Language of the Blues - Edmonton Blues Society

`
, Elmore
performances in Chicago on Maxwell Street for spare change from passersby before
graduating to the clubs.
The market had no formal boundaries, but its most active area was Maxwell Street
between Newberry Avenue and Union Avenue, and Halsted Street between West
Roosevelt Road and West Liberty Street. Maxwell Street performer Jimmie Lee
Robinson told Blues Revue magazine that the blues musicians roamed Halsted as far
north as Madison, while gospel singers dominated Newberry Avenue. 280
Bo Diddley played on street corners all around town- South side, West side. Put a hat
down
musician. I was out there when I was about fourteen, fifteen. I left home at seventeen;
281
called m
-notch session
player for Chess Records in the 1950s and 1960s.
ng on the neighborhood, mainly it was
another street but they still call it Maxwell Street. It was a huge bazaar, like you might
Although pianist Henry Gray began playing juke joints
Louisiana, when he was sixteen, he really wanted to get up to Chicago to the thriving
-
Street with Little Walter. A whole lotta stuff used to be going on there, right on the
- I had three or four
James, Elmore James, James Cotton 282
Gray graduated to the clubs when he began playing with Muddy Waters in 1947. The
with relatives in Chicago at first, but was soon making enough money to get his own
place. Other musicians, Gray recalled, stayed in houses owned by Leonard Chess, who
cofounded Chess Records-
- with his brother, Phil, in 1950.
de it
130