Magic Slim and The Teardrops

Magic Slim is a living blues legend who migrated from the South to Chicago during the 50s. Slim plays raw intense blues, a style that uses no pedals or other electronic gadgets to get his sound, it’s just him, and Slim has paved the way for rock as well as modern blues. Slim has been busy traveling to the juke joints in Mississippi to the nightclubs in Chicago and to concert stages throughout the world, he has built up a die hard fan base within it. Slim and The Teardrops performances have become legendary and they play the blues with an undeniable intensity that will leave you out of breath, lying on the floor and in need for more.

This is a look into a man that’s from the country and now he’s playing to audiences worldwide.

This big man of the blues was born Morris Holt in Torrence, Mississippi on August the 7th, 1937. His mother and father were sharecroppers; they lived on a farm and they all would get up early in the mornings and slop the hogs, feed the chickens, catch the mule and go out into the fields. “I still had to go to the field until I got age enough to leave home. I got little jobs around there when I was 13 and that was when I got my hand hurt. I hurt it in a cotton gin. I was at the gin and my hand got caught on a piece of wire going up in there, and I grabbed it and before I could turn it loose I lost my little pinky finger.”

Slim showed his musical talents early, singing in his church and playing piano. After his accident he could not play the piano anymore, so he picked up the guitar. He made his first guitar out of bailing wire from a
broom, which he nailed to a wall. “My Mama whipped me when I tore up her broom,” he said, “but she let me keep on using it, and Mama said later that if she had known what I would be into later in life, she would not have given me a whipping.”

It was in 1955 when Slim made his first trek to Chicago, to play for Magic Sam, a friend of his from home. Magic Sam also gave Slim tips on playing the guitar, and it was Sam who called his bass player “Magic Slim,” because back then Slim was lean and tall and he learned from Sam quickly. Sam told Slim to create his own guitar style. “Magic Sam told me, do not try to play like him, and do not try to play like no one else; he said get a sound of your own.” Slim got a sound of his own; his guitar tone is tough and cutting, united with a vibrato formed by using his fingers against the strings to reproduce the sound of a slide guitar while still being able to bend the notes. Slim said, “I slide with my finger. I use nothing on my finger, a lot of players try to get a sound like me and can’t. I play the same guitar everybody else does.”

Now when it comes to writing songs, Slim has his own unique way to accomplish his writing. “I just think of some words and write them down, think of some more and write them down, and then when I get enough
words together I take out some and put some more in there and make them rhyme together and then I learn them, and then I put music to them.” “My songs are either telling a story or asking a question. It’s just a feelin’,” Slim does not practice or rehearse his music. He doesn’t prepare a set list for his shows he says, “I see what kind of crowd it is, I play a few songs and see how the people react and just see if they are a dancin’ crowd or an older crowd and go from there.”

Favorite CD? “No, I like them all.” Song to play? “I don’t know, I like to play all of them.” “And I like to listen to blues, jazz, bluegrass and country and western.” Some of Slim’s favorite places to play are Brazil, Paris, Russia and here at home in the U.S.

Where is the blues headed? “I think the blues is coming back now, there are a lot of these kids reading up on the blues and now they know where the blues came from. Some of them can play too; I don’t know how they feel, because the blues is a feeling. You have to feel the blues to play it.”

Magic Slim is a man that came from the country. He was slim and tall trying to play the blues, now he can play the blues. And now he says, “If you want to play the blues, play the blues, if you don’t feel the blues,
leave it alone cause you can’t be playing it just to make a dollar.”

The Teardrops consist of Jon McDonald on guitar/vocals, Danny O’Connor on bass and Lenny Media on drums/vocals.