Today S Chicago Blues

Profiles dozens of Chicago's blues musicians; discusses the city's blues history; and offers tips on clubs, radio stations, record labels, grave sites, and places of interest to blues fans.

The booming industries of Chicago acted as a magnet for rural migrants from the Delta region of North Western Mississippi in the 1940s and 50s. The often painful adjustments made by these new arrivals in the 'Windy City' led to the rise of a new musical form, an electrified urban version of the blues that was soon ringing out from the bars and clubs of the city's South Side. The impact that this music was to have on the development of popular music in the 20th century is impossible to overstate -- although its originators were often not the ones to pocket the profits. Blues lyrics -- concise, earthy, humorous, or downright dirty -- encapsulated the urban experience as no music had done before.

(Guitar Educational). As rhythm guitarist for blues legend Muddy Waters, Steady Rollin' Bob Margolin has gained invaluable experience in the art of Chicago blues rhythm guitar. And now in this exclusive and comprehensive book with video, Bob Margolin and blues author/historian Dave Rubin bring you the definitive instructional guitar method on the subject, featuring loads of rhythm guitar playing examples to learn and practice, covering a variety of styles, techniques, tips, historical anecdotes, and much more. To top it off, every playing example in the book is performed by Bob Margolin himself!

Contributions by Luther Allison, John Broven, Daniel Droixhe, David Evans, William Ferris, Jim O'Neal, Mike Rowe, Robert Sacré, Arnold Shaw, and Dick Shurman Fifty years after Charley Patton's death in 1934, a team of blues experts gathered five thousand miles from Dockery Farms at the University of Liege in Belgium to honor the life and music of the most influential artist of the Mississippi Delta blues. This volume brings together essays from that international symposium on Charley Patton and Mississippi blues traditions, influences, and comparisons. Originally published by Presses Universitaires de Liège in Belgium, this collection has been revised and updated with a new foreword by William Ferris, new images added, and some essays translated into English for the first time. Patton's personal life and his recorded music bear witness to how he endured and prevailed in his struggle as a black man during the early twentieth century. Within this volume, that story offers hope and wonder. Organized in two parts--"Origins and Traditions" and "Comparison with Other Regional Styles and Mutual Influence"--the essays create an invaluable resource on the life and music of this early master. Written by a distinguished group of scholars, these pieces secure the legacy of Charley Patton as the fountainhead of Mississippi Delta blues.

Discover the living legacy of Chicago Blues in this guide to the iconic clubs and musicians who made—and keep making—music history. During the Great Migration, African Americans left Mississippi for Chicago, and they brought their music traditions with them. The music took root in the city and developed its own distinctive sound. Today, Chicago Blues is heard all over the world, but there’s no better place to experience it than in the city where it was born. In Exploring Chicago Blues, Chicago music writer Rosalind Cummings-Yeates takes you inside historic blues clubs like the Checkerboard Lounge and Gerri's Palm Tavern, where folks like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Ma Rainey transformed Chicago into the blues mecca. She then takes you on an insider’s tour of the contemporary blues scene, introducing the best spots to hear the purest sounds of Sweet Home Chicago.

The club is run-down and dimly lit. Onstage, a black singer croons and weeps of heartbreak, fighting back the tears. Wisps of smoke curl through the beam of a single spotlight illuminating the performer. For any music lover, that image captures the essence of an authentic experience of the blues. In Blue Chicago, David Grazian takes us inside the world of contemporary urban blues clubs to uncover how such images are manufactured and sold to music fans and audiences. Drawing on countless nights in dozens of blues clubs throughout Chicago, Grazian shows how this quest for authenticity has transformed the very shape of the blues experience. He explores the ways in which professional and amateur musicians, club owners, and city boosters define authenticity and dish it out to tourists and bar regulars. He also tracks the changing relations between race and the blues over the past several decades, including the increased frustrations of black musicians forced to slog through the same set of overplayed blues standards for mainly white audiences night after night. In the end, Grazian finds that authenticity lies in the eye of the beholder: a nocturnal fantasy to some, an essential way of life to others, and a frustrating burden to the rest. From B.L.U.E.S. and the Checkerboard Lounge to the Chicago Blues Festival itself, Grazian's gritty and often sobering tour in Blue Chicago shows us not what the blues is all about, but why we care so much about that question.

The ideal handbook for every rock-n-roll pilgrim, Music USA tours the musical heritage of America, from New York to Seattle, stopping at all the shrines of sound in between. Coverage includes background on the development of local music styles, with details on clubs and venues, radio stations and record stores nationwide.

14. "Taking New Heart": Organized Labor and the Postwar Strikes -- 15. "Eyes to the Future": Chicago in 1919 -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author -- Back Cover