Who Stole the Soul from the Blues?
Blues Foundation policies not helping most black musicians

Republished from Bonni's website Blog from March 2007

The world is going to end soon, declared the crusty old author Kurt Vonnegut, in the Aug. 24 2006 Rolling Stone. America’s addiction to oil will bring world war and environmental collapse, Vonnegut said; it’s hopeless.
Except for one thing: the Blues.
“You must realize that the priceless gift that African-Americans gave us musically is almost the only reason many foreigners still tolerate us,” Vonnegut said. “That the specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is the blues."
Growing out of some of the toughest human conditions in the world, blues has struck a universal note. “Blues is the classical music of Black people,” wrote Ralph Metcalfe Jr., music promoter and historian. More broadly, blues is the root of American popular music: jazz, rock, r&b, hiphop, even influencing country and folk music
Yet, like other forms of American roots music, blues gets lost in the scramble for the latest marketable new thing. A few giant record companies and media chains control hundreds of stores, venues and radio stations. Their advertisers want pop music that is safe, bland, even trashy.
As the great old generation of blues men and women pass from the scene, the blues sinks further in the marketplace. Bob Putignano’s column from New York in the December 2006 issue of Big City Rhythm & Blues magazine notes, “Each day does not pass without some disturbing news about an artist not being able to go out on tour, a label running into financial stress, and about how clubs are not as willing to book blues based music.” Blues record companies constantly lament their tiny 1-2% share of the market. Schools keep cutting arts subjects out of the curriculum; in many cities, students are starved for musical instruments and teachers. If young people don’t hear blues, how can they get into it?
Standing against this tide is a diehard network of blues societies, largely-volunteer radio DJs, festivals, and small local venues. For national leadership, many blues fans look to the Blues Foundation in Memphis. The Foundation states that its mission is “to preserve blues history, celebrate blues excellence, support blues education and ensure the future of this uniquely American art form.” http://www.blues.org/about/index.php4
But what is the Blues Foundation doing to fulfill its mission? Its two major events are not education, nor outreach to find new fans. Rather, they are competitions among existing musicians! The Blues Music (W.C.Handy) Awards and the International Blues Challenge (IBC) aim at generating even more new bands, not new fans. The blues music business is already crowded and sometimes vicious. In Chicago, which advertises itself as the world blues capital, tourist clubs are paying musicians a pittance. With the infighting over smaller and smaller crumbs in a tiny pie, the blues could soon die of backstabbing.
The main Blues Foundation competition is the “Blues Music Awards” in May, formerly named after W.C. Handy, a highly educated African-American composer in the early 20th century when vaudeville was evolving into jazz. Handy, a trumpet player, discovered black people in the south playing a primitive music, which they called the blues. One wonders why the dignified, historic name “Handy Awards” was dropped, just last year.
The awards themselves show that today’s African-American blues men and women are not being encouraged to emerge in their 40s and 50s. Of 25 Handy Award categories in 2006, 10 went to white musicians, 15 to black. Of the 15 black artists receiving awards, six were deceased and all but one of the rest were over 65. The opposite was true for the white awardees; all were under 65. The message to up and coming black blues artists, intended or not: You are worth nothing until you are old or dead.
How does the Blues Foundation determine the winners? Record companies and current recordings dominate the process. Record companies and some artists submit recordings, limited to releases in that year, to 100-125 blues business people whose identity is screened from the public. The Foundation website does not say who chooses the “committee of 100.” The committee goes through two rounds of nomination; fortunately, those with vested interest in a song or artist are excluded from Round 2. Foundation members (memberships cost $25; you can join at www.blues.org ) then vote among five nominees in each category.
Early Handy award winners were solid blues men and women. http://www.blues.org/bluesmusicawards/pastyears.php4
In 1982 they included Albert King, Bobby Blue Bland, Sippie Wallace, Buddy Guy, Jr. Wells. Are there good musicians following in their legacy out there today? Yes…and though their names are not household words, their faces can be found on the covers of Big City Rhythm & Blues, Living Blues, and several fine European magazines. But they don’t have a record deal every year, so you won’t find them at the Handy (sorry, I’m still calling it Handy) Awards. Instead, you’ll find some big names of pop and rock stars who happen to do a blues album.
Blues is not the music of successful pop and rock stars. It is the cry of a people who suffered 500 years of slavery, poverty, brutality, and discrimination. And, some say, even that cry is being stolen from them.
Besides having a tough time winning Handy Awards at the top end, the middle aged African-American professional musicians also face obstacles trying to break into the bottom of the national blues scene. For 20 of the 22 year history of the International Blues Challenge each February, the rules favored amateurs over professionals. Only after an outcry when Joey Gilmore was disqualified as first place winner of the 2005 competition due to an obscure 10 year old record deal, were the rules changed to fully admit professionals. The rules had excluded many African American full time musicians in favor of mostly-white amateurs with money to promote themselves.
It doesn’t stop there. National and local Blues Challenge winners are awarded agents and festival slots. Hearing these amateur bands, fans will not necessarily learn what real blues sounds like. And amateur acts that take blues festival or club stages tend to put veteran professional musicians out of a job.
The contest rules on judging also fall short. The Blues Foundation’s website under “IBC Scoring Criteria” says only: “Everyone has his or her own interpretation of what is and is not Blues. Any given three-judge panel will include members with varying opinions of blues, covering the spectrum of blues whenever possible, from the most traditional to soul/blues and rock/blues.”
In reality, with very few African-Americans in the local or national judging panels, the evaluating is not always balanced. Even though the IBC scale is supposed to be “4 points blues content, 3 points talent, 2 points originality and 2 points stage presence,” bands emphasizing original rock or folk-rock tunes have won first place in local competitions this year.
Go back to the definition of blues. The key is not making up something original and clever, although that can be entertaining. Rather, the blues is based on feeling. “Ever since the blues first developed from African-American field hollers, feeling has been the most essential ingredient,” writes critic Bill Dahl under “What is the Blues: Essays” on the Blues Foundation web site, www.blues.org.
One problem might be that it’s hard to judge “feeling.” Many of us hesitate to use our right brains when we are designated a “judge.” Again, the African-American culture puts greater weight on feelings and relationships than the mainstream European American culture which values facts and theories. Perhaps having more black judges would bring back the feeling.
Willie Dixon, musician, producer and songwriter, was fond of saying that blues are the roots, other music is the fruits. And today, white critics like David Whiteis have pointed out that the roots of blues are in the feelings and community of African American culture. Separate the roots from the fruits too far, and you won’t have any more blues.
Could it be that an unconscious form of discrimination—the separation of the music from the people who make the music-- has eroded the heart and soul of the blues, and that is why it’s not winning more fans? Don’t we need a conscious effort to reconnect today’s aging masters of the art with African American young people, who are recently showing signs of interest? Don’t we need also to put these musical masters to work educating and entertaining people of all ages and backgrounds, instead of so much emphasis on contests pitting them against each other?
With better fed, happy professional blues men and women leading the way for other fans and musicians, blues will again be able to do its magical work: helping save the world by changing sorrow into fun!
Your comments are welcome.
Appendix: WC HANDY “BLUES MUSIC AWARD” winners, May 2006
African Americans (15 awards) and year of birth:
--Little Milton Campbell, 1934-2005: Album of Year, Soul Blues Album, Soul Blues Male Artist, Song of Year
--Clarence Gatemouth Brown, fiddle instrumentalist, 1924-2005
--Buddy Guy: Entertainer of Year, 1936
--Zac Harmon, Best New Artist, 1957
--Etta James, Traditional Female Artist, 1938
--BB King, Traditional Male Artist, 1925
--Eddie Shaw, horn instrumentalist, 1937
--Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, drum instrumentalist, 1936
--Mavis Staples, Soul Blues Female Artist, 1940
--Hubert Sumlin, guitar instrumentalist and Traditional album, 1931
--Historical Album of Year, Chess Recordings Vol. 2:, 1952-58: Muddy Waters , others

