Chicago Blues

I've lived in the Chicago area for most of my life, and actually in the city since 1993. Like many suburbanites, I moved up to the north side of the city. It's not as gritty or urban, for the most part, as the rest of the city. You can find blues on the north side. Indeed, the north side is full of popular blues clubs, especially on Halsted Street, just north of the heart of the yuppie-filled Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Of course, being an indie rock fan, I'm also a blues snob. A blues snob who doesn't often listen to the blues. Particularly the slicker version of the blues that started getting more popular in the ‘80s, exemplified by artists like Robert Cray. I'd prefer something more along the lines of Muddy Waters, Slim Harpo or R.L. Burnside.

I'd even avoid going to the Bluesfest in Grant Park. Although the festival often attracts some great artists, it had become a nightmare. Crowds of over 200,000, usually crocked off their asses, and many of them not paying attention to the tunes, which got lost in the large speakers of the Petrillo Band Shell.

All this goes to show is that I really don't know Chicago blues, as it stands now. There are people who know. David Whiteis is one of those people. The veteran music journalist moved to Chicago from Connecticut back in the ‘70s, and he immediately immersed himself in the bars and clubs on the south and west sides of the city. This part of Chicago is where so many blues greats headed to, dating back to the post-World War II days. He's probably the leading blues critic in Chicago, having written innumerable pieces for local publications like the Chicago Reader.

Whiteis has now put out a book, Chicago Blues Portraits and Stories. This book delves a bit into Whiteis's past experiences here, and looks at some contemporary figures on the blues scene. The book does not attempt to explain everything about blues today. Yet, in choosing his subjects carefully, Whiteis says a lot about what blues is all about, where's it been and where it may be going.

As a writer, Whiteis isn't really a stylist. He's erudite and detailed, and his solid prose style may not seem to be the best vehicle for giving a reader a taste of authentic blues. But he actually does a great job of placing you in the milieu of the performers and the audience. This latter part is quite important. Much as Jake Austen noted in his 2005 book TV-A-Go-Go, Whiteis makes clear that the audience interaction is a crucial aspect of blues shows at these small clubs -- it's something distinctive about African-American audiences. It is clear that Whiteis sees both the big picture and the small details and I really could picture the scenes that he was describing.

The book begins with chapters on three renowned Chicago performers, Junior Wells, Sunnyland Slim and Big Walter Horton. These chapters are nice, but don't seem to dig too deeply. At this point, I was concerned that the book was just going to be a series of short biographies. Interesting, but not extremely so.

The book really comes to life in the next section, where Whiteis takes a trip down memory lane to Florence's Lounge and Maxwell Street. The Lounge was an old blues club that eventually burned down. It is obvious that Whiteis spent a fair amount of time at the place, as he gives you a feel for the interior, the clientele, and the performers, with plenty of anecdotes. Most importantly, with this chapter, I really began to get a sense of the meaning of the music to the audience.

While blues is constantly be channeled and rediscovered in rock and roll, recently by artists like The White Stripes, it's hard to see where it fits within African-American culture. This is due in large part to the current dominance of hip hop culture amongst black youth. Quite frankly, as a 40 year old white man, I don't know how blues fits in, and the Florence's chapter started to open my eyes, taking me into a world outside my own that is only 10 miles or so from my own home.

As the book progresses, Whiteis touches on many issues surrounding the blues. For one thing, blues is universal, yet it is intrinsic to the African American experience. This comes up in some of the later portrayals of contemporary blues artists. The other is how the blues experience is, in some respects, clinging to life in the midst of the homogenization and gentrification of America's urban areas. This is trenchantly detailed in the excellent chapter on Maxwell Street, the long running flea market that was ultimately relocated from its original spot so that developers could build on the original site. Whiteis notes that for thousands of migrants and minorities, the original Maxwell Street was a place where you could make money selling wares and get a foothold, and also a cultural exchange, which included hearing authentic blues. Yet they shut it down:

Meanwhile they built cities, forged steel, swept streets, butchered cattle, mopped floors in fancy homes and highrises, typed memos and fetched coffee for lawyers and executives, and still found the time and inspiration to breathe life into America's gray-flannel soul Now "we" can't afford their presence any more because "our"cities have been built. "We" have enough steel, bricks, and mortar, and it's time for "us" to move on to a new economic order so the rich can get richer, the poor can get laid off and try to find jobs flipping McBurgers somewhere, and everyone else can stick their world over on Canal Street.

After a look at modern clubs and a cool peek into the amazing world of Denise LaSalle, Whiteis devotes the rest of the book to more profiles. But these profiles are more personal than the first ones in the book, and while some aspects of the various stories have a lot of commonality, they all expand upon the blues experience and the direction of the music. You get stories about people who lived hard lives and were saved, to a degree by the blues, like Bonnie Lee. There's an amazing piece on Lurrie Bell, the son of a bluesman who has quite the tale of survival. There's Jody Williams, a legendary blues guitarist who dropped out of the scene for years, and comes back to adulation. And Billy Branch, a true forward thinker who teaches schoolchildren about the blues.

One thing that hangs over so many of these performers is the sense that this style of music is waning. Not dying, but waning. Most of them make their money performing for white audiences on the north side of Chicago, and some only get their due in Europe. Yet they all feel that the music is alive. Branch and Whiteis both agree that if current blues music could just get more radio exposure, this wouldn't be an issue. Of that, I can't be too sure. But after reading this book, I have a much fuller appreciation of the importance of the blues, both as an art and a life force of its own.

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