in the Mississippi soil of his youth as well as in the traumatic everyday life of the raw West Side. But like all good blues and all great art, he reaches far beyond his ethnic origins and his everyday experiences and speaks for us all. That is why you will like this album regardless of your previous taste if you are reasonably "aware," "hip," "turned-on" or whatever your generation's slang may be for being in touch with humanity and life.
The solid second guitar on this album is by an artist equally unknown to LP blues buyers but equally well-known to the basic blues audience in Chicago clubs. Mighty Joe Young has worked with most of the bluesmen in town (Otis Rush, Sam, etc.) but now leads his own unit. Delmark expects to present him in his own album before long. Stockholm Slim filled in for a well-known pianist whose leader left town unexpectedly. He is Per Notini, and has recorded with his own band back home in Sweden, but does not intend to follow music as a career. Earnest Johnson and Mack Thompson are well-known to Chicago bluesmen though this seems to be their first LP appearance. Odie Payne, Jr. has been with Chicago bluesmen since the early 1950s and it would be difficult to name a band he has not been with for club dates and recording sessions. He left the blues scene and his 12-piece rehearsal dance band to tour Europe with the American Folk-Blues Festival at the time of the second recording date and his son, Odie Payne III, quite adequately filled in for him. We want to acknowledge the assistance of Shakey Cadillac Jake J. D. Harris in the production of this album.
- Bill Lindemann


Magic Sam

Magic Sam (Samuel Maghett) was one of the most dynamic and gifted blues musicians during his short lifetime (1937-1969). Born a few miles northeast of this site, Maghett began his performing career in Grenada and lived in this house until he moved to Chicago in the early 1950s. The youthful energy and spirit of Magic Sam, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, and Freddie King modernized Chicago blues into an explosive, electrifying new style in the late 1950s and early ’60s.

Magic Sam, unlike most of his blues contemporaries, was born and raised in a community where fiddle music, hoedowns and square dances held sway over the blues among the African American population. Roy Moses, a renowned black fiddler in Grenada County, was not only the leading caller of steps at such dances, but also a mentor and inspiration to younger local musicians. Samuel Maghett carried these musical influences with him to Chicago in 1950. Blues guitarist Syl Johnson, who later became a nationally known soul singer, recalled that Sam was playing “a hillbilly style” at the time, and Johnson began teaching him blues and boogies. Sam developed a house-rocking blues style unparalleled in its rhythmic drive; it may well have had roots in the dance tempos of the reels and breakdowns he learned in Grenada.

Magic Sam was better known, however, for the heartfelt vocals and stinging guitar work of his 1957-58 blues recordings produced by Willie Dixon for the Cobra label in Chicago such as “All Your Love” and “Easy Baby,” some of which featured another Grenada native, Billy Stepney, on drums. Sam’s singing reflected another early influence, that of the church. During the ‘50s he often returned to visit and perform in Grenada, where he was credited with helping to popularize the blues. Sam and his combo won a local talent contest at the Union Theater which enabled them to compete on a show in Memphis promoted by WDIA radio. After performing under several stage names, he settled on “Magic” Sam–to rhyme with his surname.

In Chicago, Sam was at the vanguard of a new West Side blues movement. He remained a popular nightclub act during the 1960s and was poised to take his career to a new level, after recording two acclaimed albums for Delmark Records and turning in legendary festival performances in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and in Europe, but he died of a heart attack on December 1, 1969. His music has continued to influence generations of blues, R&B, and rock musicians.

Magic Sam’s birthplace now lies submerged beneath Grenada Lake. The Redgrass and Hendersonville communities where he spent his earliest years, along with the former town of Graysport, were flooded in the late 1940s to create the lake as a flood control reservoir. The Maghett family relocated here to the Knoxville community, where Sam resided until he was thirteen. Maggitt Street, just south of this site, represents one of many local variations of the family surname.