The first thing to remember about Chicago blues is how steeped in rural twang it is. From the 1920s through the 50s, most of it was as rough-hewn as it had been on the plantation and in the levee camp, even after the advent of amplified distortion and echo. The musical connection between the bayou and delta and the Windy City remained strong for decades. It was more direct than that of, say, Texas and Los Angeles, another popular route of migration in the mid-twentieth century. Jazz also flourished in Chicago during this time, and in the 1960s, Chicago soul became as polished and urban as Motown, but its blues tradition bore the mark of the agrarian South.
This was true of Chicago’s blues singers, guitarists and piano players from the outset. Pianists such as Big Maceo Merriwether, Roosevelt Sykes, Sunnyland Slim and Little Brother Montgomery cut their teeth playing for work gangs employed in the lumber and turpentine industries in the Deep South. The workers led a rugged existence and the principle relief from it was the barrelhouse, usually a tiny shack equipped with a beer barrel, a weather-beaten upright piano, and little else. Barrelhouse piano style developed from these musicians’ necessity to bang the keys hard in order to accommodate for both the beer-fueled din and the somewhat unresponsive instrument. There was little dynamic variation in their playing. Guitarists such as Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy, Jimmie Rogers and Honeyboy Edwards likewise began performing publicly at barn dances, or even in fields or on the streets of small southern towns and developed similarly aggressive styles.
The industrial cities of the northern Midwest held great allure for southern blacks in these years. The Illinois Central and other railroad lines became legendary for taking thousands of these Americans to new lives. Families that settled in Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis and Detroit sent for their relatives and helped them find their way around these new environments upon arrival.
A southside Chicago neighborhood anchored by Maxwell Street became the destination for many such people. There was work to be found in steel mills and meatpacking plants, and in the black community’s service and entertainment industries. Many aspects of this community’s Southern subculture, such as cuisine and modes of speech, carried over into its new environment, and, as had been the case back home, music was ingrained into every thread of life’s fabric. Clubs sprang up. Record stores catered to the appetites of the populace.
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