For immediate release, May 26, 1999
Contact: Professor Steve Balkin, Roosevelt University, 312-341-3696
Without Maxwell Street there would be no Chicago Blues Festival. While this flashy high budget Festival in Grant Park continues to be held every year, its origin, Maxwell Street, is in danger of elimination as the University of Illinois at Chicago moves forward with its plans to destroy what remains.
"The Grant Park Blues Fest is a good thing but people ought to know where it came from. This is like people making a fuss about some new fancy church but forgetting about Jesus and the disciples, the humble men the teachings came from." says Blues musician and folk artist Frank Little Sonny Scott Jr., who is also a member of the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition.
In order for the public to experience where the music originated, the Coalition will host a Blues jam in the old Maxwell Street neighborhood. It will be held outside, Sunday, June 6, 1999 from 9:30AM to 1:00PM at the northeast corner of Maxwell and Halsted, across of Original Jim's Hot Dog Stand, about a mile south of the Sears Tower. This event is organized by Frank Scott and will feature Dancin Perkins' band, Mr. Pitiful and the Blues Busters. Frank Scott says, "This is a going to be an old fashioned, on-the-street Blues Jam session -- Blues legends and veterans but anybody can sit in. We want to raise awareness of the need to save Blues landmarks. This is our way of praying for our heritage to be saved. Maxwell Street is sacred, made holy by the poor people who came here and, out of their hard life and times, gave electric blues to the world."
Opening the jam session will be 1940s Maxwell Street veterans, Jimmie Lee Robinson and Johnnie Mae Dunson (if she is feeling Ok). Jimmie Lee Robinson (the Lonely Traveler) played with Frank Scott and Freddie King in the 1950s in a group called the Everyhour Blues Boys. He wrote the Blues song, Maxwell Street Teardown Blues (which is on his Maxwell Street Blues CD). Last year he went on a 61 day fast as a Gandhi inspired protest to save Maxwell Street. 78 year old Johnnie Mae Dunson started playing drums for Eddie Porkchop Hines while he danced on Maxwell Street. She later played drums with and wrote songs for Jimmy Reed. She continues to writes blues songs everyday and composed and sang a Maxwell Street Blues Lament, for the Internet, to influence University of Illinois Chancellor David Broski and Mayor Daley to save Maxwell Street. She is also a folk artist, making jeweled canes and collage Blues poster signs. One of her canes is on display at the Harold Washington (main) Library.
Robert Dancin Perkins, a stalwart of the Chicago Blues scene and a retired crane operator, was born in 1931 in the countryside near Baltimore Maryland. His parents moved to the near South Side of Chicago when he was four years old. He was first taken to Maxwell Street by his parents when he was eight years old and remembers hearing a lot of the bands back then. "They be really gittin it on," he says. His parents bought him an acoustic guitar in the Maxwell Street area when he was ten years old. He was inspired to play Blues from listening to the musicians on Maxwell Street and from hearing his stepfather, Luther Miller, play blues guitar around the house. He regularly played on Maxwell Street from 1965 up until the old market was moved in 1994. He played with John Davis (the Mayor of Maxwell Street), Maxwell Street Jimmie Davis, Pat Rushing, Willie James, and John Emery, whom he credits "with keepin me going to play the Blues by finding me jobs at the clubs."
He got the nick name, Dancin, because of the eccentric dance steps he does while playing his bass guitar. He is also known as Mr. Pitiful, a name he got from playing with a band Magic Slim and he headed, called Mr. Pitiful and the Teardrops. When Magic Slim wanted to tour England with the band, Mr. Perkins had to decline because of his fear of flying, and so split off from the band. Perkins kept the name Mr. Pitiful and Magic Slim kept the name Teardrops. Mr. Perkins now calls his band, Mr. Pitiful and the Blues Busters. It is a four piece band, which includes his son Chris on drums, plus a singer, the Down Home Lady, who also got inspired to sing blues by going down to Maxwell Street.
A film crew from England, Nowmedia, will be recording the event for a documentary video and a worldwide radio broadcast about the struggle to save Maxwell Street.
This may be the last time live Blues is heard on Maxwell Street.
Frank Scott, 773-264-4746; Dancin Perkins, 773-778-8134; and Jimmie Lee Robinson, 773-778-1476 are all available for interviews. Information about the Maxwell Street Coalition and Nowmedia are available by contacting Steve Balkin, 773-549-2545 and by visiting the Coalition website <http://www.openair.org/maxwell/preserve.html>.
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