Non African Americans (10 awards and year of birth)
--Marcia Ball, piano instrumentalist, 1949
--Tab Benoit, Contemporary album, 1967
--Mookie Brill, bass instrumentalist, 1960
--Al Kooper, Comeback Album, 1945
--Janiva Magness, contemporary Blues Female Artist, 1957
--Charlie Musselwhite, harmonica instrumentalist, 1944
--Paul Oscher, acoustic album and acoustic artist of year, age not given, under 65
--Rod Piazza & Mighty Flyers, band of year, 1947
--Kim Wilson, contemporary blues male artist, 1951
Bonni McKeown, the white middle class author of this article, is a freelance writer and blues piano player in Charleston WV. She spent three years on the West Side of Chicago and co-produced Chicago bluesman Larry Taylor’s debut album They Were in This House. Her website is www.barrelhousebonni.com
- posted by Bonni @ 5/26/2010 09:52:00 AM

 

C.C. Copeland bass, West Side Wes drums, Killer Ray Allison guitar, and Abb Locke (hidden) on sax let the good times roll with kids after school in Donoghue Elementary, on the South Side of Chicago.

Thought I'd reprint an old column that appeared in Pioneer Press Skyline weeklyfor the neighborhood of downtown Chicago in April 2005. It's just as relevant today. Blues needs to be passed to the next generation!  It gives kids another way to express themselves, plus they learn about history and culture.  Check out a video about our Chicago School of Blues band which has been giving programs for the charity Rock for Kids.

West Side is the Best Side…

Blues for Kids: Forever, Today

- posted by Bonni @ 4/14/2010 08:20:00 AM

 
I've been getting to know some very brave and colorful politicians on the West Side of Chicago!  See my blog on Senator Rickey Hendon.  http://hendonsheroes.blogspot.com/
- posted by Bonni @ 1/03/2010 09:47:00 AM

 

Blues & the Spirit Symposium, Dominican University, May 22-24, 2008

Part 1. What do you learn at a Blues Symposium?

First of all, What is a symposium? I always wondered why an academic conference had such a fancy name. Here’s what the on-line dictionary says:

sym·po·si·um (sm-pz-m)

n. pl. sym·po·si·ums or sym·po·si·a (-z-)

1. A meeting or conference for discussion of a topic, especially one in which the participants form an audience and make presentations.

2. A collection of writings on a particular topic, as in a magazine.

3. A convivial meeting for drinking, music, and intellectual discussion among the ancient Greeks

Can you believe the last definition? A blues version of an ancient Greek college bull session! And that’s what Dr. Janice Monti, head of the sociology department at Dominican U. in the tree-line upperclass suburb of River Forest, IL, pulled off last weekend in organizing the first Chicago blues symposium. Living Blues Magazine had sponsored several years of blues symposia in Mississippi, but this was the first gathering to include heavyweight urban African American scholars and artists. The Dominican Sisters, smelling social justice at work, lent helping hands, prayers and smiles. Student aides and friendly sound men, like Papa G, whose long Polish(?) name I haven’t learned to spell, rushed to show us around. And there was no lack of music, drinking (be it water, coffee in the student snack bar, soda or evening wine!) and intellectual discussion. When you bring a hugely diverse group of 150 inquiring minds together, this is what’s bound to happen. Check out the on-stage talking heads: http://www.dom.edu/blues/biographies.html

The symposium was sponsored in part by an Illinois Humanities Council grant. Even though I’ve written and worked with Humanities folks for years, and have never forgotten those huge Humanities 1 lectures downtown in Morgantown’s Met theater with some of WVU’s leading professors, I still ponder the question: What are the humanities? So I went to the source of the symposium’s money. According to the Illinois Humanities council: “The humanities are the study of what human beings have thought, felt, and celebrated throughout the centuries and today. They grow out of an interest in the language, literature, thought, and history of humankind. The humanities emphasize analysis, interpretation, and exchange of ideas rather than the creative expression of the arts or the quantitative explanation of the sciences.”

