Charlie Musselwhite, Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998
(Click here for a good article about Charlie Musslewhite from the Biloxi Sun Herald.)
Dear Chancellor Broski,
My name is Charlie Musselwhite. I got my start in this blues business in Chicago. A lot of what I learned and some of my most vivid memories come from playing on Maxwell Street. I used to play at the corner of 14th and Newberry with people like Robert Nighthawk, Johnny Young, Carey Bell, John Wrencher, John Lee Granderson and others.
I was a teen age kid then and all these older musicians told me how they had got their start playing on Maxell when they were kids too. For all of us it was a very important place. A place like no place else.
I made my first album in Chicago and have gone on to record 16 more on my own and about 50 more as a guest artist. Today I travel all over the world playing blues. And I carry the lessons I learned at 14th and Newberry with me today every where I go.
I grew up in Memphis and became quite familiar with Beale Street. It is a shame what Memphis did to that great street and its neighborhood. Finally somebody came to their senses and saved what was left before it was all done away with.
Please save what is left of the Maxwell Street Market. It has such an historic meaning for the music of America. And it was way more than the music. People of all colors came from all over the city to barter and interact and become friends there. People that had lost track of each other in migrating north to Chicago would find each other again at the Maxwell St Market. It was a rich part of American history that deserves to be honored and treated with all the respect of a monument to a cities people.
Most sincerely,
Charlie Musselwhite
Postscript: Below is a great quote of Charlie's from an interview by Andrew Cody.
I moved to Chicago just to get a job. I heard the pay was better. It definitely was not a career move. It was hard to look at the blues as a career, and who knew at the time the impact people like Muddy, Walter and Howlin' Wolf would have on American music? If I realized what I was doing and what was going on around me, I would have photographed and recorded everything. As it was I just enjoyed it and kept learning.
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