by D. Thomas Moon <dtmoon@flash.net> and Al Fijal
(reprinted with permission from the Feb/Mar1996 Blues Revue magazine)
It was the last day for Chicago's original Maxwell Street Market, an area roughly three city blocks deep and five wide that had been a multigenerational host to the blues. A greyish sky loomed ominously overhead. High winds ripped through plastic sheets that served to protect vendor's wares from the intermittent drizzle. There was an indescribable sadness in the air. An army of bulldozers and tractors had already begun to level the landscape at the summoning of a coalition of politicians and university administrators eager to make room for the expanding University of Illinois' athletic fields and parking.
It was a fate that had been sealed, at least in part, due to Maxwell Street's unseemliness. It was deemed too smelly, too dirty ... even too downmarket, as various community groups had long contended that Maxwell street was a perilous drop point for stolen goods. (It was a bad rap, though not completely unjustified. A few days earlier, land clearance had been slowed by a hazardous materials team upon discovery of a stolen yellow crate marked "Radioactive," which was found to contain a harmless moisture gage for construction materials.) But warranted or not, the working class world where hawkers and hustlers had vied with the grittiest, most down-home bluesmen to separate passersby from their change was to be forever bulldozed into history.
"This constitutes a disrespectful attitude towards the people," remarked George Meredith, one of many disgruntled merchants, some of whom had tried vainly to seek an injunction to reinstate the Maxwell and Halsted Street site. "I think it's a flagrant violation of human rights. It's a great injustice to the little man." He had a point. Twenty-five dollars once bought a year's license to sell. Anticipating a license fee of up to thirty dollars per week in the new market, many vendors had called it quits.
As our small caravan made its way through Maxwell Street's commercial epicenter for the last time, we mourned the apparent death of the one-of-a-kind style of open-air capitalism that had catered to up to twenty-thousand every Sunday for the past 120 years . At 14th and Halsted, we passed the familiar blue school bus whose powerful loudspeakers blasted the blues throughout the neighborhood in hopes of luring potential customers. Heading north on Newberry, we strode by piles of plumbing fixtures, tools, and hubcaps. Several swarthy figures stood huddled behind a nearby van, each intently negotiating the value of a handful of gold watches, chains and jewelry. Rounding the corner toward Maxwell, we came upon merchants of second-hand furniture, home-concocted insect killers, bowling balls and brass doorknobs. One mendacious vendor was selling a dilapidated whisky still.
A little further along, we stopped in front of Nate's Deli, site of the "Soul Food Cafe" in the Blues Brothers flick, to read a sign in the window. It read: "Attention! Although Maxwell Street is gone, Nate's Deli lingers on. I don't care what people say, Nate's Deli is here to stay!" Nate Duncan stood nearby, parceling out plenty of hugs in addition to the corned beef, brisket, and kosher pickles. [Despite wishful thinking, Nate's finally closed its doors on January 15th.] Across the street at the corner, we made another stop at Jim's Original World Famous Stand where a blind man was extolling the virtues of Jim's greasy Polish sausages while lamenting the impending doom that would soon settle on this patch of open-air commerce. We crossed Halsted and proceeded past Matty's Hot Dogs, one of few remaining permanent stands of the hundreds that once lined Maxwell Street. We were soon within sight of a doorway leading to an abandoned basement shoe store, where the owner had once thrown a member of our party out for wavering too much as the price came down on a pair of work boots.
It was all to be missed. Yet however much we anguished the market's commercial demise, it was the unconditional reverence for what Maxwell Street means musically that had really drawn us to the market on its final day. Upon hearing the first few teasing chords of what promised to be a bluesy tribute to James Brown, our troupe merged with a larger stream of devotees beelining its way toward the music. "Ladies! Can I do my thing?" a singer shouted from a sidewalk stage littered with shattered bottles, discarded brown paper bags and assorted debris. "I need six more dollars in the bucket." Each member of our party parted with the obligatory amount and the David Lindsey Band gave us every bit of our money's worth, including a moving eulogy, "The Last Day On Maxwell Street."