So Humanities grants pay for discussions of history, theory and criticism of the arts, rather than presenting the art and music itself. However, Dr. Monti reasoned that music history is the expression of ideas and feelings coming out of a particular culture at a given time, and you can’t study music history without having music! She found other sponsors for art exhibits and live music concerts, receptions, and club tours during the symposium weekend.

After a tour of the black cultural centers of Bronzeville down on the South Side, the symposium opened Thursday night with a gospel invocation by the Imago Dei choir and blues musings by a panel of elders including community historian Timuel Black, poet Sterling Plumpp, writers Paul Garon and Jim O’Neal, a founder of Living Blues magazine; professor and jazz musician George Bailey, Willie Dixon’s widow Marie, author and Blues festival director Barry Dolins. Our group, the Larry Taylor Blues & Soul Band, www.larrytaylorbluesnsoul.com , was to play in a reception after the panel, and the musicians milled around, a little impatient with all the talk about blues and anxious to get up there and play the music.

In his role as ambassador for West Side blues, Larry encouraged other musicians to take turns on his stage. It turned into a magical evening led by Larry and his current bandmates (and fellow veterans of a Willie Dixon’s 1977 Berlin tour) Vernon and Joe Harrington, with West Side Wes on drums and me on keys. Our South Side buddy Killer Ray Allison was a guest star, contributing good-spirited singing and guitar wailing.

Other guests appeared in shining succession. Doris Fields, http://www.myspace.com/ladydandmission

West Virginia’s queen of soul, known as Lady D, did proudly in Chicago. Karen Wilson brought her jazzy voice from California and Mud Waters Jr brought his Delta and Chicago heritage and folks were treated to guitarist-singer Fernando Jones and extra-funky bass man CC Copeland. Everyone loved Larry’s version of Tobacco Road. Dr. Monti told us that the out of towners were impressed that Chicago had many great musicians they hadn’t heard a lot about.

For me, it was just a blast playing with these guys. Egged on by the audience, we kept going until the catering staff carted the food away. I only got to grab a handful of cheese, two crumb-crust tarts, and a half cup of wine. Probably all for the best!

The next day, Lady D found a homeboy. A fellow West Virginia native, James Abbington, gave a workshop demonstrating the function and sounds of gospel music vs. blues. She hopes to invite him sometime to share his observations in West Virginia. Our state is fertile ground for primary research on the legacy of black Appalachian church music and the Mountain State’s hidden history of jazz and R&B bands that toured during the prosperous 20^th century coal mining era. Doris also went to the Saturday fish fry and had a chance to hear Fernando Jones’ Columbia College blues ensemble http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5434/is_200803/ai_n25421015 (the first, long-overdue, college sponsored band in the country!) On the club tour she got to hear Chicago singers like Sharon Lewis and Peaches Staten.

Being a journalist as well as a musician, my favorite panel was about photographers and historians, called Preserving the Legacy. Photojournalist Marc PoKempner told how, by giving people copies of pictures of themselves, he gained the trust of musicians, clubgoers, and proprietors in the heart of the South Side, enough to take some amazing action shots of blues in the 1970s. Other artists on the panel, home videographer Carolyn Alexander and Maxwell Street musician and folk artist Frank “Sonny” Scott, had created their work with no formal training. Neither of them had much to say on the panel, but showed their arts in a reception afterwards, leaving the explanations to “the Fess” of Maxwell St., Roosevelt U. economics professor Steve Balkin.

Suzanne Flandreau, Head Librarian and Archivist, Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College Chicago, gave a graceful introduction to the panel. She noted the critics’ constant debate over the somewhat snooty terms “insider” and “outsider” art, and stated that the true insiders on the panel, having come from the local urban African-American culture that was being studied by the symposium, were, in fact, Frank and Carolyn. At the reception, professional photos by the late Raeburn Flerlage and others hung on the wall, with Frank Scott’s collage posters. Carolyn’s videos of blues bands playing at backyard West Side barbecues flickered on the screen as James Wheeler’s band played live near the wine, cheese and strawberries. Again, great feelings and great folks.

The heavy stuff was yet to come. Blog ya later.

Photos above: Symposium Coordinator Janice Monti (center) with me (left) and Doris "Lady D" Fields. Poet/historian Sterling Plumpp. White-hatted guitarist Fernando Jones. Singer Larry Taylor. Soul-Patrol webmaster Bob Davis and Bruce Iglauer of Alligator Records exchange views on the blues biz.

Symposium Part 2  Promotion for the Living      

Here’s what I learned in school…that is, at Dominican University May 22-24 2008, in the first-ever Blues and Spirit Symposium—a pioneering effort to explore the roots of urban blues and gospel.

Music of any era seems to be the result of three forces: 1) Creation, or what musicians bring out of their heads and hearts, 2) Audience, the needs and demands for music in the culture and individual lives of the listening public, and 3) Promotion--what promoters and sponsors are willing to put on the stage (and, in the modern era, on records). In the age of mass media, promoters, the middlemen, have held the key. At times, like during the Swing Band era and the soul and rock’n’roll era of the 1960s and 70s, they make a brilliant connection between the artists and the hearts of people, resulting in music that uplifts and even leads society. Sometimes they pander to the lowest common denominator and produce mediocrity and trash. At times (like now!) they impose their own limited views of what music they think different groups of people prefer—including their own racial biases. Strict classification of music for marketing purposes tends to categorize and isolate everyone. Music gets confined. Communication breaks down.

