Julian Piper in Chicago

‘As far as I’m concerned it sucks……….’ Michael Frank - owner, publisher, PR man, envelope stuffer, Manager of Chicago’s Earwig Records and general all round good guy, is taking the opportunity to rail off about Martin Scorcese.

In the States there’s been a lot of hoopla recently about 2003 being the ‘Year Of The Blues’ and because genial George Bush has made it official – blues is OK and here to stay.

But times don’t change. Michael’s being asked to sign away royalties for the Scorcese movie and as far as he's concerned it's the same old music industry shuffle and he isn’t going to play ball.

‘Honeyboy’ Edwards laughs, reaches into the small refrigerator on his bedside table, and with a grin offers me a bottle of beer. It’s one of those surreal moments that happen occasionally in the blues, and something worth while remembering next time after a bum gig when the van breaks down outside of Stroud.

After all - sharing a few bottles of ‘Red Dog’ with the last man on the planet that played with Robert Johnson, just doesn’t happen every day………….

I’d never been to Chicago before – or for that matter downtown Brixton where I stayed the night before the flight. Culture shocks come in all shapes and sizes, but there’s no contest that the body lying on a Brixton pavement in a pool of blood as I got off the bus, was a lot more scary than anything I was to experience in Chicago.

I’d flown in he previous evening with Dave Peabody who would be photographing our trip for posterity. Dave had been to the ‘Windy City’ before but for me it was a first time and I couldn’t help being slightly apprehensive. Chicago sadly has a well deserved reputation for being a violent city, several of the classic bluesmen like Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter died as a result of violent attacks, Howlin’ Wolf allegedly even once threatened Hubert Sumlin with a gun onstage, and blues history is full of tales of maniacal gunmen bursting into clubs and spraying the punters with lead.

Chicago’s a vast sprawling city on the shores of Lake Michigan and is neatly divided into North, South and West subsections - there doesn’t appear to be an East, presumably because you’d end up swimming to Canada.

All the great blues clubs where Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Howling Wolf, Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers, Magic Sam, Freddie King and countless others cut their chops, were on the South or West side of the city. It’s mind boggling to imagine just how many great musicians were once regularly gigging here.

I knew that most of the old blues scene was gone for ever, but still hoped to end up hearing blues being played in the kind of club Muddy Waters might have played half a century before. Fortunately we were to be in good hands. Michael Frank the amiable owner of the Chicago based Earwig blues label, has lived in the city for thirty years, and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of every nook and cranny of the place. Before his present day time job working for the Chicago Authority, he was a social worker on the Southside investigating cases of child abuse; something that doesn’t exactly sound like an occupation for the faint hearted.

We’d met up at around nine o'clock the first evening and before you could say ‘chittlins’ were standing in the queue at the The Chicago Rib House at 3851 S. Michigan Avenue, waiting for our Grilled Shrimp.

This clearly wasn’t the sort of place to stand around on the street corner and after two attempts to buy petrol –getting out of the car at the first filling station Michael hastily got straight back in - we drove on to Lee’s Unleaded Blues, a small club at 7401 S. South Chicago Avenue.

I was slightly concerned at how three people clutching brown paper bags stinking of fried shrimp and spare ribs might have been received, but needn’t have worried. Anyone who writes a song like ‘’I Wanna Get In Your Head Before I Get You In Bed’, has to have a good sense of humour and Johnny Drummer, whose band were to play at Lee’s, has been part of the ‘Chi Town’ scene for the last thirty years.

Michael first met up with Johnny in 1974 when he was playing with the Aces and Freddy Below who were Little Walter’s original backing band; as an introduction to the Chicago club scene we couldn’t have done better.

The small L shaped club was jammed with incredible characters – the mountainous Emmanuel Furson who acted as the MC, and the three warm up acts - ‘Junkyard Dawg’ a guy hopping around on crutches with one leg, the ‘Arkansas Bellyroller’ and diminutive Louis Scott – a pint sized girl who sang like she’d just got out of Stax studios.

Johnny’s band were set up on the small bandstand around the corner, and after he’d managed to extricate his bass player from another neighbourhood bar, his tight little band kicked off with a rollicking version of Jimmy Reed’s ‘Bright Lights Big City’’.

This was the real deal – I was even asked to get up and jam – but fortunately realised in time that my brain was no longer connected to my tongue, or for that matter my fingers.…………..