Further down the street, Piano C. Red was stopping pedestrians in mid-stride with his own dedication: "This is our last Sunday here," he said, leaning into his keyboard. "And this has been goin' on out here for the last 100 years. This is where the blues really started from, on Maxwell Street. Let me tell you something. We had the one and only Muddy Waters play here before he became a name ... Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James ... they all played here. Somewhere out there is Jew Town Jimmy. Where you at Jew Town Jimmy?"
A solitary figure clad in a loud Hawaiian shirt emerged from the crowd huddled near Cheat You Fair, where the sign advertised incense, pimp oil, pipe bongs and fashionable head gear. He politely waved and pointed to a cap which bore the inscription "Jew Town Jimmy." After exchanging smiles with this High Prince of Maxwell Street, Red exclaimed, "Jew Town Jimmy has been over here for the last 99 years!" Both men laughed loudly.
Had this been the case in actuality, Charles Thomas (a.k.a. "Jew Town Jimmy") would undoubtedly have a greater appreciation for his moniker, as the turn-of-the-century market was exclusively tailored to meet the needs of a growing Russian and European Jewish immigrant population. It wasn't until the mass influx of Black Southerners in the Thirties and Forties that Maxwell Street began to take on the look and feel of a Southern farmer's market as opposed to a gypsy bazaar. It was at this historical juncture that it also became a proving ground for resident bluesmen, who would typically set up in front of the houses of the main thoroughfare to take full advantage of the market crowds.
"When I started to playin' on Maxwell Street out in the public was somewhere 'round about '46 or '47," recalls Johnny Williams, a man who was acquainted with Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson and "Funny Pappa" Smith before migrating to Chicago from Belzoni, Mississippi in 1938. " It was different back then because straight down Maxwell Street almost all the way to the police station [the one you see in the opening credits of the Hill Street Blues television program], there was houses all along there. We would pay the people so much to let us hook up. We had long extension cords. We would be strung out from Newberry all the way through Sangamon."
Though union rules prohibited established artists from playing at the market, there was plenty of hungry talent on Maxwell Street to compensate for their absence. "That's where the biggest majority of us got our start, right from there," declares Williams. "Myself, Floyd Jones, Snooky Pryor, Homesick James, Moody Jones and Johnny Young. Grayhaired Bill was there at that time. Also, John Henry [Barbee] and Porkchop [Eddie Hines]. Muddy Waters used to play out there before he started recording. That's where we all got our breaks at." "These guys played Maxwell Street because they didn't have access to the clubs," explains Steve Cushing, host of WBEZ's Blues Before Sunrise radio show. "All of the Melrose guys from the earlier generation like Sonny Boy I, Tampa Red, Maceo and Jazz Gillum were established recording stars. For the most part at that point they had the clubs tied up. A lot of the guys who were coming from the South were having a hard time breaking into the clubs, so they went to play Maxwell Street."
Musicians typically arrived early Sunday morning to secure a spot, set up, and search out the appropriate combination of players necessary for a desired sound. Personnel shuffles between Maxwell Street bands were commonplace. Johnny Williams recalls: "See, when you got there you'd see who's ever was already set up. Maybe this guy wouldn't have but one guitar and he would say, 'Come on, work with us,' you know. That's the way it would go. You'd just show up with your guitar and not worry about it because you was going to get to work with somebody. Sometimes I'd go there and I'd hook up and play with Floyd [Jones]. Different months it'd me and him and Little Walter. Sometimes I'd hook up with another fella they'd call Charlie, or I'd hook up with Washboard. Different bands."
"They set up early in the morning," adds Delmark recording artist Jimmie Lee Robinson. "Sometimes they'd get there about seven or eight o'clock. Moody Jones and Floyd [Jones] and them always hooked up at my cousin's house, right across the street from a saloon called the Bucket of Blood. Moody Jones was my cousin's boyfriend. They'd get the juice from there. They always played right in front of her house. You might have seen a picture of a building with some long stairs going up. That was her house. She lived on the first floor. Little Walter's girlfriend lived there, the one that bought him his first amplifier. He lived with her there at my cousin's house too. We all was together. I was raised up with them, see. I was around Walter when he first played the harp on the electric amplifier."