This sums up what I learned from the summary of keynote speaker Dr. Portia Maultsby, www.indiana.edu/~aaamc/news.php?id=v65c4 ethnomusicology professor from Indiana University, co-editor of the comprehensive book, African American Music based on her impressive, pioneering studies. She is now writing a book on how African American music relates to the “mainstream” of American culture. The mainstream by implication has been Euro-American, but as things change to a more inclusive vision of America, the analysis of our nation’s music is certain to reflect this. When Dr. Maultsby slowed slides and played musical samples of the 20^th century history, the promoters’ racial contortions seemed quaint. Almost silly, until you consider the serious impacts on black musicians trying to make a living. Examples:

**In the 1950s, black blues musicians like the Bo Diddley (RIP), Chuck Berry and the late Johnnie Johnson, and Little Richard innovated the faster, eight-beat style that became known as rock-n-roll. Somehow the white music promoters thought the white audience would not buy records by black people, even though white teenagers were busy sneaking into black clubs, imitating black dances, and combing through R&B music bins. The promoters went on a search for a white man who could sing black music. Voila! They found Elvis Presley. In the 1960s, the music biz found that with the proper marketing, good music was purchased by people of any race. Soul hits by Motown, Atlantic and Stax went to the top of both pop and R&B charts. But then the industry stopped promoting soul music, and it’s hard to find old-school soul on the radio today.

**A white girl group, the McGuire Sisters, with their bouffant, turned up hairdos, found promotional support to cover one of my favorite doo-wop songs, “Sincerely.” The original performers, the Moonglows, a black group, could not get the same level of promotion. Dr. Maultsby showed their pictures on the screen, and you can find both versions on YouTube.

**Much later, in the 1980s, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan came along with a flood of musicians down in Texas. Stevie Ray picked up the guitar style of Chicago bluesmen Albert King, Hubert Sumlin and Larry’s stepdad Eddie Taylor and added a Texas hat. Promoters turned him into a superstar, still idolized by electric guitar players everywhere. Stevie Ray and his brother Jimmie cut their musical teeth in Antone’s club in Austin, Texas. Clifford Antone was a gangster who got busted for drug selling, which did not keep him from running the club. He loved Chicago blues, and he brought people like Albert King, Buddy Guy, BB King, Sunnyland Slim, Jimmy Reed, Luther Tucker, and Eddie Taylor down to his club—even James Brown and Ray Charles. the local white Texan musicians learned to copy their music. Before he died, Clifford Antone made a DVD where you can see all this for yourself.

Now white superstars Elvis Presley and Stevie Ray Vaughan always gave due credit to their musical teachers, but the business promoters basically took the blues guys’ music for the lowest possible price and left their careers to flounder. This type of musical thievery is still going on in various forms, aggravated by some promoters who assume that the black musicians are poor, ignorant and easily ripped off.

During the Saturday panel of musicians, (which, in Humanities jargon is called “lived experience,”) Larry Taylor put some issues on the table that he said are hurting blues music today. Nobody wanted to touch these issues. They were:

1. Exploiting Dead Musicians: the tendency of promoters to use name recognition and make easy profits from the music of those who have passed on.

2. Lack of Promotion for living, upcoming African American musical artists seeking agents, publicists, and radio exposure. (The internet has potential for help here, according to Bob Davis of Soul-Patrol, who spoke on the Industry Panel.)

3. Ignoring Potential Audiences: The myth, repeated constantly in the blues press, is that blues has a limited audience and that black people don’t like the blues. People DO respond to blues musicians, especially performers who make an effort to relate to them. Larry and I think this myth is being spread by some who want to define and control their tiny corner of the music business. We are looking for a wider effort to educate the public, expose people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds to the music, and win more and better jobs for the musicians.

Two of the other black musicians on the panel showed their fear of losing whatever crumbs they now have in the biz, by scoffing at Larry’s comments. A well-known band leader in the audience had told several people including Dr.Monti that he would bring up some issues, but at the last minute declined to speak. However, sifting through the evaluations, Dr. Monti said she found the attenders wanted future symposia to focus on the music business issues.

So roll out the water, coffee, wine, cheese and strawberries for next year. Let’s see if another Blues and Spirit Symposium can address how the business part of music can facilitate, enhance, distort or shut down the natural human communication between the performer and his or her congregation of fans.

I believe that, in this day of rising costs of putting on live music (travel, equipment, advertising, insurance), we need to discover ways of doing business that build trust among venues, promoters and musicians. This cooperation generates good feelings that make more people want to participate and come to live shows. Everybody profits and everybody wins. It can be done! The Symposium did it.

Labels: blues symposium, Dominican U. blues, symposium

- posted by Bonni @ 6/30/2008 08:45:00 PM

 

Southside Chronicles 3: Monday June 2 2008

The Maxwell Street Afters

PHOTOS:

TOP: 57th Street Quaker House: Sophia Community Sunday night dinner. Housemates Arjuna rapper HB Sol) and Iccha with me; student activist Hannah, a dinner guest, tells Donn Wedd and daughters Julie and baby Sophia about her adventures with U.Chicago town, gown & hood

LEFT: Playing for Little Scotty (singer in pink) on the plywood Maxwell Street bandstand, 2000.

RIGHT: Felicia Porter, Ramblin Rose and me with the statue-ized apple selling guy at Ladies Blues Brunch on the new, homogenized Maxwell Street.

Maybe I’ve told you before about Chicago’s historic Maxwell Street, the neighborhood on the Near West Side where the street market drew thousands of people every Sunday from about 1910 to around 2000 when the city and UIC and some developers got together and tore it down. The fight to stop the demolition drew a lot of protestors, including me on my first of many trips to Chicago. There were 48-hour blues marathons on Frank “Sonny” Scott’s homemade plywood bandstand, near Jim’s famous hotdog and Polish sausage shop. Back in June 2000, I took my first rinky-dink keyboard, plugged it into an amp someone had fashioned from old stereo speakers, and played a few tunes with another bluesman named Scott—Little Scotty, who was at various times a pimp, a civil rights speaker, and a street seller of buttons of Martin Luther King, Pride in America, and Malcolm X. One by one as the Maxwell Street stores were demolished, people played music in the rubble til the bulldozers came and tore down the bandstand.

