After a thirty-five year career as a blues performer, including more than two decades with the W. C. Handy Award-nominated duo Satan and Adam, harmonica player Adam Gussow has made his solo debut. Kick and Stomp showcases Gussow in an unexpected but logical setting: a harp-powered one-man blues band.

Taking a cue from his Harlem mentor, Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee, Gussow does it all, in real time—singing, blowing amplified harp, and stomping out some thump-and-metal grooves.

Kick and Stomp owes its stylistic breadth to Gussow’s background as a New York City-bred funk-blues player who has spent the past decade in the north Mississippi hill country. Ranging from old school blues like “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl,” “Poor Boy,” and “Goin’ Down South,” to Cream’s blues-rock standard, “Sunshine of Your Love,” and their power-trio version of Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads Blues,” all the way to a techno/house remake of Stanley Turrentine’s soul-jazz classic, “Sugar,” Gussow surprises. His original instrumentals mix sanctified Mississippi two-beats, hard bop (Art Blakey), and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s big-beat shuffles. The album concludes with a dazzling solo workout on Scott Joplin’s ragtime standard, “The Entertainer.”

Only a handful of players on the contemporary blues harp scene have developed an immediately recognizable voice on the instrument. Gussow’s sweet edgy tone, upper-octave pyrotechnics, and headlong swing make him one of those few. Kick and Stomp showcases his talents as a modern virtuoso, a player American Harmonica Newsletter praised for exhibiting the sort of "[t]echnical mastery and innovative brilliance that comes along…once in a generation."

1) Kick and Stomp (A. Gussow) 3:46 Bb
2) Good Morning Little Schoolgirl (J. Williamson) 2:55 D
3) Sunshine of Your Love (Bruce/Clapton/Brown) 6:38 C
4) Every Day I Have the Blues (P. Chatman ) 4:54 Eb
5) Poor Boy (traditional) 4:09 G
6) Shaun's Song (A. Gussow) 4:44 D
7) Goin' Down South (R. L. Burnside) 4:43 A
8) Buford Chapel Breakdown (A. Gussow) 3:41 Bb
9) Crossroads Blues (R. Johnson) 5:46 D
10) Mr. Cantrell (A. Gussow) 5:57 A
11) Down Ain't Out (A. Gussow) 5:59 Db
12) My Baby's So Sweet (A. Gussow) 4:12 D
13) Sugar (S. Turrentine) 3:51 Bb (3rdposition)
14) The Entertainer (S. Joplin) 2:21 C (1st position)

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