Robinson recalls other early street performers: " I was playing down in Jew Town in the early 40's. I played acoustic guitar for years on the street. We had mandolin players and things --- a guy they called Willie and Johnny Young. There was no electric guitars in those days. What they had was tubs. You'd put a hole in the middle and put a rope in there and tie a knot. You'd get a broom handle and play a bass like that. And they had those jugs you'd play through --- brown jugs and washboards. Me and Willie, the mandolin player, would just play two pieces, just me and him then. There was also a guy named Harp. His real name was Louis. He ended up having sugar diabetes and they had to take both his legs off. He used to be going around Jew Town with no legs on. This guy named Harp, he used to take me around and he bought me an electric guitar and amplifier. He played the harp like the old harp players before Sonny Boy played. He didn't play the harp like Little Walter and them. He'd be hollerin', doin' dog calls ... he was different. He would go around and collect the money whilst I played. And sometimes Washboard Sam [not Bluebird recording artist Robert Brown] would play with me, the one that used to play with Stovepipe. Sometimes the bone man would play. As long as I heard them sticks goin', I could go."
Many street musicians who were on the scene in the late 40's went on to achieve celebrity status as recording artists and/or club performers of renown. Robinson remembers a number of those who were later to achieve stardom: "Earl Hooker was there in them days. We didn't call him Earl Hooker, just Zebedee. He lived on the South Side and he used to come all the way over and played on the street. He had a little band with him most of the time. We was together as kids in Jew Town. We all came up together. Little Willie Foster was down there. He had a nice lookin' woman named Josephine and they lived in the basement next door to Ed Newman. Willie killed a man over her, only they broke up some time later. I used to play with Little Willie Foster all along Jew Town. Jimmy Rogers used to live around there too when he first came to Chicago. We all used to be together --- me and Jimmy Rogers, Muddy Waters and Little Walter. Homesick James was there. He was a pretty boy in them days. He was young. Every time I played, Homesick was right there. That was in the late 40's --- '48, '49, around in there. You know who else used to be around Jew Town? Sammy Davis Jr.! Back in those days, he used to be at a place called the Newberry Center between Maxwell and Roosevelt on the west side of the street there. It was a place that was set up for the young people. They used to train us how to box and stuff like that. Sammy Davis Jr. was always associated with the kids --- teaching them tap dancin' and things like that. He was very talented".
Robinson himself eventually saw his share of the limelight, beginning with his collaborations with Eddie Taylor, who frequently worked Maxwell Street for tips in 1949. Robinson recalls their meeting and the early days of their partnership: "Harp told me that he had a guitar player --- somebody to start playin' with me. He told me he had nice, good hair, but Eddie had put some of that hot shot in his hair and it looked like it was curly, though it wasn't," he remembers with a laugh. "Eddie told me, 'I can't read. I can't write.' So I said that I'd do the reading and we got together like that. I started teachin' him how to play with me. I would play and he'd stand there and hold his guitar while I played and sometimes he'd try to play the tunes. We kept on bummin' around like that together. We'd be together every day, every night, every day. We would walk with our guitars and our amplifiers from Maxwell Street all down Halsted Street, clear down to Madison Street."
Despite the abundance of talent, Jimmie Lee Robinson and Johnny Williams agree that the undisputed heavy hitters of Maxwell Street's Golden Era were those associated with Moody Jones' Maxwell Street band: "Moody Jones, Ed Newman, and Fats [James Kindle] and my Uncle Sam [Norwood] always played together," says Robinson, "and I played with them too, 'cause I used to hang around Ed Newman's house when I was a young boy. We used to play in his back yard. Moody Jones was my idol. Me and him used to be together all the time. He could read music and was the best guitar player on Maxwell Street. Fats and One-Leg Sam --- they were great too. Fats played the banjo. He tuned it like you tune a guitar. One-Leg Sam, which was my Uncle, he played rhythm. He'd just rap the guitar. He was the best rhythm guitar player. And Ed Newman played upright bass. He was the best bass player that I ever heard playin' the true sound. He was the best! And I mean he could take that bass fiddle and slap it and throw it all kinda ways. He was tough!"