Just across the road is the ‘El’ – part of the elevated rail loop – and we’re standing outside a small boarded up club the size of your local minicab office, a place which we easily might not have given a second glance. But Michael Frank is a walking talking encyclopaedia of Chicago history.

Sunday afternoon found us driving out to catch up with Honeyboy, who lives on the third floor of an apartment building on South King Drive, deep in Chicago’s South side.

Michael’s worked with Honeyboy Edwards since the early ‘Seventies doggedly rejuvenating his career, and along the way recording many of the old time blues players Sunnyland Slim and Floyd Jones for Earwig, alongside newcomers like John Primer and Big Jack Johnson.

For anyone who’s ever seen those classic photographs of Chicago tenements taken during the ‘Fifties, the first shock was the realisation that little has changed. Most of the area is very poor and run down, semi derelict and quite often plain threatening. But it’s a repository of musical history; Muddy Waters old house, Louis Armstrong’s Chicago pad, the Checkerboard Lounge, site of the Regal Theatre, are all within a few minutes drive of each other – if you know where you’re going.

To get to Honeyboy’s front door we had to climb three flights of outside wooden steps – the only way in and the only way out - and an obviously horrible fire risk.

After hammering for a few minutes, the door was warily opened by Tony, a thin bearded man in a singlet, and are lead into the small kitchen where Tony sleeps on a small camp bed in front of a television, through to a bedroom.

I’ve never met Honeyboy before but over the years he’s become a good mate of Peabody the lens, whom he greets like a long lost brother. Eighty eight years old and still going strong, incredibly Honeyboy is still out there, regularly jumping on planes to European blues festivals where he’s feted as the living icon that he is.

A short wiry man, whose brown eyes still twinkle in the certain knowledge that there’s more to life than the television flickering at the end of his bed. Honeyboy could easily pass for a man twenty years his junior.

It quickly becomes clear that Honeyboy’s celebrity has made his bedroom a neighbourhood attraction. As if on cue a pretty young girl – the first of several visitors whilst we’re there - wafts through the door behind us and also cadges a beer before disappearing. She’s not introduced to us so we don’t know if she lives there but we do know that in an adjoining room lives the daughter of harmonica player the late Walter Horton; to many an even hotter exponent of the ‘Mississippi Saxophone’ than Little Walter. These blues people certainly stick together.

The bedroom is the kind of place that anyone of Honeyboy’s age would ideally like to live in; a mixture of clutter and functionality designed to involve the minimum of effort. One wall is plastered with photographs of Honeyboy – often with pretty young ladies - and there’s an alcove holding a rail of clothes, a jumble of guitar cases, and several suitcases.

All Honeyboy has to help him cope with the searing heat of Summer is an old rusty white fan, but it’s something that won’t be needed today. Although it’s the beginning of June, outside the rain is hammering down, and on the Interstate just the other side of the road, through the window we see the juggernauts ploughing on into central Chicago throwing up sheets of ugly grey spray.

Honeyboy's clearly not concerned - I suspect he doesn't go out much unless it's to perform - and from his opinions on the fate of blues music, obviously takes most things in his stride.

''Blues started to be less popular, the black people stopped supporting it - that's what happened, started giving parties spinning records and run us musicians out to the north side. Then we started playing for whites, musicians got to play for an audience, have people to laugh and talk with them.

After that people started looking for me again. One day a man drove up in a van and said ''I'm looking for Honeyboy Edwards''. He was from a record label come to record me.

I recorded for Fleetwood Mac back then, that was '67. Willie Dixon set that up, he just come to my house and said ''I've got a job for you.'' So me, Big Walter, Homesick James, J.T.Brown the sax player and Otis Spann, all recorded with them. Marshall Chess - Leonard's son - he recorded that session.

Because they're white, when they play the blues they get the benefit of our music and get more recognition for it than we do. But that makes blues more popular too and I was glad to do something with them because if you ain't got nuthin' out there, you can't make no money. A lot of those white boys play the blues real good. Ain't but one thing about most of them though - most can't sing a thing !'

Honeyboy rummages in his closet and proudly displays his latest acquisitions. First off there’s a new Martin made of some glass fibre material with a silver reflecting front, then a custom made bass guitar with a metal neck and fork shaped headstock that looks like a prop from Spinal Tap.

