B-L-U-E-S in Chicago - July 1978

 

This artifact from my bedroom bureau shows how lively the Chicago Blues Scene was in 1978. Every night in July, boffo!  What a line-up! Sunnyland Slim, Otis Rush, Magic Slim, Detroit Jr. Son Seals, Erwin Helfer and Mama Yancey - it just goes on and on. I got to a couple of these nights - hot but it was great to be there.

This happened while I worked with Sunnyland on the Prose Poem "Sunnyland Blues." Most of that was Sunnyland conversation - and what testimonies they were. Here below instead I include some excerpts from the book that touch on my impressions of Chicago. These and some verbatims by other musicians weren't particularly received well by the critics. I get it, they were jarring, and might have worked well in a longer more rambling presentation.

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FROM CHICAGO AND ACROSS KING DRIVE - Distended lights of the northwestern trestle. Buses this burden their scores. Ice chests in the gas stations wait for Saturday night and the Barber to clean his mirror.

But the grating on the door window doesn't tell the story or the oiled dust on the Southside’s patterned tin ceilings.

Up I go a stairway.  It's yellowed with time and food that was fried.

Bare bulbs and Roach motels don't tell you either.

 

That this is a loving place because Slim feels
God don't love ugly.
You pray for me and I'll grow strong.
The devil is a busy man. And
everyone wants to go to heaven.
But no one wants to sing, pray or die.

Colored flags are hanging out Sunnyland’s window. Out and across Halstead.

ML King, JFK, Jesus and Trophies, 17 hats letter from the president and an Independent Record of the Year award on the Wall.

To this reporter as a whole, the Southside doesn't strictly attach itself to convention’s Image of the ghetto slum. I

Instead, single family houses seem to outnumber tenements. What I see is neat lawns and silver oil drums converted to barbecues.

Enough trips out and two stolen cars later, and I see the projects grimly and realize most people I meet carry a gun. But still, in my memory

There is the guy in the summer Panama. And some shiny shirt
idly clipping the sidewalk edge.

And quickly this sky glooms with cyclone smell and weather bulletins broadcast on WGN+.

 

+Which stands for “World’s Greatest Newspaper” - Jack Vaughan