Following a brief interview segment Magic Sam is featured playing two songs at the 1969 American Folk Blues Festival on a guitar he borrowed from Earl Hooker accompanied by Mack Thompson (bass), and Robert St Judy (drums).

Samuel “Magic Sam” Gene Maghett was born on February 14, 1937 in Grenada, Mississippi and learned to play the blues from listening to records by Muddy Waters and Little Walter. After moving to Chicago in 1950 at the age of nineteen, he was signed by Cobra Records and became well known as a bluesman after his first record, “All Your Love” in 1957. It didn’t appear on the record charts, yet had a profound influence, far beyond Chicago’s guitarists and singers. Together with recordings by Otis Rush and Buddy Guy they made a manifesto for a new kind of blues.

Sam’s breakthrough performance was at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1969, which won him many bookings in the U.S. and Europe. His life and career was cut short when he suddenly died of a heart attack on December 1, 1969. He was 32 years old. He was buried in the Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.

In February 1970, the Butterfield Blues Band played at a benefit concert for Magic Sam, at Fillmore West in San Francisco. Also on the bill were Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop, Charlie Musselwhite and Nick Gravenites.

“Magic Sam had a different guitar sound,” said his record producer, Willie Dixon. “Most of the guys were playing the straight 12-bar blues thing, but the harmonies that he carried with the chords was a different thing altogether. This tune “All Your Love”, he expressed with such an inspirational feeling with his high voice. You could always tell him, even from his introduction to the music.”

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