Black Tornado (Blind Pig)
Even when Morris “Magic Slim” Holt isn’t at his most original or funky, he’s an entertaining history lesson about electric blues. “Still a Fool” is the exact midpoint between Muddy Waters (who wrote the song) and Jimi Hendrix (who copied this Waters lick in the ’60s), and Slim’s “Magic Boogie” similarly treads the line separating John Lee Hooker and ZZ Top. Slim no longer lives in Chicago, where his late pal Magic Sam once taught him everything, and the rawness of his previous album, 1996’s slithering “Scufflin’,” is largely absent here. But the Lincoln, Neb., resident makes up for it with depth, covering both A.C. Reed and Buster Benton and ceding the microphone to his soul-singing son, Shawn, on “Young Man’s Blues.”
