For immediate release: 12/25/98
Contact: Steve Balkin, 312-341-3696
Sad over Maxwell Street…
Thanks to Jason Wiseman, you can listen to Johnnie Mae Dunson's Plea and Blues Lament.
The Real Audio files were made through the help of Mary Spaulding and his Sunday Blues Show and Website.If you don't have a real audio player, click here to download a free copy.
If you just want to hear ordinary wav file excerpts, listen to:JMDplea(283K), Moan I(387K), and MoanII(353K).
Copies of this Plea and Blues Lament are also available on cassette tape.
77 year old Johnnie Mae Dunson got her start playing on Maxwell Street in the 1940s playing drums for dancer Eddie 'Pork Chop' Hines. She is a singer, drummer, and song writer spending several years writing and playing for Blues legend Jimmy Reed.
She had to move recently as her house was condemned by the City of Chicago. Further, she was hospitalized a short time ago, suffering from congestive heart failure. She says, "the City forcing me out of that house was a Death Sentence." Still, she found the energy to come to Maxwell Street to sing at protests in August and September.
She said that before she dies, she wants to do some things: she wants to live in her house again, record some CDs, and save Maxwell Street. She is also worried about her friend and fellow Blues musician, 67year old Jimmie Lee Robinson, who is on a protest hunger fast to save Maxwell Street. People have tried to get Jimmie off this fast but he says, "I studied Gandhi as kid. He lived in my time. If he moved the British Empire by a fast, I can certainly move UIC with a fast. The people of Chicago won't let me die."
Says Steve Balkin, secretary of the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition, "I am worried about them. Johnnie Mae's Maxwell Street Blues Moaning Lament is bone chilling and low down in its sadness. Frank 'Little Sonny' Scott Jr., another Maxwell Street old timer (The Everyhour Blues Boys), is playing guitar for her. He is sad too. And Jimmie Lee is taking too big a risk to be on this fast so long. I hope this lament is a prayer that works rather than melody of mourning."
Visit the Coalition's website <http://www.openair.org/maxwell/preserve.html> for background and information on how you can help. Demolitions could start as early as this coming January. But there is still time to act.
web page provided by OPENAIR-MARKET NET
return to Preserve Maxwell Street