The loss of historic architecture was bad enough; most of the stores dated back before the Chicago fire in 1871, and only a few facades were saved. The upending of the market and the street corner music was even worse. Maxwell Street is sacred ground--the birthplace of Chicago blues. When African-Americans migrated by the thousands from the South in the 1940s and 1950s, Maxwell Street, being very close to where the Illinois Central train station was, ended up being the first stop for people to buy supplies. It had the flavor of an international market. Italians and Mexicans came to buy and sell; Jews owned many of the stores, giving the place the nickname of Jewtown. Our plywood bandstand was decorated with signs that said "Blacks + Jews = Blues, " no doubt inspired by Professor Steve Balkin of Roosevelt University, a devotee of Maxwell Street and the Jewish working class. Known by the musicians as “the Fess,” Steve and his wife were my first hosts in Chicago during the Maxwell Street protests.

African Americans had brought the music to the street corners—blues and gospel. Musicians would earn money playing at Maxwell Street, meet each other and get together to play gigs around town. Back in the 1960s and 70s, Larry’s stepdad, Eddie Taylor Sr. played on Maxwell Street and would take Larry along. My late blues godmother Johnnie Mae Dunson Smith was known as the Queen of Maxwell Street. She sang protest songs from her wheelchair when the stores were torn down.

.In the late 1990s, the city moved the outdoor market, now mostly run by Latino vendors, several blocks over to Canal Street and is supposed to move it to a permanent location at Desplaines Street. None of these places has the atmosphere of the original Maxwell Street, but it’s still a big fine flea market with good bargains and very tempting ethnic foods.

During the last four years, Maxwell Street itself was rebuilt, complete with University dorms and high-priced condos, and a cheerful, brick, gentrified shopping block with a few old facades. There are statues of apple vendors and ladies with shopping bags, even one of a blues musician. My housemate Arjuna, better known as the political rapper HB Sol, had not been to Maxwell Street for 15 years, and found it quite disconcerting. For him it was another example of people getting pushed out of their own ‘hood—something that could happen down here on the South Side too, as the U. of Chicago is making rumblings about expansion. Last week at the Sophia Community dinner here at 57^th Street Quaker House, Arjuna invited a guest, Hannah, who is a UC student and neighborhood activist. She told us that this university, just like UIC, tries to maintain a separation from the neighborhood, to the point of paranoid warnings to students not to step outside the square-mile Hyde Park confines of the campus.

But as Arjuna saw, there it was. A sanitized Maxwell Street. Like my Hampshire County WV buddy Francis Chilcoat’s own song goes, “Welcome to After. A-F-T-E-R!” It’s about a broken relationship, but it could be about a war. You get the feeling things are not the way they were, or were supposed to be. You have to cope with it. For thousands of years people have been conquered and lost their relatives and their homes. The world has seen a lot of Afters. Bullies beating up on people and nature, just making a mess. Genocide of Native Americans and slavery of Africans. The Holocaust. Rwanda. Cambodia. Bosnia. The Three Gorges Dam in China. Iraq. New Orleans. Mountaintop removal. Random shootings of innocent people. The blockbusting of urban neighborhoods in the 1960s, at the expense both of fleeing whites and overcharged, incoming blacks. Grief does not end. Resentments linger. Maxwell Street should not have been demolished. It was. In this life, one cannot fix Afters.

Some of the white middle class protestors have coped with the Maxwell Street afters by creating a foundation, with the intent to preserve the history. Maxwell Street Foundation has been responsible for books, a photo portfolio and several exhibits. They’ve collected artifacts from the street like the classic sign in a second story window which read, “We Cheat You Fair.” The slogan always seemed to represent Maxwell Street, where the only color that mattered was the color green and the price of anything was whatever the buyer and seller agreed on.

I serve on the advisory board of the Maxwell Street Foundation, which for the first time has a booth in the Chicago Blues Festival this week.

My job is to help preserve the music. I don’t mean recordings of music. I mean real live music with real live musicians, getting paid. (The industry promotion of live rather than dead blues musicians is a subject Larry brought up on the musician’s panel at last week’s Blues and Spirit symposium—a subject everyone promptly shoved back under the rug, but cannot stay there forever.)

Even in a town as huge and culturally with-it as Chicago, there are continual obstacles to live music. For example, the band playing outdoors at the Canal Street market has been hassled by the city to get a license. (They only play for tips as it is, and have always been allowed to entertain at the market.) As one of my housemates, Iccha, Arjuna’s wife, puts it, “The city wants to get part of every little bit of money you make. And every bit of money they might think you could make.” Then, last month, two weeks after I got here, city council threatened to pass an ordinance requiring an expensive promoter’s license for every small club or onetime charity benefit show. It would pretty much shut down the live music and theater that attract people to live in Chicago despite the $100 parking tickets. Five thousand musicians, actors and fans emailed in protest. I went to the city council and found out that the ordinance was buried in a committee, hopefully never to emerge. People are still wondering who had come up with such a horrible idea. http://savechicagoculture.org

Luckily, in the midst of all this nonappreciation of music, there is a restaurant/bar, Juniors Sports Lounge, in the middle of Maxwell Street that realized the new “improved” Maxwell Street was now competing with every yuppie shopping district and needed to offer something distinct. Something unique to the area, now that the poor black residents and the Jewish stores had been driven out. Something during a time before the sports come on TV, like a Sunday brunch with blues.

So Junior’s Lounge asked Maxwell Street Foundation to find some musicians, and I got the job. It was not hard. Underemployed musicians are roaming the streets and clubs here, as elsewhere, with empty pockets hanging out. The trick was that for only $150-250 we could not pay a full band, so we needed acoustic duo acts like those we have in West Virginia, without drums and loud electric guitars. In Chicago, though, acoustic blues music was countrified stuff that became outdated in the 1950s as soon as electric guitars came in. After some searching, I booked an interesting acoustic brunch series in 2007 with Fruteland Jackson (yep, that’s his real name and he’s one of the best blues educators in the country), Elmore James Jr., Larry Taylor and his guitar playing brother Eddie. This year during April, Fruteland www.fruteland.com played a duo with another award-winning blues teacher, Fernando Jones, who started the nation’s first college blues ensemble at Columbia College.