I'm beginning to suspect that Honeyboy's a bit of a guitar fanatic.The guitar weighs so much that it’s just about all you can do to lift it, let alone entertain wearing around the neck but for some perverse reason he obviously likes it.

''All I ever wanted was an electric guitar and finally got one in Denver at a pawn shop, a little old cheap guitar called The Singing String. I bought a small amplifier - only had about three tubes in it but it was pretty loud.

First guitar I ever heard belonged to a man, Clarence McDaniel a sharecropper, who stayed across from our house and he'd bought it from Sears Roebuck paid twelve dollars. It was a good guitar called a Stella - cost you a hundred now or more. Every night when we come out of the field we'd go over to his house and he'd sit down and play. That's the first time I got interested in the blues and tried to know what it was - I'd pick up the guitar and try to play but I couldn't play nuthin'!

Clarence played the guitar until the middle of the fall and got tired of it, sold it to my father for eight dollars. I used to sit up and play one tune so long my daddy would say ''Boy, why don't you get outa that tune ? Don't you know anythin' else to play ?'' So I started to change things around, playing in E natural and D how he played. Before then I was playing in Spanish, doing lots of fool things with the strings and he'd say ''Boy - get in natural key ! You won't make a guitar player playing in Vastapol '' - and he told me right.'

Pride of place in Honeyboy's collection though goes to a beautiful sunburst Gibson ES.350 he’s just bought. There’s not a scratch on it and the binding has yellowed to that lovely orange associated with vintage Gibsons; Peabody and I are both green with envy.

After Michael’s signed a few Contracts with Honeyboy – he’s about to jet off to Italy a couple of days later – we say our farewells and go back out into the drizzle.

And the Robert Johnson connection ? Well it’s all true but should you ever meet up with Honeyboy it’s probably best not to mention it; understandably he’d rather be known for his own music. But – just for the record – Robert and Honeyboy really were best mates, played together, hobo’d together, shared wine and women and lived the sometimes dangerous and privileged life of Delta bluesmen.

''Robert was a nice person, he wasn't a hell raiser, wasn't violent - he was a great blues player and had his own style. All I know Robert to do, he liked to drink - loved whiskey and he was crazy about his women. That's the two things he was crazy 'bout and that was his downfall.......''

That evening we catch a cab to Blue Chicago, a tourist club in the middle of town. Michael’s told us to mention his name but sadly it doesn’t seem to cut any ice with the cheerful but mountainous guy guarding the door, so we dutifully cough up our six dollars and go in.

We lounge up against the bar trying to look casual, only to be quickly moved away by a very irritable looking Japanese waitress. It’s not a good start and she speeds off in the direction of a raised seating area growling that we should get the f… out of her way and sit down. Lee’s Unleaded Blues this ain’t.

But there’s no room. Chicago Blues Festival T shirts strain over the spreading stomachs of friendly British blues fans, who’re all from ‘oop North’ and had come over for the Blues Festival the previous weekend. They’re all having a good time, and I can’t help admiring their fortitude in managing to get high on the fizzy brown brew that passes for beer in this joint.

As Peabody and I squat on two empty stools at the side of the dance floor, the band lope onto the small stage.

Johnny B.Moore and his band were meant to be the advertised act but apparently Johnny’s had a heart attack – the perennial blight of the middle aged blues man – so tonight the bandstand will be occupied by Jimmy Burns.

He’s an elderly looking gent with a bush of white hair creeping out from beneath a cream fedora, and I can’t help feeling that he looks like he’d rather be at home with his slippers on watching the ball game. He’s cuddling an unidentifiable Gibson two cutaway solid, which he plugs into a Marshall solid state amp. The second guitarist who looks to be Korean or Japanese, is playing a 335 copy of some sort, and wedged behind them sit the bass player and drummer.

Jimmie manages to look both bored and ill at ease - no easy accomplishment. After plugging in he turns to the bassman and quietly whispers ‘’B.B…..’’ before launching into a pretty spineless version of ‘Rock Me Baby’.

The Japanese guitar player stares nervously out across the empty floor, around the edge of which now stand a few interested punters, but he’s watching Jimmie like a hawk – I guess a man who isn’t sure what’s going to happen next.

