Ask your father about blues music, he'll tell you about Chicago

“Dad, I’d like to write an article about blues music and Chicago. What should I write about?”

“Muddy Waters, of course!! Best blues song ever: Hoochie Coochie Man”

 

My father is the kind of man who would have loved to live in Chicago during the 1950’s to be able to go to jazz and blues clubs and listen to the greatest performers of all times.  First, he would have gone to the open air market on Maxwell Street. It was a market, where most of the Black community used to go to buy and sell just about anything (see the video below). It had become the ideal place for bluesmen to perform. Maybe, he would have run by John Lee Hooker playing his song Boom Boom with Big Walter Horton (from the Blues Brothers movie). Then, he would have gone down to the South Side of the city, to reach the blues clubs in the Black neighborhoods and he would have enjoyed listening to street musicians on the way.

 

Chicago is definitely one of the most prominent cities in terms of music in the United States. It even gave a name to a specific type of blues music (the Chicago blues) and it is where urban blues was born. And this is not surprising giving that it was one of the first major cities in the country. Blues performers, who had often left their local communities to come and work in the city, had to deal with the new urban reality and adapt to a larger, more varied audience's aesthetic.

I could choose to talk about many Chicago blues musician: Buddy Guy, Freddie King or Jimmy Reed. I could also develop more about The Blues Brothers rhythm and blues band founded in 1978 and the Hollywood movie created around its members in 1980.  But the paternal figure has decided: I will talk about Muddy Waters.

Muddy Water may have been born in Mississippi, that didn’t prevent him from defining Chicago blues with songs like "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man." In 1943, he headed to Chicago where music was shaping a generation. With his electric guitar which he used to be heard over the din of patrons at the clubs he played on Chicago’s South Side, he was able to develop the legendary style that transformed the rustic blues of the Mississippi with the urban vibe of the big city. In addition to his musical legacy, Waters helped cultivate a great respect for the blues.

I could add a lot more information about Muddy Waters, but what fascinates me most is the way he contributed to subvert the codes of the genre. As a Black musician performing a rural southern musical genre, he succeeded in imposing a new type of music in the big industrial city among a diverse audience. The inferior classes, which were formed of people who had emigrated from various places in America or around the world, had nothing to do with the troubles experienced within African American society. And yet, this music managed to move them to such a point that it influenced a variety of the most successful music genres and musicians of the second half of the 20^th century. The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin and more owe this great Chicagoan musician a lot.