For immediate release: (7/1/99)
Contact: Frank Little Sonny Scott Jr. (773-264-4746), Piano C. Red (312 -787- 4030, ext. 605)
Maxwell Street Blues veteran Piano C. Red will be brining his Flat Foot Boogie Band back to old Maxwell Street. He will be playing outside at the northeast corner of Maxwell and Halsted Street (across the street from Original Jim's Hot Dog Stand) from 11:00AM to 3PM, this Saturday and Sunday, July 3 and 4, 1999. This free event is being held to raise awareness for saving old Maxwell Street -- to try to stop the University of Illinois at Chicago from tearing down any more buildings and to save the culture, businesses, and hot dog stands there.
Special guests will be coming by to sit in. These musicians include Manual Arrington, Little Scottie, Pete Allen, Phil Logan, Madaez Howlin Wolf, and the Grown Man Blues Band. Folk artist and Blues percussionist Frank 'Little Sonny' Scott Jr. arranged this event. If you are lucky, he will stop by to sell his folk art Maxwell Street crosses and do a dramatic house-key percussion solo with the band.
All musicians coming by (amateur or pro) can have a chance to sit in. Says Steve Balkin, Vice President of the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition, "the purpose is to have an old fashioned community thing where spontaneity, feeling, communicating, and gettin down with the music are the main purposes. Everyone can become part of the event, listening, playing, dancing, or just picking up on the raw emotions. You don't usually get that in a nightclub. Maxwell Street takes away the distance between musician and audience. It's music by the people and for the people."
Mr. Red regularly played on old Maxwell Street in the 1980s and 1990s on the Johnny Dollar Blues Stage, a makeshift wooded platform set up by a Maxwell Street merchant named Johnny Dollar, who also owned a Thrift Shop and Catfish Stand next to the Stage. This is a homecoming for Mr. Red since the makeshift stage he will be playing on now is at the Maxwell Street Wall of Fame, just across the street from the old Johnny Dollar Store. That building is also one of the buildings on the Coalition's high priority list to save.
Piano C. Red was born in Montevallo, Alabama in 1933 and came to Chicago in 1951. Says Red, "I've been going on Maxwell Street since I got here. I used to see great artists like Elmore James, Jimmy Reed, Little Walter, Hound Dog Taylor, Sonny Boy Williams, and Junior Wells. I sat in with these musicians."
In 1996, Mr. Red invited President Clinton to play sax with his band during the Democratic National Convention. He wrote the President, "We're your kind of people. Many of us are from the South like you. We're friendly. We've got all races and religions here. We all get along. We think Maxwell Street is a good example of what America is about - respectin each other's traditions - keeping them alive, helping each other, makin money, and havin fun. It's also about struggle and the blues says it all." Unfortunately the President did not accept the invitation.
Piano C. Red's day job is as a taxicab driver. He has a new CD out, Cab Driving Man, from which he will be playing tunes during this Blues Fest.
For more information about Maxwell Street, visit the Preserve Maxwell Street website <http://www.openair.org/maxwell/preserve.html>. Or call the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition at 312-341-3696.
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