The band go into a Curtis Mayfield song that’s far better suited to Jimmie’s lightweight guitar playing, but Peabody and I can both hear a strange graunching noise coming from the general direction of the bass amp. Initially I think it must be a gremlin in the works, and then before realise that it’s the bassman himself weazing and grunting with the rhythm.

That aside Jimmie’s lucky to have this rhythm section – the drummer is rock steady, does a great shuffle and despite the weird grunting the bassman’s spot on, but it’s all a bit twee.

Just when things are really getting yawn inducing a pretty black lady in a white dress, who’s been sitting at a table near the stage with two friends – the only black people in the club as it happens – gets up onstage and lets rip on an Aretha number.

This is just what’s needed – she’s got presence, and a powerful voice that takes no prisoners. People start dancing and the joint if not rockin’, is certainly beginning to gain some atmosphere.

Things are beginning to look interesting but one of the barmen comes up behind the people scattered at the edge of the dancefloor – a mixed bag of Japanese tourists, college kids and yee-hawing blues buffs – and despite their obvious displeasure at being manhandled, begins physically pushing then towards the stage.

It’s the last straw, the waitress has already been eyeing up our empty Corona bottles, and we’re both knackered. We slink out wishing that we were back at Lee’s Unleaded Blues. Hell.……….

Our last day and we’re sitting upstairs in Buddy Guy’s small modest den at his downtown club LEGENDS. The man who many regard as the finest electric guitarist on the planet, is doing one of the things he enjoys most - reminiscing about his early days.

Buddy’s new album ‘’Blues Singer’’ is a deliberate throwback to his work with Muddy Waters on the 1964 ‘Folk Singer’ Chess recording, a laid back celebration of acoustic blues that makes no commercial concessions, and on which guests Eric Clapton and B.B.King slip seamlessly into Buddy’s Mississippi Delta groove.

‘The record company said ‘’ Did I remember doing the record I cut with Muddy ?’’ I said ‘’Of course I did’’. At that time Chicago was full of great guitar players but most of them wouldn’t be happy to sit down, take a chair and fit in with someone else; they all wanted to be the star and make themselves known.I wouldn’t think about doing it, I’d just ask Muddy what he wanted – I wouldn’t even play a solo.

So Leonard Chess told Muddy that all the colleges were going for this acoustic blues stuff, and he should think about going to Mississippi and getting some old acoustic player for the session.

When I walked in the next morning Leonard started calling me all the M……..rs - I was all kind of sonofa bitches.

Muddy just said ‘’Shut the fuck up..!’’ So we sat down and started and they stood there for an hour and a half watching which was very unusual; usually they’d just come in and hear the playback.

Leonard (Chess) said ‘’M……..r – where’d you learn to play like that? How do you know that.’’

I said ‘’Well, I’m just playing their music. You put me down with Muddy Waters and I didn’t need no rehearsal – I already knew it. ‘‘

Back in those days we worked in the daytime, straight in the studio getting there at about eight o'clock in the morning, and we’d go all day. Sometimes a session would last into the night a bit but not often.’

Ironically it was Buddy Guy’s modesty and reluctance to step centre stage – always happy to act as a foil for musicians he respected, that would put his career on hold until two decades later.

‘I signed with Chess but when you had people like Muddy ,Wolf, Jimmy Rogers, on the label, it was obvious that Chess were just after making big hits. I walked in once and Willie Dixon gave me this song ‘’Same Thing’’ to record, but Leonard Chess walked in and didn’t hesitate – ‘’That song’s not for him – call Muddy !’’

Within 30 minutes Muddy walked in and recorded it but with me playing behind him. But there was a big smile on my face because I wouldn’t have no beef with that; when I met Muddy, Jnr and Wolf I was just in love with the music.

But back when I first came to Chicago you had so many clubs - Zanzibar, Smitty’s, 708, Sylvio’s – you could walk two blocks and there were clubs all along the street with the doors open. Often you’d pass by and the blues was so good you thought it had to be Muddy or Walter but it was always some young cat playing with just three pieces and a raggedy keyboard.

The buses ran all night because there must have been 100,000 people working in the steel mills and stock yards all round the clock.

So the cafes were open 24 hours too – you’d go by and see this chicken sitting there all golden, been cooked for three weeks and you’d think ‘’I must get a piece of that’’ - then when you taste it, it’s just like a lump of wood !