For the May and June blues brunches on Maxwell Street, I decided to try a women’s acoustic show. I called up Ramblin’ Rose, one of the singers who has been visiting the Maxwell Street market, and a young trombone player, Felicia Porter, who splits her time between Greece and Chicago, and hauled my keyboard, amp and mic down to Junior’s Lounge. (Since I am organizing shows for Junior’s Lounge co-sponsored by Maxwell Street Foundation, I guess that qualifies me as a promoter; under that ridiculous proposed ordinance I would have had to pay a $500 fee, which is about what I earned for my part of the five Ladies Blues Brunches we have put on.) Joining us this week on bass has been Cecile Savage, originally from France, who began playing in Chicago over 25 years ago with Larry’s generation of blues men and women.

Being as it was a very short term gig, we did not rehearse. There are standard blues tunes everybody knows, and you just try to adapt to the singers and musicians as you go along. You know the basic chords, rhythms and patterns, and you improvise. That’s what makes blues so much fun. Ramblin’ Rose is very good at exchanging remarks with people in the audience, and putting them in songs—especially with the Denise LaSalle favorite “I’m a Dirty Old Woman.” People liked my song “We’ll Still Have Memphis” which gave Felicia a chance to croon on the trombone. Cecile sung a lovely original tune called “Spring Fever” that was a little like “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” My 57^th Street housemate Iccha, who is studying jazz singing, cheered us up with “Simple Life.” Another woman guest singer pulled off “God Bless the Child.” Rose took out her flute and played the jazz standard “Killer Joe” with Cecile and Felicia.

Arjuna (HB Sol) even tried his hand at rapping with the live band. Wendy, another bass player, stopped by and spun out a funky groove for his rhymes. Instead of having a set mechanical beat, HB had the chance to tell the musicians to speed up or slow down. Some rappers are like showoff guitar players, trying to get in the maximum number of words (like Gilbert & Sullivan) or notes per measure. But Arjuna told us, “Slow it down. I want to make sure to get the words in.” HB’s serious raps are found at his website: www.myspace.com/hbsolmusic On his new album “Monumental.” He hits the mark with his satire on “Free Love” and its consequences. Beware, there is some profanity, but there’s a purpose and a moral(!) to it.

By the time the Ladies Blues Brunch was over, the ladies and guests had played blues, jazz, pop and hiphop. It all naturally evolved from the river of American music created by African-Americans—the river described by last week’s symposium keynote speaker Dr. Portia Maultsby, ethnomusicology professor from Indiana University. Classifying music in genres is convenient for marketing, while frustrating for musicians. At least on Sunday, at Juniors Lounge, it wasn’t our responsibility to:

Classify or ossify

Stupefy or crucify

Dignify or biggitify

We just made our fingers fly

We just made our voices cry

Didn’t stop to wonder why

We just tried to keep the beat

Flowing down on Maxwell Street!

Aren’t these hiphop rhymes fun? Maybe we can survive the Afters.

If you’re in Chicago, we have one more Sunday Ladies Blues Brunch coming up: June 8, from noon to 2 p.m, Junior’s Lounge, 724 W. Maxwell St. You can get there on the Blue Line L at UIC. A big THANK YOU to Junior’s management and
Maxwell Street Foundation for co-sponsoring our blues brunches.

And don’t forget…I’ll be playing Friday June 6 with the Larry Taylor Blues and Soul Band, www.larrytaylorbluesnsoul.com at 2 pm in the West Side Revue on the Crossroads Stage of the Chicago Blues Festival in Grant Park. Am I scared? Yeah. In fact I gotta get off this computer and work on my music! This is the big leagues. Larry’s three act West Side revue, featuring the Harrington brothers Vernon and Joe, plus guitarist Willie Davis who is on our CD, plus horn blowers BJ Emery and Mike Finnerty, begins at noon and ends at 5:30. The first act at noon features Joe B’s Shotgun band with West Side singers Al Harris, Willie D, Ice Mike, and ZZ Hill Jr. The final act at 4 pm is the Taylor brothers and sisters. On Thursday and Saturday I’ll probably be found at the Maxwell Street Foundation booth, handing out history brochures. C’mon down to the fest!

If you would like to see a classy evening blues show this weekend , Larry’s also at the Checkerboard Lounge as special guest of Killer Ray Allison Thursday June 5 and Friday June 6 at 9:30 pm, 5201 Harper Ct., just around the corner and two blocks from the 53^rd Street Metra train station. Sunday night I sat in on keyboards to play the old-fashioned stuff with Killer Ray at a South Side neighborhood club called Good Times. Killer Ray just keeps on playing and makes everyone smile and dance. It was a blast!

As long as there are people, there will be blues to sing. Welcome to After.

Labels: Francis Chilcoat, HB Sol, Little Scotty, Maxwell Street

- posted by Bonni @ 6/02/2008 02:19:00 PM

 

Mojo is Working, and we are too

Bonni’s South Side Chronicles 5/16/08:

Hunting more gigs in Chicago, Larry Taylor and I are out hanging around blues clubs again. At Rosa’s Lounge, where Mama Rosa serves drinks for all and is glad to make us some late night coffee, we sat in with one of Larry’s old buddies, Killer Ray Allison. Killer is aptly named. Scorning the wise union standard of playing 45 minutes and taking a break, he sings and wails on the guitar for two or three hours, going through two or three drummers and bass players, never losing his sunny smile. And because Ray doesn’t stick to the same old lump-de-lump blues, but tackles anything from 1950s Chicago blues to smooth R&B ballads and funkadelic madness, adventurous musicians seek him out each Wednesday at Rosa’s. This week we got to play the Temptations’ dreamy “Just my Imagination” and James Brown’s frantic “Get on Up.”

