Here's a tip for aspiring music journalists: think twice before you call an old bluesman at his hotel after 10 p.m. If he's anything like 71-year-old Morris Holt—aka Magic Slim—he might say, “Well, I was damn well asleep there!” and then answer most of your questions with a grunted “Yeah”. Then you've got your own case of the blues as you try to cobble together a passable article out of a one-way conversation.

Lucky for me, the story of Holt's musical life is interesting enough without injecting choice sound bites from him. Born the son of a Mississippi sharecropper, Holt first got hooked on the blues after hearing John Lee Hooker's “Boogie Chillen” on the radio. His first love was the piano, but after he lost the little finger of his right hand in a cotton-gin accident he took up guitar. When I called him after bedtime at his Windy City motel and asked whether he'd trade his current fretboard skills for a life spent with all 10 fingers, he sloughed off the importance of pinkies. “It don't bother me none,” he said of the missing digit.

When Holt was 11 years old he became close friends with schoolmate Samuel Maghett, who would become famous as blues legend Magic Sam and eventually bestow a similar moniker on Holt, due to his lanky physique. A fierce guitarist best known for the much-covered '57 classic “All Your Love”, Maghett would also play the role of Holt's musical mentor. “I learnt a lotta licks from him,” Holt offered.

Holt followed Maghett's lead and moved to the electric-blues hotbed of Chicago, where, in 1967, he formed his own group, Magic Slim & the Teardrops, and became a fixture in the juke joints of the city's South Side. In '77 he recorded his first album, Born Under a Bad Sign, which was also the title track of a 1967 album by Albert King. “That's what my record company wanted to name it,” recalled Holt. “I went, ‘Okay, that's a pretty name.' ”

The latest Magic Slim & the Teardrops release, Midnight Blues, continues the tradition of Holt's genuine house-rocking blues, characterized by his intense guitar work and earthy vocals. As well as five originals, it includes a couple of tunes by Muddy Waters, who was just one of the many greats to influence Holt. “I loved 'em all,” he pointed out. “You never know when you're gonna use them [the influences], but the way I see it is, I'll know 'em.”

One of the Waters covers, the timely “You Can't Lose What You Never Had”, sports a harmonica solo from former Waters sideman James Cotton. Midnight Blues also features guest appearances by guitarists Lonnie Brooks, Little Ed Williams, and Elvin Bishop, all of whom Holt describes as old friends.

On a sad note, three days before our chat, Holt's brother and long-time Teardrops bassist Nick Holt succumbed to brain cancer at the age of 69. And mere hours before my call diverted Slim from his rendezvous with the sandman, word of Michael Jackson's death had started to spread. The passing of the troubled King of Pop wasn't exactly tearing Holt apart, though.

“Michael was all right,” he said, “but you know he didn't play no blues.”

Magic Slim & the Teardrops play the Yale Hotel next Thursday (July 16).