I didn’t want to miss nuthin’ though - I’d always end up going into some club but at times I was thinking even birds had more sense than to stay in Chicago - even the Geese flew South for the winter .’’

Buddy’s easy going personality also did him no favours in the type of guitar sound that Leonard and Phil Chess would allow him to record. Although his ‘live’ shows were legendary for his guitar histrionics and tricks learnt playing on Maxwell Street Market, it wasn’t until the ‘British Invasion’ of the ‘Sixties that Chess finally wised up.

‘When I finally did start recording, all they wanted was for me to turn my guitar right down, but after Hendrix and Eric came along and he found out that’s what I’d been trying to do for years, he sent Willie Dixon around to my house to get me. I hadn’t even been in Leonard’s office before but Willie too k me in and he said ‘’Kick my ass Buddy – this f……g shit’s been selling millions, you can do whatever you like.’’

Even when I did ‘First Time I Met The Blues’ they wouldn’t let that guitar ring out - have long distortion notes. Now all you gotta do is to punch a button but back then you had to have the amplifier wound right up – it was the only way. Eric once asked me ‘’What you got on the amp? And I said ‘Nuthin’ – just volume and tone.’’

Although he now lives forty miles out of the city and is away for a large part of the year touring, Buddy is living proof of the fact that you might be able to take the boy from the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy. ‘Blues Singer’ was recorded in the Sweet Tea Studios in Oxford Mississippi and Buddy obviously loved every moment.

‘I went down to Mississippi to do it – they still got an old mixing board. This guy got the old amps and old guitars – for most of the time I used an old arch top Harmony.

I fingerpick but I knew my fingers were out of shape. I thought ‘’Oh my God – I hope I can get in six songs before the fingers get sore’’, and sure enough after three days I could hardly touch the strings because they were so sore.

But I just sat in the engineer’s room with a mic and did it right there, recorded everything sitting in the mixing room on the couch. Because of the noise, every time I got ready to record they had to turn off the air conditioning - you know what Mississippi’s like. Every time I got to the end I had to point to the band out in the studio and by the time we finished, we were all wringing wet.

One track the engineer said ‘’You set a record Buddy. - twenty nine minutes none stop.’

The tracks Eric and B.B. played on were dubbed in later but I felt that thing when I was recording – they can fill a gap in my music anytime.’

Special Thanks to Michael Frank of Earwig Records for patience and dedication beyond the call of duty, to Buddy Guy and all at Zomba and of course the Chicago bluesmen and women who keep the flame alive..………………

‘I’m trying to continue a tradition- the college owns this place. I spent my life saving opening the first club but I’m not a baby anymore, can’t do that anymore. It’s the easiest thing in the world to lose a blues club. You only got to have someone down the street drunk, they look in and that’s it ! The whisky business is a tough business.

Back in 708 days I wouldn’t know how to use my money. These days people use drugs and you don’t sell the alcohol you used to…’

One of THE great Chicago blues joints during the 1950’s and 60’s, the 708 was originally Muddy Waters stomping ground but as the demand for his band grew out of town, his regular slot was often filled by his arch rival, Howlin’ Wolf.

Mythology has always propagated the idea that this was the Chess brothers first blues club but infact whilst they did own the premises for a while, Leonard’s business was in reality a cut price Liquor store in what was then a very dangerous neighbourhood. Admittedly it did have a Juke Box – likely to have been one of the ‘soundie’ machines then in vogue that played pictures along with the music - and probably hosted some informal jams at weekends.

The 708 didn’t become a blues club in its own right until Leonard Chess had moved onto the more prosperous – and less threatening - Macamba Lounge.

This former automobile repair shop next to a car wash is currently being renovated, and until he started his Legends nightclub in the more prosperous downtown area, was wwowned by Buddy Guy. Over the years the Checkerboard built a formidable reputation for Buddy’s barnstorming shows with his virtuoso harmonica pal, the late Jnr Wells.

The wake after Muddy Waters funeral was held here, Buddy hosting a jam with harmonica player James Cotton, and it was also the location of the often shown video of the Rolling Stones sitting in with Muddy.

To get a flavour of the club atmosphere you should invest in a copy of Buddy Guy’s ‘Live At The Checkerboard Lounge’ on JSP (CD262) – a priceless musical time capsule, and one of the few albums recorded in an all black club rather than the more commercial Northside tourist traps.

