 |
 |
ERIC CLAPTON CROSSROADS GUITAR FESTIVAL CHICAGO
Rebroadcasting on March 19, 2008 on PBS (check local listings)
Premiered on November 28, 2007 on PBS
ESSAY
CHICAGO BLUES
(continued)
McKinley Morganfield -- most people called him by his nickname, Muddy Waters -- made the trek to Chicago from Mississippi and arrived in 1943 eager to work in a factory during the day and play his rough-cut rural Mississippi blues at night. At first Waters played an acoustic guitar, but when he could afford a new electric model, he bought it and started a blues revolution that would spread far beyond the Windy City.
Waters loved the loudness of the instrument -- he could hear himself above the cackling bar crowd -- and its sinewy tones. At the same time Waters was experimenting with the electric guitar, the brothers Chess -- Phil and Leonard -- two Polish Jews intent on making a living in the local music business, signed Waters to their Aristocrat record label. In 1948 they issued two Waters sides, "I Can't Be Satisfied" and "I Feel Like Going Home." Neither Waters nor the Chess brothers could have predicted that the record would sell out, but it did -- and quickly. Waters had stumbled on a new magic formula; his blues songs had elements of the city and the country in them, and he sang and played his guitar as if Mississippi had been transplanted to Chicago's South Side, which, of course, it had.
Not long after the success of his recording debut, Waters put together a blues band and sparked a creative blues explosion in Chicago that was unrivaled anywhere at any other time. Suddenly, in the 1950s, Chicago was alive with electric blues, and artists like Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Willie Dixon, Otis Spann, Jimmy Reed, Elmore James, Jimmy Rogers, Junior Wells, and James Cotton became household names. Playing blues that was hot, sexy, and sweaty, they put Chicago on the blues map, and Phil and Leonard Chess, with their new Chess Records, recorded most of them, making the label the most important in blues history and the city the new home of the blues. Songs such as "I Just Want to Make Love to You," "Evil," "Juke," "Bright Lights Big City," "Mannish Boy," "Little Red Rooster," "Dust My Broom," "Back Door Man," "Rollin' Stone," "Hoochie Coochie Man,"and "Got My Mojo Working" filled black bars and clubs and became certified blues classics.
There seemed to be no end to the vitality of the music as the city attracted more and more aspiring young blues musicians from the South and other parts of America. Soon, new names like guitarists Buddy Guy, Magic Sam, and Otis Rush surfaced and gave new twists to Chicago blues. But what the blues didn't take into consideration in Chicago and elsewhere was the shifting musical tastes of black Americans. With the arrival of the '60s and the civil rights movement, a growing number of young blacks shunned the blues for the more contemporary sounds of soul, which, ironically, couldn't have been created without the blues coming first.
Chicago never lost its blues grip, despite the competition from soul and rock and later funk and hip-hop, but it did dwindle in popularity. As the '60s transformed into the '70s and later decades came and went, the blues remained a Chicago constant. Sales of records decreased and old bluesmen passed on, but Chicago kept its legacy intact. Today, in the 21st century, the blues still lives in the city, making "Sweet Home Chicago" still home to America's greatest roots music form.
Top banner photo: Festival stage at Chicago's Toyota Park (credit: Dave Allocca, Starpix)
|
|
|
|
photo: Buddy Guy
|
|