"Among we blues boys that played the blues out there, Moody Jones was the best," confirms Johnny Williams. "And at that time, Johnny Young, my cousin, played the mandolin. He was the greatest I ever heard, except [Charlie] McCoy on the mandolin. Also, One-Leg Sam. He was about the best background man with the guitar. Best I ever seed. He would mostly sit in with the fancy players --- mostly jazz. He didn't fool with no blues much."
There were those who fooled even less with the blues, or the "Devil's music" as it was apt to be called. "We had lots of sanctified people who mostly played around Newberry," recalls Williams, who himself gave up the blues to become a minister in 1959. "They'd be playin' their gospel music and we'd be playin' our blues. Moody Jones played with them. He converted his and would play in church, but I wasn't strong enough to do that."
"Me and Ed Newman, we was the ones that used to play in church," says Robinson. "Me, Ed Newman and One-Leg Sam. When Moody wasn't with them, then I was with them. There was a church around the corner on Peoria. Right on that corner was a house and they would meet up in that house there all the time --- through the week and everything. They used to try to get me. They tried to tell me I had a special gift. They tried to tell me I was supposed to be a healer and all. They tried to rope me in but I didn't get into it with them. I did play with them sometimes though. They'd preach and sing in the street. There was a young girl who sang with them who looked like she might have been a fast mama. She was always there singin'. They was sanctified. Boy, they'd kick them heels up and they'd dance and they'd sing. They'd have a big crowd around them every Sunday and all through the week sometimes.
"They'd be playin' the blues," Robinson proclaims candidly with a shrug. "The only reason it wasn't classified as blues was because they wasn't talking' about under the womens' clothes and talkin' about goin' to bed with 'em and layin' down and huggin' 'em all night long. But as long as they was using the same music and sayin' Jesus in it, they was church songs."
Few are aware of the musical heterogenity one was likely to encounter on Maxwell Street in the 40's and 50's. In addition to blues and its saintly sister, gospel, there was an abundance of folk, country/western, jazz and even polka music. "It wasn't just blues, like the people got it written," cautions Robinson. "They're givin' too much to the blues players and they're not giving enough to the ones that played versatile. See, the people that came down to Jewtown, what they really loved to see and hear in those days was people like Stovepipe who was playin' folk music. In those days country and western music was popular. They had the 'Supper Time Frolic' come on the radio. Blacks played country and western too. Stovepipe played country and western and polkas. Hell, black people might have been the inventors of it! The kind of blues you have now, like B.B. King, that's not real blues. The real sound was the guys playin' the country and western and the rags. Ed Newman, Fats and them played 'Beer Barrel Polka', 'Tennessee Waltz' and 'Drivin' Nails in My Coffin'!"
"A white fella used to come there every Sunday," adds Williams. "He'd look for me. He liked the 'St. Louis Blues.' I'd play that for him. Another one was 'Don't Get Around Much Anymore.' He'd like to hear that one. See, I was a sentimental musician. I played all popular stuff, such as 'Stormy Weather', 'Route 66', all jazz stuff. But the blues was the only way you made the money."
It is interesting to note that musicians were not the only ones to derive gain from the money-making potential of the blues. There were music stores, such as Goldstein's, where some street musicians would disburse their earnings for guitars, drums or accordions. There was the musicians' local haunt, Leavett's, a tavern on the northwest corner of Maxwell and Halsted where they would frequently go to eat and drink. And finally, there were those in the business of recording some of Maxwell Street's better performers.
One such entrepreneur, Bernard Isaac Abrams, established the Ora Nelle label and recorded Little Walter, Othum Brown, Johnny Young, Johnny Williams, Jimmy Rogers and many others on the premises of his Maxwell Radio Record Company store. Williams recalls: "He had a store right there on the corner. Otis [Othum Brown] and Little Walter had cut a record with him. Through by that, I went by there one day. I had a beat that he liked. I used to go by Tampa Red, he was an old musician, and he used to say, 'Uncle Johnny, now you need to cut that, because you's the first one I ever heard with that kind of beat.' I brought that beat to the people. So he [Abrams] said, 'I want to cut that.' I didn't get but fifty dollars for it."