Although at first glance just another house sadly in need of renovation in a neglected Chicago suburb, there’s still a definite ‘Soul’ about Muddy’s old pad. Apparently drummer Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith – a long time member of Muddy’s band - still lives in the property, and indeed it’s easy to imagine the ghosts of the blues greats who once treated it as their second home, sitting out on the front porch, drinking Jack Daniels and maybe sharing a hand or two of Poker.

Pianist Otis Spann along with harmonica ace Little Walter, all lived at one time or another with Muddy and his wife Geneva in this place, rehearsing songs like ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ and ‘Got My Mojo Working’ that would make Muddy famous, in the small cramped basement.

By all accounts it was a homely place. Mike Bloomfield recalled jamming in the basement, and musicians like Jazzman Chris Barber, whose band were the first British outfit to play with Muddy back in 1958, regularly looked in if they were passing through.

Strangely Chicago does little to honour its blues legacy, and it’s mind boggling to think that they haven’t taken the trouble to turn the house into a museum.

If an alien culture ever comes down to earth and needs to inspect sites of cultural significance, this nondescript building is going to need to be high on their list. It’s where Buddy recorded the ‘Folk Singer’ session with Muddy Waters that served as the inspiration for his latest recording, and beyond that, the tip of the musical iceberg of some of the most influential music ever created.

Now operated by the Willie Dixon Blues Heaven Foundation, along with the old Sun Studios in Memphis, this really is the Holy Grail of recording history. Little changed since Phil and Leonard Chess held court here, you almost expect to run into Muddy, Wolf or Sonny Boy coming up the stairs.

And the secret of the Chess sound ?In the front room of the studio are two six inch metal pipes disappearing into the concrete floor. A cable went into the first from the mixing desk, feeding a signal into a small amplifier set in a metal garbage can. A microphone in front of the amp, relayed the heavily echoed sound back to the desk – simple

So did the Rolling Stones really find Muddy up a ladder doing some decorating when they called by in 1964 ?

If Keef is to be believed ‘Yes’, but the word here has it that Leonard Chess considered him far too valuable a property to risk breaking his neck up a ladder.

Theresa’s small club on a corner of Indiana Avenue is where Buddy Guy got one of his first breaks and over the years, until its untimely closure a few years back for conversion into apartments, remained one of the best known and loved Chicago blues bars.

‘Theresa’s was the first club that I went to in Chicago, a guy took me there and she met me at the door, but she wouldn’t let me in so we went to a place called The Squeeze. I started playing and they got Theresa on the phone and said ‘’Listen…….’’

I went back to Theresa’s with my amp and I asked her if I could plug in? She said ‘’Yeah – there’s no one in here now – you can’t run nobody out of here !’’

I played ‘Further On Up The Road’’ and she said ‘’How come you didn’t play like that the other night ?’’

Back then she had music two nights a week and when she finally told me I could play, within five weeks you couldn’t get in the place. She used to come and cuss me out ‘’You m….r - you can’t go and play anywhere else, you’ll take all the people with you.’’. (Buddy Guy)

‘Theresa’s had people like Little Walter and Jimmy Reed and other people – not quite such big names. The musicians like Muddy would get up on the stage and tell everyone to let us alone, that we were some of his white friends from the North side coming down to hear the music, and nobody better mess with us or they’d have to mess with him. He’d take care of it – nobody’d better fuck with those white boys out there or they’d have to deal with him, so people didn’t bother us.’ (Michael Bloomfield)

Just South of the ‘loop’ – the elevated railway that runs around the centre of Chicago – is what was once called ‘Jewtown’; a buffer zone between the city’s burgeoning black Southside population and its’ white neighbours. The centrepiece of the area was Maxwell Street, a mile long strip where merchants sold everything from Voodoo potions to car hub caps at the weekend. For musicians new to the city like Buddy Guy – he recalls Willie Dixon taking him there and showing him how to do tricks with his guitar - it was a place where they could busk and make a stab at survival.

In an immensely crass piece of town planning, the area has now been – like a lot of Chicago – tastefully redeveloped. For a a taste of what it was like, listen to ‘Live On Maxwell Street’ by Robert Nighthawk and his Flames Of Rhythm. Rounder CD 2022. It’s all there, the street noise, the hustle and the blues……