Magic Sam, born Samuel Maghett, was one of the most dynamic and gifted blues musicians of his short life from 1937 to 1969. Born a few miles northeast of this site, he began performing in Grenada and lived in this house until moving to Chicago in the early 1950s. Along with Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, and Freddie King, he helped modernize Chicago blues into an explosive, electrifying new style in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Unlike most of his blues contemporaries, he was born and raised in a community where fiddle music, hoedowns, and square dances were more prominent than the blues among the African American population. Roy Moses, a renowned black fiddler in Grenada County, was a leading caller of steps at such dances and a mentor and inspiration to younger local musicians. Maghett carried these influences to Chicago in 1950. Blues guitarist Syl Johnson later recalled that Sam was playing a hillbilly style at the time, and Johnson began teaching him blues and boogies. Sam developed a house-rocking blues style unmatched in rhythmic drive, possibly rooted in the dance tempos of the reels and breakdowns he had learned in Grenada. He became especially known for the heartfelt vocals and stinging guitar work of his 1957-58 blues recordings produced by Willie Dixon for Chicago's Cobra label, including All Your Love and Easy Baby, some featuring fellow Grenada native Billy Stepney on drums. His singing also reflected the influence of the church. During the 1950s he often returned to Grenada to visit and perform, and he was credited with helping popularize the blues there. Sam and his combo won a local talent contest at the Union Theater, enabling them to compete on a show in Memphis promoted by WDIA radio. After performing under several stage names, he adopted Magic Sam to rhyme with his surname. In Chicago he stood at the forefront of a new West Side blues movement, remained a popular nightclub act during the 1960s, and seemed ready to reach a new level after recording two acclaimed albums for Delmark Records and giving legendary festival performances in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and in Europe, but he died of a heart attack on December 1, 1969. His music continued to influence generations of blues, R&B, and rock musicians. His birthplace now lies beneath Grenada Lake because the Redgrass and Hendersonville communities where he spent his earliest years, along with the former town of Graysport, were flooded in the late 1940s to create the lake as a flood control reservoir, and the Maghett family relocated here to the Knoxville community, where he lived until he was thirteen. Maggitt Street just south of this site preserves one of many local variations of the family surname.