"Abrams had a home recorder," elaborates Delmark Records founder Bob Koester, who made a brief appearance in the Rhapsody film 'Maxwell Street Blues.' "It was not anything like full range and I gather that the stuff was made with a little shit microphone that they used to sell. It was a record your voice kind of deal and I think artists would go there to make audition discs to try to get record deals. He apparently only pressed four sides, but Sleepy John Estes and others did some things. [Many of these obscure Ora Nelle recordings are available on Pea Vine CD 1888 'Chicago Boogie.'] They had a bunch of discs that either the artists hadn't paid for or he had kept. There were still Ora Nelle pressings around Maxwell Street Radio in the late 50's and possibly early 60's. Just before they closed the place, the guy offered to sell me his inventory. He wouldn't even let me look at everything. He expected me to pay some ridiculous price for it and I didn't.
"In its last years Maxwell Street Radio was primarily a radio repair shop. He was selling off his old inventory of 78's. There was no sign that they were trying to carry the recent 45's. The building looked like it could fall down, but then most of the buildings did look like that and I suspect that a few of them actually did."
Maxwell Street continued to attract those interested in the blues well beyond its so-called Golden Era, and many of the musicians who were actively performing in the 40's and 50's could still be found there in the 60's or 70's. Two of the more prominent artists to fall within this category were Blind Arvella Gray and Daddy Stovepipe. Koester, who made regular visits to Maxwell Street in the early 60's to listen to the music and search out 78's, has vivid memories of both men: "Daddy Stovepipe died quite a few years ago at the age of ninety something. He played the street for ten or twelve years from the time I came here in 1958. He said he had been there [on Maxwell Street] since before WWI and had played in the street. He did some of his records in the early 20's. He played blues, but once in a while the cops would crack down on blues singers. They wouldn't allow street singers, so he became the Reverend Johnny Watson. [His given name was Johnny Watson.] But he still had the stovepipe hat that he was famous for. Daddy Stovepipe did not play exciting country guitar. He just strummed and sang. He had a thin repertoire, primarily his 'Maxwell Street Boogie,' which he had perfected so much that it would sometimes seem to be the only thing that he would do. An artist working on the street didn't have to know very much because nobody was going stand there for an hour and listen to you."
"Stovepipe wore one of those top hats," offers Robinson. "He would play his guitar and rap it and he'd blow his flute. Sometimes he'd have his rack goin' 'round his neck and he'd blow his harp. Stovepipe used to come into the neighborhood back in the 30's when I was a kid. He would come around our house --- 1405 Washburne. He walked all around. He'd go all on down Washburn and then come up the other way walkin' and singin' and playin' the blues and stoppin' here and there on the corners. We'd be right there lookin' at him blowin' his thing and singin' --- playin' music out there. It was great!
"He played sometimes with Washboard Sam. This Washboard Sam didn't have no teeth in his mouth and had them big, funny lips. He wasn't wasn't real black or dark. He was sorta like Indian color --- red color. That's all he did --- play that washboard. They was the oldest guys in Jew Town that I knew. Them and Tommy [Hollins], the trumpet player."
"And let's not forget Arvella Gray with his steel National, knowing words to John Henry that were not in the Library of Congress yet until he put them there," continues Koester. "Arvella had a good repertoire. I first met him in St. Louis on a Delmar streetcar. Arvella would go down to Louisville and play in the Derby and make very good money. He apparently knew exactly where to go. He would get people to pick him up and take him to parties where he'd make $200 to play. Arvella told me once that he had hustled on the riverboats. That's where he learned some of the John Henry lyrics. He had also been a stick-up man. He said, 'You know, I tell people a lot of different stories about how I lost my sight and I tell them whatever they want to hear. But actually, it was a shotgun. I was trying to hold up a grocery store and the man got me with a shotgun.' He was a very nice guy. He used to play in front of my store."
Arvella's fierce independence and self-sufficiency were an inspiration to many, including Johnny Williams subsequent to an accident that resulted in the loss of his finger. "I lost a finger and I quit," he admits. "So one day I went to Jew Town and saw Blind Gray. He didn't have but three fingers playin' [Arvella Gray was missing the first two fingers of his left hand] and I said, 'Well if that guy can play, I can play! I got to the place where I didn't miss that finger until I got to a B flat."
