By Gail A. Pirics <gpirics@ameritech.net>

The full article appeared in the special Chicago Sun-Times Supplement for African-American History Month, February 5, 2000

Out of the neighborhood surrounding Maxwell Street, rife with poverty and transplanted southern industrial workers, was born a pure new music that would entrench itself in sounds of generations of musicians to come. The blues defined the sound and pride of African-American culture while staking its claim on the recording industry’s future.

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In the late 1930s and early 1940s new jobs in steel mills, industrial factories and slaughterhouses lured African-American workers from the rural South to the city’s South Side. They took up residence on the famed Maxwell Street where they bonded through their love of music and ties to St. Louis, Memphis and the Mississippi Delta.

Just as Memphis’ Beale Street served the emerging blues artists in the South, Maxwell Street was a proving ground for Chicago’s blues musicians. They gathered between jobs to play and refine their new sound, an electrified blues, while picking up some spare change in the process.

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While Chicago’s blues developed in the streets and at local clubs, recording studios such as Chess and VeeJay records picked up the young talents and spread the word and rhythm. A musical revolution like no other was taking hold.

Soon the blues would influence rock and roll, span the globe and forever change the sound of popular music. It broke barriers and, in the 1960s, spread to the white, middle-class and crossed the ocean to feed the British blues boom.

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"Blues is a people’s music. It is music of the struggle and joy of the people," Katzman said. "It was a way to relax after working hard all week—it still is. It is an honest music that is very connected to the Chicagoan. It has an urban feel. It is what Chicago is. It is our trademark and it is what we’ve given to music."

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