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Morris Holt during his last visit to Grenada in 2011. Staff photo / Nanette Laster
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By GALEN HOLLEY
Staff Writer
A Chicago blues man with roots in the Lake City passed away last week.
Morris Holt, aka Magic Slim, died Feb. 21 in a hospital in Philadelphia, Penn. He was 75.
“He was a country boy all his life,” said Holt’s sister, Lucinda Holt-Brown, who still lives in Grenada.
Holt was born in Yalobusha County. As a child working the cotton fields, he couldn’t afford a guitar, so he made one by taking baling wire from a broom, nailing it to a wall and plucking it.
He tried the piano, but when he lost the pinkie finger on his right hand in a cotton-gin accident, he focused on guitar.
“He just picked it up naturally,” said Holt-Brown. “I don’t think he could read music, but he could hear something once or twice and just play it.”
Holt and his family moved to Grenada when he was 11.
“We lived out here, east, on number eight, in Knoxville,” said Holt-Brown. “My mother cooked at Bloodworth’s Restaurant, after we moved to town from the farm,” she said.
It was in Grenada where Holt met another future star of Chicago blues: Magic Sam, the man who gave him his nickname.
Chicago legend
Holt eventually moved to Chicago, where he recorded his first single, “Scufflin,” in 1966. He also formed his band there, Magic Slim and the Teardrops.
Holt cut his first album, “Born Under a Bad Sign” in 1977, for a French label, and in the next decade recorded regularly for Alligator, Rooster Blues and Wolf Records.
Holt’s subsequent albums, including “Black Tornado” (1998), “Snakebite” (2000) and “Raising the Bar” (2010), were acclaimed by critics and made him a venerated figure among Chicago bluesmen.
Magic Slim and the Teardrops won the Blues Music Award for Blues Band of the Year in 2003.
Holt last visited Grenada for a family reunion two years ago, Holt-Brown said.
During the visit, the Mississippi Blues Commission unveiled a Blues Trail marker on Union Street in honor of Holt.
“We had a picnic at the lake,” she said. “We had food, and Morris played, and we all had a big time.”
Holt’s funeral will be in Lincoln, Neb., on March 2. The Zoo Bar in Lincoln, where he often played, is also planning a musical tribute.
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