Major Works
- Journeyman’s Road: Modern Blues Lives from Faulkner’s Mississippi to Post-9/11 New York (2007)
- Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition (2007)
- Mister Satan’s Apprentice: A Blues Memoir (1998)
- Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition (2017)
- Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of the Music (2020)
- My Family and I: A Mississippi Memoir (to be published in the spring of 2025)
Biography
Adam Gussow is an associate professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi (2002 to present), and a professional harmonica blues player and teacher. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in English and American Literature from Princeton University in 1979 (magna cum laude). He earned a master’s degree in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in 1983, and his PhD in English Literature from Princeton University in 2000. He teaches courses at Ole Miss in American and African American literature, the blues tradition, Southern autobiography, and race in American culture. He is the author of six books on the blues including Mister Satan’s Apprentice: A Blues Memoir; Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition, which was the winner of the Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature; Journeyman’s Road: Modern Blues Lives From Faulkner’s Mississippi to Post-9/11 New York ; Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition (2017), which won the Cawelti Award from the American Culture Association / Popular Culture Association, and Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of the Music (2020). Satan & Adam, a 2018 documentary about his thirty-year, Harlem-based partnership with bluesman Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee, which screened on Netflix for several years. Gussow’s many honors in addition to the C. Hugh Holman Award include the John G. Cawelti Award for Best Textbook/Primer in Popular and American Culture, and the Living Blues Award for Best Blues Book of 2017. His latest book is My Family and I: A Mississippi Memoir, which will be published by Emancipation Books in 2025.
Gussow was a member of the blues duo Satan and Adam for more than twenty years. He tours with Alan Gross in the duo called “Blues Doctors, and he currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi.
Official Video for “Thunky Fing Rides Again” by Satan and Adam
Related Websites
- Modern Blues Harmonica with Adam Gussow
- Racing Down the Blues: An interview with Adam Gussow. University of Chicago Press
- Artist Profile on Acoustic, Folk and Country Blues website
Bibliography
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