a few quotes from the recent book: The World Don't Owe Me Nothing: The Life and Times of Delta Bluesman Honeyboy Edwards by David Honeyboy Edwards as told to Janis Martinson and Michael Robert Frank. Chicago Review Press,1997. This book is recommended reading for those interested in the history of Chicago Blues. There is a lot about Maxwell Street in this book.
In '45, me and Walter come to Chicago. We had heard all about Maxwell Street - they called it Jewtown, too - and we wanted to go there because that was where the happening was. Musicians come to Chicago from everywhere then just to play on Maxwell Street. Because they could make a living there.
We got in to Chicago about eleven o'clock that night. We got off that train and come straight down Halsted and over to Maxwell Street. Maxwell Street was all the time wide open and really crowded. At that time all the steel mills and slaughterhouses, packing houses was wide open. Everybody was working two or three shifts, people was working the graveyard shifts. There was always people out on the streets, the street was full of people of all kinds, blacks, whites, Mexicans, Jews. Lots of people had come up from the South to get a job in Chicago.
And about seven o'clock in the morning I heard all these musicians playing in the streets. Floyd Jones was out there, Jimmy Rogers, all them was playing in the streets. Jimmy Rogers had a girl with a little baby, he had just come out of the army. He was wearing a suit and a high straw top hat. Snooky Pryor was there. And Tampa Red, not the original Tampa Red, another guy called Tampa Red, tall, yellow, walked kind of bowlegged. Had a real heavy voice and played in Vastopol. And old Stovepipe who used to play the harp. Stovepipe was a old-time minstrel show musicianer; he played ragtime stuff. Pork Chop, playing the washtub bass in the street; One-Leg Sam Norwood playing guitar, who used to play with Tommy Johnson; John Henry Barbee was out there trying to throw tricks; a fellow playing banjo called Fat - they was all playing on the corners. Some of them was down by the hot dog stands … And there was so many people in Jewtown you couldn't walk the streets.
We had the biggest crowd around us, with people chunking quarters and dollars at us. Money was floating then. On Maxwell Street, who could play the best, that's what got the best crowd. And the best sound, that's what got the best crowd. They would stop by, but if it wasn't sounding good they would go to the next.
Walter was playing his song, "Hey, baby, don't you want a man like me." That boy could play a harp. He was like Big Walter but had a better style, a sound and a style. Now, Big Walter could play more harp than Little Walter but Little Walter had a cooked, solid sound. Big Walter could get more notes, he knew more flashy notes, he knew more keys, but Little Walter had the best sound because he had a dead sound. Just a little something can make a big difference in harp playing.
From the inside cover: In the thirties, Honeyboy was playing in Handy Park on Beale Street during the seminal era of Memphis's music scene. Eventually the blues let him to Texas, to Deep Ellum in Dallas and to Houston, where he and the blues took a new sound. In the late forties he brought a teenaged Little Walter to Chicago and together they played on Maxwell Street. Eventually, Honeyboy made Chicago his home, as did the blues we know today.
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