Born in Mount Olive, Mississippi, Magee was raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he came of age dabbling as a piano player in local churches and suffering his parents' ire when he drifted into the blues. As a young man he worked local blues clubs under the monicker "Five Fingers Magee" and was billed as "the fastest guitar player in the world." After a stint in Germany as a U.S. Army paratrooper in the 1950s, Magee was demobilized in New York and ended up settling in Harlem. A sometime-so...