"There were other people," notes Koester. "One-armed John Wrencher had a band. It was funny because I had first heard both Arvella and Wrencher in St. Louis. Wrencher had been playing with a group called the String Wizards --- the first blues band I heard in my life. Little Walter in his late years, not too long before he died, would also go down on Maxwell Street and play guitar. I don't think the union bothered going down there and, of course, once the black local and the white local merged, it was a white business agent who didn't even know the black guys [laughs]. But that famous Rae Flerlage shot of Walter which is used on one of the Chess --- the head shot with the guitar --- was not a real old photo. That was done on Maxwell Street. I'd also regularly see Maxwell Street Jimmy, Eddie Burks; and James Brewer in a group that did a church service with Albert Holland on second guitar."
Along with Arvella Gray, Blind Jim Brewer and Albert Holland share starring roles in Rhapsody Films' 'Maxwell Street Blues.' Brewer can be seen to great effect playing dazzling, up-tempo gospel guitar through an old Fender tube amp, accompanied sparingly by tamborine-shaking singers and Albert Holland's rhythmically incisive guitar. "I met James Brewer back in the early 50's," reminisces Holland. "He was playin' gospel on the street when I used to go down on Maxwell Street to shop. I got acquainted with him then and I started learnin' a whole lot from him. I had taken music lessons and had learned about the guitar, but he taught me a lot of other things they didn't teach me in school about blues. I used to go by his house and I would bring him by my house and we'd practice on the guitar. I used to set up until two or three o'clock in the mornin' so I could learn all the different keys.
"We would go out every Sunday from '55 on, him and I, and play gospel on Maxwell Street around 14th or Peoria. We were known as the Church of God in Christ group. We had women singers. [By the late 70's] they had all gotten older and died or had quit and moved away. Carrie Robinson was about the only one left. She'd do the sanctified dance. That's what they called the 'holy' dance. It was mostly sanctified music that we were playin.' We played gospel out there because they had so many blues players. We thought, 'If there's so much of that goin' on, why should we get out there and have the crowd actin' and jumpin' and drinkin' and carryin' on around us.' Since everybody was playin' the blues, we said that we would play gospel. But James and I could play the blues too, you know. Some Sunday afternoons we played lawn parties on the North Side and we'd play nothing but the blues and folk songs. Him and I played over on the West Side for a political bunch of the Africa Organization. We played a lot of places together. "James was a pro. Muddy Waters could only play in A and E. Big Joe Williams could only play in G. Hound Dog Taylor would play that cross E tuning. But James could play in any key. He was good, but he didn't get recognized like he should. Look at that tape [Rhapsody Films' 'Maxwell Street Blues'] --- just that one little song when they were talkin' to him with Arvella Gray. Watch how he's makin' those runs up and down there. That guy was a guitar player! I'd put him over Muddy Waters, the Staples singer [Pops], John Lee Hooker, or Hound Dog Taylor. He should've got a better break than he did. Honey Boy Edwards once said, 'You know, I can beat a lot of these guys playing guitar. But these guys who can't play as good as I can get further up in the world than I do.' He was right. A lot of 'em out there in the street could play better than them guys I heard on T. V. If those guys had had the right managers or somebody with money behind them, they'd be something."
Despite the lack of widespread public acclaim, Eddie Burks insists that there was definately money to be made by Maxwell Street musicians throughout the 60's: "You could make more money then on Maxwell Street in one day than you could make in a whole week and a half in the joints playing every night. You really didn't have to be what you'd call a good musician to go down there and make money then because there was a lot of people every Sunday. Sometimes twenty-five or thirty thousand people would come. You had a big opportunity for tips. You might make 150 dollars in one day. John Embry wanted the streets, for instance. If I would get a gig and I would call him up, he would come and work if that gig didn't interfere with Saturday night. On Saturday night he wanted to go to bed so that he could get up at nine o'clock and be down on Maxwell Street making his money. A lot of rich people used to come through there --- from overseas and everyplace. Agents from overseas would come by and give you cards to call them up. They would try to set you up to go to France and places to work. Your bands that didn't fool with the stuff got a chance to go overseas and play. I had three or four opportunities in '67 and in '69 to go over there and play, but I had some other things that I was doin' then. Yeah, you could make some money down there."
