For immediate release: (4/14/99)
Contact: Frank 'Little Sonny' Scott Jr. (773-264-4746)
Live free outdoor blues jam sessions will being again, every weekend, in the old Maxwell Street area (weather permitting). They will star Jumpin Willie Cobbs and the Fireballs, featuring Ray Scott (formerly with Jimmy Dawkins).
These musical events are part of the movement to keep alive the old Maxwell Street blues tradition. They will take place at the northeast corner of Halsted and Maxwell by the Wall of Fame and Bandstand, across the street from Original Jim's Hot Dog Stand.
Stop by, grab a Polish sausage or Porkchop sandwich, and listen to some real down home grassroots blues. You're invited to play along, sing, clap, dance, or just listen. As UIC closes in on this area, happenings like these may not be available much longer. Show your support for these super musicians and for the cause to preserve the last remnants of old Maxwell Street.
Willie Cobbs and the Fireballs play every Sunday night (7PM to midnight) at the Starlite Lounge, 605 S . Pulaski in Chicago. They are out on old Maxwell Street to keep a tradition alive -- to play on hallowed ground. Says one blues fan, "They are funky and hot, filled with deep soul and electrifying energy. They move you with their raw toe tapping sound -- downhome and dangerous." Blues musicians from around the city are coming by and sitting in, and old Maxwell Street regulars (friends of Piano C. Red and the late Willie James) are stopping by just to listen and chat.
Willie Cobbs will be selling and autographing his CD, Cottonsack Blues, Ray Scott will be singing, and Frank Scott will be selling his pictures of the Maxwell Street Wall of Fame, souvenir caps, and Maxwell Street crosses.
Click here for a picture of Willie Cobbs in front of the Starlite Lounge; photograph taken by Fireball guitarist David Caldwell <funkybluesoul@worldnet.att.net>.
These jams are being organized by Frank "Little Sonny" Scott Jr. of Frank "Little Sonny" Scott Jr. Music Productions. Drummer Frank Scott Jr. lived and played in the old Maxwell Street area in the 1950s and led a group called the Everyhour Blues Boys with Freddie King and Jimmie Lee Robinson. He no longer plays drums but occasionally joins in on the jams playing/shaking his percussive house keys.
Ray Scott was born in Aug 3rd 1934 in Dundee, Mississippi. He left with his mother when he was 6 years old to move to Memphis where he started, in earnest, to learn about Blues.
He was very close with B.B. King. "B.B. treated me like I was his little Brother, calling me Sonny King. I used to tap dance while he played blues in Memphis and in Arkansas. I traveled with him in his car with the rumble seat. He could really holler when he sang the blues. It seemed people could hear him 4 or 5 miles away - and this without a microphone," says Ray Scott
Ray is also close with B.B. King's daughter Shirley King. "She calls me Uncle Ray and I've been on some of her records." Ray still talks to B.B. King and Shirley King but no longer actively plays the Blues except for occasional jam sessions like the ones to help save Maxwell Street. He is a singer and drummer but doesn't play drums anymore.
He came to Chicago in 1947 and lived at 1916 West Adams, on Chicago's West Side. In the 1950s he had a band that played all over the Maxwell Street area and other parts of town. His band was called: The Ray Scott Rock and Roll Band. It included Philip Upchurch, Luther Guitar Junior, Floyd Murphy, and Calvin Jones (Muddy Water's bass player and cousin to Ray Scott). Calvin Jones is now living in Tunica, Mississippi.
Scott was also close to Jimmy Rogers. "In 1974 we was working construction in Elk Grove Village. I was his foreman. I told him he should get playing again because he still got the sound, and he got those good records. I sang to him while he was working in the mud."
For more information about Ray Scott or the other musicians involved in these jam sessions contact Steve Balkin <mar@interaccess.com>
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