Perched behind the hard-action baby grand piano at Rosa’s, I had no chance to escape before Ray decided to throw down a high-speed version of “Mojo Workin.’” This Muddy Waters classic has a Holiness church-type beat.( Get out your tambourine and go doot, doo-de doot, doo-de doot-- real fast.) “Mojo” is an old southern word for “magic,” as in casting a spell on a person or object of desire: “got my mojo workin’ but it just won’t work on you.”

When the song got going, I don’t know how many crazy beats per minute, Ray nodded at me to play a solo. I couldn’t get in between the beats to play any kind of a melody. I felt like Gilda Radnor in the old factory skit on TV Saturday Night Live, trying to squirt just a tad of whipped cream atop each of the hydrogen bombs that lurched toward me on the conveyor belt. The music piled up, faster and faster. My mojo totally quit working, and I exploded in giggles. Not so amusing if my own audience had been there, expecting me to play something intelligent, but in this Wednesday night jam, Ray was egging everyone to try anything. A jam where the competition is hearty, but mistakes are welcome—what a relief! I threw up my hands and laughed.

“We got to slow Ray down,” Larry said later, quite earnestly. “I tried to sing and couldn’t get the words in.” He worries that his buddy is working himself too hard, but Ray is a natural force, like the winds that blew the rain showers through here last week. Larry resigned himself to the gale force, saying, “That’s ok. When Ray leads the song he’ll do it fast, the way he wants to, but when I get up there I’ll put him to play in the groove with me. You can’t get a groove when you go too fast. Ray and I go way back in this business. He’s helping me work to get my voice in shape for these gigs. This is great practice.”

Both Larry and Killer Ray were drummers for 30 years, playing behind the greatest blues and soul bandleaders. Ray played with Buddy Guy, and was even in a movie once. But fame seldom reaches to the drummer in the back line of a band, Gene Krupa of the swing era being an exception. To make any money in music you have to lead your own band, and that’s what both of them decided to do. Check out their websites:

http://www.myspace.com/killerrayallison

www.larrytaylorbluesnsoul.com

Ray has invited Larry to be a special guest in his show Saturday at the Wabash Tap , 1233 S. Wabash where one of Koko Taylor’s blues clubs used to be. The Tap will be a base for Saturday’s bus tour of several Chicago blues clubs. I’m sure the tour riders will get more than their money’s worth there with Killer Ray and Larry. Walk-ins are welcome at the Tap too: http://www.chicagobluestour.com/wp/?cat=19

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get my mojo back for the Sunday Blues Brunch show, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Junior’s Sports Lounge. Singer Ramblin’ Rose Kelly and I pulled off our first brunch last week, doing some old favorites like Willie Dixon’s “Wang Dang Doodle,” Jimmy Reed’s “Bright Lights Big City” and “Let’s Get Together.” (Jimmy, they say, was drunk and trying to play on Maxwell Street in the early 1970s when my late blues godmother Johnnie Mae Dunson hauled him away and helped him get dried out. Eddie Taylor, Larry’s dad, played with Jimmy Reed for years.) Also the Peggy Lee jazzy favorite “Fever” which Rose sings very slinkily. Rose, who moved to Chicago from Arkansas as a toddler, started her singing at age 12 in a West Side church choir and has taken her voice around the world since.

Labels: Killer Ray Allison, Larry Taylor, Maxwell Street

- posted by Bonni @ 6/02/2008 02:12:00 PM

 

South Side Chronicles 1 : Hyde Park May 9, 2008

Hi everybody. Here I am in urban heaven, Hyde Park, Chicago, a multicultural, intellectual bright spot bounded by expressways, ghettos, and Lake Michigan. On Woodlawn Ave. at 56-57^th St. is a row of stately early 20^th century campus church houses, like in Morgantown near the WVU library, where I used to hang out in the 60s . There’s Hillel, the UUs, American Baptists and UCCs, Presbyterians, right on the same block as our oldest Quaker meeting house in Chicago, where I am staying. The Sophia religious community, not Quaker but with similar same values of simplicity, integrity, peace, etc., stays as permanent residents and runs the guest rooms that keep the house afloat. Don and Lisa are the longest-residing couple. Their youngest daughter, 3 mos., is named, naturally, Sophia, the Biblical name for wisdom. http://www.57thstreetmeeting.org/

Wisdom seems to be what Hyde Park is into.The wise seniors who have chosen to retire here enjoy their lakefront high-rises. The grocery store in the Hyde Park shopping center, Treasure Island, has the good things that are on my diet: stuff like raspberries and organic eggs. There are museums and dens of poetry, art and jazz. Students of all ages from everywhere in the world pad up and down the streets in sneakers and flipflops, with laptops and books, The younger ones occasionally chase each other up the street, uttering silly words. Birds are singing in the trees here, just as in the Appalachian spring back home. The streets are full of life.

The University of Chicago is here in Hyde Park—not to be confused with the crass institution known as University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) on the Near West Side, which gobbled up Maxwell Street and has all the class of a concrete highway. No, the U. of Chi. does have some class (although it might be getting ready to prey upon the real estate in the surrounding hood as well)—a gargoyle-like Biological sciences building, and the high-spired gothic Rockefeller Chapel, where I played four years ago with Little Scotty in a Dennis Kucinich rally. On Sunday in the chapel basement I went to a fascinating interfaith dialog group of Quakers, Unitarian Universalists, Mormons, Jews, Catholics and evangelical Christians. People mused whether each religion was governed by creed or process. The Latter Day Saints, Jews and Catholics weighed heavily on the creed side, while the UUs and Quakers were more led by spiritual and ethical principles and processes. Some were concerned about bogging down with creeds, others were worried about floating away without them.

