Willie James<pager# 312-647-8669> Date: Tues, 29 Jul 1997
Dear Chancellor Broski:
I've been playing on Maxwell Street for about 30 years. I came to Chicago from West Point, Georgia. A lot of people were talking about Maxwell Street in Chicago back then when I was 14. I went there and got inspired by the guys playing on the street such as Maxwell Street Jimmy Davis, Big John Wrencher, Arthur Coop, Playboy Vinson, and guys like Hound Dog Taylor. It was different than the blues I first heard down South.
I was inspired by a one arm guitar player in Georgia called One Arm John. He had a coat hangar around his right forearm using it as a pick and he played with a thumb using his first and second finger. He explained to me that I could do anything I wanted if I just tried hard enough. I taught myself the guitar on a homemade guitar made out of a cigar box, a 1 x 2 board, and catgut fishing line. I was about 12 years old then. My mother had moved to Chicago in 1959 and I came in 1961.
Around 1964 I stared sitting in with musicians on Maxwell Street and I learned a lot from them, especially about stage presence. At that time, I wasn't doing it for the money. I made money by selling costume jewelry that I bought from wholesale stores in the area like Oscars and Geenenders. So I learned about business there also.
I also worked at a music store on 13th Street and Halsted, selling musical instruments in the 1960s. The owners where the Pickeling Family. They were Jewish and there were many Jewish stores in that area and we all got along fine. Maxwell Street is sometimes called Jewtown; that is a term of respect. You could always go there and get something much for next to nothing.
Now I have a band called the Maxwell Street Blues Band and we play all over the midwest. Last week we played at the Fairmont Hotel. But I still go down to Maxwell Street, now the new Market, nearly every Sunday so I can play in the street. I do this because lot of people don't go to bars; a lot of children can't go into bars or handicapped people or older people. I want to make people happy. The feedback they give me is my reward. It's a community thing. That's part of my mission in life.
Old Maxwell Street is a legendary place in the history of the blues. It would be a great loss to our community and to the world if what was left on Maxwell Street was just destroyed. That place represents real down home culture, a piece of the South right here in Chicago. It's also a place where a lot of different nationalities of people get together and become one group of people. It's a people thing. That is what is has been for me ever since I've been there.
I now play with my fiancee and son in my band and coming down to Maxwell Street teaches my family important lessons about life, people and business. So please don't destroy what is left in that legendary old Maxwell Street area.
Very truly yours.
Willie James
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