In its final few decades, Maxwell Street's slow decline was visibly apparent. Increasing numbers of rundown buildings fell prey to the wrecking ball. "When the buildings got old, they'd be vacant for a while and the next Sunday we'd go and they'd be knocked down," murmers Holland. "They wouldn't repair them. From '62 on, they really began clearing out. There was more lots than there was buildings." "My recollection of what was happening at the time was that you had this market and a general atmosphere of decline," recalls Tony Mangiullo, proprietor of Rosa's nightclub and ongoing sponsor of the Maxwell Street Alive concert series, "but yet there were a whole bunch of people there. The people were not necessarily even there to buy things, but just wanted to be there --- people from Japan and other parts of the world. There were people playing and the music was good, but the setting was depressing --- abandoned buildings, lots full of garbage, pretty dangerous stuff."
As demolition projects picked up speed, musicians found it increasingly difficult to find sources of electricity. It was not uncommon to see extension cords stretched across streets to distant vacant lots or alleys, where bluesmen of this era typically performed. "You had to hook your power source up to the stores," one-time street performer Kid Dynamite says, "and then whatever vacant lot that you played on, you would get permission from whoever was next to the lot." "I even had a generator," Holland goes on, "'cause when they knocked down too many buildings, you couldn't get electric unless you strung a wire so far, so I just bought me a generator so James and I could furnish our own electric."
Though the bleakness of these vacant lots was a far cry from the former streetside milieu, the isolation of the music from the market crowds ironically served to heighten the party atmosphere. There was more room to dance or congregate with friends, drinking became more public, and there were enough fallen tree trunks, abandoned sofas and concrete foundations to provide make-shift accomodations for spectators. The ambiance of these empty lots grew into a tradition that lasted until Maxwell Street's final day.
Among such lots which became hotbeds of blues activity during this period were those on the east side of Newberry Street between Maxwell and 14th Street. This area was spacious and its focal point was a gigantic cottonwood tree. The tree would fill the neighborhood air with cottony white fuzz, softening the harsh urban surrounding and suggesting a country-like atmosphere. One band, Willie James' Maxwell Blues, was usually located nearby. "He may be the modern Maxwell Street player," Mangiullo says of Willie James. "He always had his own band. He's been around for some time now. He's constantly there." Former band member Kid Dynamite recalls with pride: "I played with Willie James' band for a good while down there. They used to pass a bucket and we used to make pretty good money down there on the lot when I played with them."
According to many, Kid Dynamite's vocal prowess practically insured such proceeds. "I've seen Kid Dynamite on Maxwell Street where people rush to put money in his hands to the point where he couldn't hold it all," recalls tenor sax player Mike Lipsey, a sideman featured regularly over the years with such street performers as Pat Rushing, Henry "The Mayor" Davis, John Embry and L. V. Banks. "That guy is an absolute monster! I have seen him perform on Maxwell Street and put out an energy so profound that the subjective experience I had was like it was actually getting lighter out. I've had some profound experiences with that guy."
Lipsey recalls other musicians from Maxwell Street's final decade: "In the early 80's you could go there and there'd be four different bands playing. It was pretty neat from that standpoint. John Embry would come in the morning and would stay until about one or two. He'd use Perkins as his bass. You'd have L. V. Banks in another section. L. V. Banks was a pretty sophisticated guy for the type of musician that you would meet down there. The majority of the musicians down there were hurting pretty much emotionally and financially, but he was always very well groomed and really took care of himself. He seemed to have it together."
Pat Rushing was another legendary street performer. He was perhaps the most established of the musicians occupying the lots on the west side of Newberry. He would typically set up on a concrete floor formerly occupied by a garage or some other small building. His band would erect a canvas canopy over this ready-made stage to ward off the sun and the rain, adding a touch of extravagance in contrast to the expanse of trash that surrounded the spot where they played. "He was pretty open about letting me play with him," Lipsey says of the fast, funky guitar player, "but he was a sad case. He was the type of guy who could not isolate his love for music from everything else that went along with it. He could not cut the music sphere of what he was from all the other sordidness. He's a preacher right now."