The Quaker house promotes peace and cultural events. Tuesday evening I joined in a senior folk dance group that meets twice a month downstairs in the room where the Quakers meet on Sundays. In the basement is the church kitchen where I have carefully labeled my food stash; laundry, and, delightfully, an old upright piano! Upstairs on the second floor of the guest house, I have a fine room with wood floors and wide windowsills and glass doorknobs, and an old secretary-type desk with lots of cubbyholes to stick business cards, DVDs, staple refills, and maps. My laptop and printer are open for business: I’m here to improve my music, promote the blues shows I’m in, study Chicago culture, and write. It’s my freshman year all over again, only without all the drunk dorm-mates and my anxieties about the opposite sex. I have everything I need, right here.

No need for a gym this time of year; I just take my bike, the clunky three-speed that Oak Park Quaker buddy Judy gave me last year, and ride up and down the lakefront bike trail to warm up before doing my therapy exercises that keep my back straight and my butt in line. You can ride on the trail, right beside Lakeshore Drive, for miles and miles. I want to see if I can make it down to the vegetarian soul food restaurant on 75^th street sometime.

Three bookstores and an indispensable Kinko’s (where I can copy color handouts promoting our upcoming shows) have conveniently plunked themselves within five short blocks from the 57^th Street Quaker House where I live. And the best coffee spot, the Istria Café, is right under the Metra commuter train line where everybody gets off from downtown. It’s a tight, tiled little place where the friendly barristas make great coffee, and one can sit on the sidewalk outside, as people do in my first Chicago hood, Wicker Park. Last night I went to the 57^th St. Bookstore to hear author John Hagedorn talk about his book The World of Gangs.

Chicagoans make fun of Hyde Park and say it’s elitist. And people’s conversations here do get a little esoteric, like those folks at the Istria coffee house who were debating whether soy milk could possibly harm animals. However, it costs a lot to live anywhere in Chicago, so why not live here and get something for your money. Luckily I got a good deal here at the Quaker House, for which I thank the folks here (and my Higher Power). If you ask me, people who criticize Hyde Park are just jealous!

My favorite blues guy Larry Taylor is doing better every day. Still poor financially but not in spirit; the clouds are lifting from him, and despite the terrible economy we think we’re gonna make it.. We are looking to a big month of gigs coming up. In the Blues & Gospel Symposium at Dominican University in the near western suburb of River Forest, May 22-24. Larry’s band is playing for the opening reception and he’s speaking on a panel about his life in the blues. Lady D is coming to the big city for this conference, and we’ll have a report for the Charleston Blues Society. Larry is spearheading a three-act West Side Revue in the Chicago Blues Fest June 6. He’s also picked up a gig in Rosa’s Lounge May 23, playing there for the first time since our CD release party in 2004. We’ll be playing with Vernon and Joe Harrington, two of his oldest West Side buddies. These blues guys are allergic to rehearsals but I hope we can schedule one this time.

On Wednesday Larry and I went to an Obama reception at the upscale Latino place Cuatro Cocino on 20^th and Wabash. Later that evening at Rosa’s Lounge (I believe Robin and Mary Ellen from Charleston were at Rosa’s once with me, as was the late great senior center mover & shaker Peggy Rossi from Hinton) Larry got to sing with an old buddy, drummer-turned guitarist and singer, Killer Ray Allison. We also met a French female bass player Cecile Savage, who Larry had played with years ago when she was with harmonica player Sugar Blue. Cecile got her French radio buddies, who were also at Rosa’s, to interview Larry and me and served as translator. She played and sang one of those 1930s-type songs in the same style as Barrelhouse Bonni. I hope we can play together at some point.

Sunday is my first Blues Ladies Brunch gig at Junior’s Sports Lounge on Maxwell Street. This series is co-sponsored by the Maxwell Street Foundation, and the April blues brunches featured Fruteland Jackson and Fernando Jones. My first two Sundays from noon til 2, I’ll be accompanying singer Ramblin’ Rose Kelly, who I met last year when she came to the last brunch show honoring Piano C Red. The last three Sundays, I’ve invited Felicia Porter, a twenty-something who’s already very experienced in the jazz world, to play trombone. Back home in southern West Virginia, I am always spoiled by the expert horn players Dugan Carter, Bob Redd and Marshall Petty--gentlemen who consistently camouflage my musical mistakes. Hope to see them, and everybody else when I get back to Charleston and Hampshire County WV in mid-June.

I regret that the Sunday gigs will keep me from Quaker meetings for the rest of my stay in Chicago. Luckily I did attend this past Sunday and said hello to many 57^th Street Friends who I hope to see again in some fashion. I made salad for the biweekly potluck in the basement kitchen. Going right downstairs from my room to the meeting was kind of like waking up in the McK house at Capon and dashing down to the hotel for the flag raising and breakfast!

There is a very well-kept scholarly Quaker library down the hall on the same guest floor as the Martin Luther King Room where I stay. There I find my Granpa Lou Austin’s spirit hovering. I am reading the journal of John Woolman, a very patient man from New Jersey who consistently traveled and visited fellow Friends in the early 1700s, before America was a nation, and convinced them to give up owning slaves. Woolman was very mindful of how greed and luxury corrupts a person’s spirit, and how slavery spoils the lives of the bosses as well as those who are enslaved. We need some John Woolman types now, and I think we have them. But time feels short, we don’t have 30 years like he did to convince people that violence, injustice, and messing up the Creation is not honoring the Creator, and that these actions carry their own serious penalties and consequences. And more and more people are getting tired of being slaves.

For all issues and relationships, Quaker process really works, though the slowness of it has frustrated my impatient self. However, the way things are now on planet Earth, perhaps the Creator may see fit to speed up the remedies.

“If we don’t change our minds

If we don’t change our ways

We’ll be speeding like a rocket to the end of days,

We can stop the shooting, terror and polluting

And do what the Good Book Says.”

--Song by Lady D “Go Higher”:

http://www.myspace.com/ladydandmission

Labels: S.Side Chronicles 1: Hyde Park

- posted by Bonni @ 6/02/2008 01:17:00 PM