"There were other guys on the street who were playing what I call Maxwell Street blues," adds Mangiullo. "It has its own category as one of the many facets of the blues. There's a grittiness that makes a difference," he suggests parenthetically. "David Lindsey should be mentioned when discussing the Maxwell Street of modern times. He's a great guitarist and singer. He's a very agressive player. Also, Ice Man Robinson. He's a guitar player and singer also. The way he plays is really raw, no embellishments. When raw blues is played, it goes right to your heart. He's amazing because when he starts playing he never finishes. He just keeps on going and going and going --- just like a Duracell battery."
As the winds of change blew through the market and the end began to look inevitable, many of these artists infused themselves with a sense of urgency. There was a conscious effort made on their part to preserve and promote the tradition which had given birth to and nurtured big city blues. Musicians cooperated amicably with the intrusion of cameras, cam corders, and tape recorders. Documentaries were made, movies were filmed, and Maxwell Street continued to live up to its guidebook reputation as a popular blues destination throughout its final months.
Eventually, the space got tight. A university intent on acquiring land began erecting fences. When used auto part vendors began staking out and fencing in their own large chunks of the block, many musicians were left without a place to play. A handful of musicians remained there among the rubble right to the end, but on Sunday, August 28, 1994, the new market was officially opened. One tradition had been brought to an end, another was beginning.
The new city-sponsored market consists of four parallel rows of merchant stands running along Canal Street from Roosevelt Road south to 15th Place. Originally, it was to extend a few blocks farther to 18th Street, but businessmen in the area, fearful of crime and congestion, convinced the city to reduce the size of the site. The area just to the west of the market was actually the original site of the turn of the century market. Roosevelt Road retains a retail strip that consists of many former Maxwell Street stores.
The compact site is reminiscent of the bustling pre-1960's Maxwell Street in certain respects. Pedestrian traffic is considerably concentrated and produce stands are plentiful. There are, however, no stores opening onto the sidewalks of Canal Street. Sadly missing also is the spontaneous atmosphere, which seems to have been sacrificed in the name of restraint. Legions of security personnel clad in orange jackets work in conjunction with armies of market managers equipped with clipboards and two-way radios to maintain order and control. Some feel that there is a certain antiseptic quality to the new market as well, for better or for worse. There is an abundance of portable toilets and an almost total absense of funky filth.
Despite the face-lift, old and used items and cast off junk are still for sale here. Though many of those who presided over piles of used, out of fashion and scavenged merchandise in the old market are nowhere to be found, the character of the old Maxwell Street site is still in evidence: A gypsy family has set up a table for telling fortunes, the wheelchair vendor is tooling around selling windup toys, the man who operated the used book stand in front of Nate's Deli has relocated, and the old blue school bus is prominently parked at the entrance at Roosevelt Road.
The blues is also still a strong presence. Piano Red and his band are there. The David Lindsey Band has established itself in front of the Terminal Tap at 14th and Canal. An older man dressed in work clothes does a decent Howlin' Wolf in the new market. A few others in the lively crowd inevitably bring instruments with them, hoping to join any one of these performers during the course of any given Sunday, just as it was always done in the past.
It is difficult to predict what the future holds in store for the new site. By the smiles of fortune, the Maxwell Street Market didn't die last fall. It's still hanging in there after 120 years. In a certain sense, Maxwell Street has become to Chicago blues what Preservation Hall is to New Orleans jazz. The tradition is just as old and the place is just as real. As long as this historic site stands, it celebrates the birth and life of the blues in Chicago. Long live Maxwell Street.
The authors would like to acknowledge Mike Rowe's account of Maxwell Street in "Chicago Breakdown," as it helped to direct the focus of a large portion of the article. Thanks also to the following individuals for all of their invaluable assistance: Jimmie Lee Robinson, Rev. Johnny Williams, Steve Cushing, Bob Koester, Tony Mangiullo, Eddie Burks, Mike Lipsey, Albert Holland and Kid Dynamite.
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