I am going to be focusing on Blues, While the genre is famous for having it’s start in Mississippi, , the city of Chicago and the Blues have been tremendously influenced by each other. To prepare for my studies this week, I have started reading a book about Chicago blues and watching lots and lots of Youtube videos and listening to clips of very early Blues recordings. I also picked up a Chicago Blues CD from the Evergreen Library.

I came across an article that yielded many comments with people describing their experience with Chicago Blues and what it means to them. One user really caught my attention with their response. They said

“to me, blues is a lifestyle. Simple as that. It follows us home after the music stops”

Although the words are not anything profound, I can understand the point they were trying to get across. So far, I can tell that Blues is rooted from emotions, as most music is, but the Chicago Blues were much more than that. It’s as if the notes were telling a story of how far each artist had traveled in life. You could hear the interactions they are describing in the bass line. Blues is visceral and because of that, it effects some listeners more than other music.

As I described in my presentation at the end of Winter Quarter, I am extremely interested in the circumstances involved for some of these Chicago-centric genres to become popular in the place and time that they did. In my Chicago Blues: The City & The Music book, there is a reasonable explanation as to why Chicago was so opportune for the Blues to become extremely popular there. Logistically speaking, the trains that provided transportation for people looking to move cross country had somewhat specific routes.If someone from North Carolina wanted to move, the train that was associated with their state would stop in Ohio, on the Louisville and then to Nashville. So, there was not much leeway as to where you could go, as there were only a few options per route. As one can probably infer now, Chicago and Mississippi were on the same route and so the Blues musicians of Mississippi were attracted to the work potential of Chicago due to its already existing stockyards and steel mills and settled in Chicago. Over in Chicago, the city was accidentally preparing for a music scene to settle in. In the 20s and 30s, there were clubs built and abandoned by prohibition and then depression. When the forties came around and society had somewhat recovered, there was an influx of musicians emerging in Chicago and coming from the South. Conveniently, there were clubs and halls waiting to be played in, and an audience looking for something to hold onto after The Great Depression.

I hope to find out more of the personal circumstances of the artists as well as the record label executives who helped and hindered careers during my reading/watching. There have been hints in my reading that a lot of the record deals were done in a terribly poor business manner and a plethora of artists were ripped off behind the scenes.

I often question why I am trying to take such a logical route to understand  such a visceral subject such as the Blues. I originally was not even going to focus on the Blues because I didn’t grow up listening to it and I had never even heard of Muddy Waters before 2015. I say that with minimal shame because I believe I am well versed in music enough to admit that I don’t know everything about music (who the heck does?) and I am more than willing to jump into something I have no personal history with. I am going to push myself to write poetry about this music. Dance to this music and hopefully even sing along soon enough. I am intimidated by Blues in a way because it is this enormous enigma that people seem to connect with so deeply and I am treading on the Blues surface.

I am searching for that A-Ha moment where some guitar picking strikes a chord in my heart, when I feel so connected that I understand what that comment meant about the Blues lifestyle that carries you home after the music is over.

I am anxious, I am ready and most of all, I am excited. On Thursday of this week, I will be flying to O’Hare Airport in Chicago to start my ten day endeavor. I have finally established a good weekly work schedule in Olympia and now I have to leave and go start a whole new one with limited wifi and an  unpredictable screen. I am sitting in the library and I am seeing my regular library faces that I have been recognizing over the past four weeks. I am feeling slightly nervous about what is ahead of me. I am going to enter a city that I have been to at least ten times, but only to the tourist spots and with my questionably fun extended family. I just hope that I can feel somewhat at home and assimilate myself into the city and the public transportation  sooner rather than later.

This week I am focusing on House music. While House music is often misunderstood to be originated in Europe, it is a true product of Chicago. In doing quite a bit of article reading over the past four weeks, I have been able to conjure up a sort of timeline and lineup list of the important players in the Chicago House music scene that started in the late seventies and on. It is crucial to my personal understanding that I have a clear idea of al of the individuals involved. I often would pull up Google Maps and get an idea of the locations being mentioned so I can get a true visual without having to imagine it.  I have started to read my book for the week, an autobiography titled, House Music… The Real Story by Jesse Saunders, the semi self proclaimed “first house music DJ”.  So far, it is an easy read and Saunders proves himself to be an emotional, but humorous writer. Sometimes he just restates everything he is trying to say for paragraphs at a time, but I am taking it as a sign that he is simply very passionate about his craft, and not so great at being concise. I am glad really glad that I am able to read about House music from an insider’s perspective and not some journalist and professional enthusiast. Not to say that I don’t enjoy writings from those mentioned, but getting to hear about the relationships and internal happenings in the house music scene from someone who was in the center of it is really remarkable to me. I look forward to finding out the “real story” behind the some of the most amazing, innovative music on Earth.

Yesterday, I watched Pump Up The Volume which I believed to be a movie about Chicago House music, but really went over a range of cities and styles of dance music at the end of the documentary. It was all worth seeing though, because it gave sort of a world wide perspective of how Chicago House music transformed what a music community meant around the world. People all over were coming together to listen to House music and that tradition has continued today in much more commercial settings such as dance oriented music festivals and raves. Sadly, the way in which this community gets together is now changing, in my opinion, for the worst. There are countless reports of young adults and teens dying or having life threatening reactions to the types of drugs that are being taken at raves and dance clubs is unprecedented. When House music clubs first started, they usually served water and juice. People could drink alcohol if they choose, but it was never the center of the experience. Not to say that drugs weren’t present at the early House music clubs, they certainly were, but  again, not the center of the experience.

I finished my book from last week, Chicago Blues: The City & The Music and I must say that the Blues industry and community was just as exhilarating as the music. The relationships between the artists, and especially the artists’ relationships with the business people handling their careers interested me the most. Blues artists are notoriously known for being ripped off in multiple ways, despite their fame and following. One aspect that I was interested in was the record labels that were responsible for making Chicago Blues known to the public. One label that piqued my interest especially, was Chess Records started in the South Side of Chicago by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess. Artists like Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon were on the roster for quite a long time and other big name bands like The Rolling Stones have recorded there. At one point, there were over 100 names on the Chess Records artist roster, and nearly all of them were getting completely ripped off in their label deals, and paid nothing close to the amount that they deserved. I am on a mission to find out more about Chess Records and the story behind the label that supported but also betrayed it’s artists.

The past ten days or so have been some of the strangest, most eye opening  days of my life. To start, I went to Coachella quite last minute thanks to a gifted ticket. My time at the festival was mostly unrelated to this project, although I certainly applied an understanding of many of the performance and listening skills Andrea taught the program. Since there were artists from all over the world there, I wasn’t able to focus directly on Chicago music. I ended up meeting my family in California and because of our different locations and schedules, we all had to leave at different times and have different kind of tickets (standby and regular). Because I was on a little bit less hectic schedule as the rest of them, and I had some of my reading with me, I agreed to take a standby ticket and hopefully get on the first flight I could. I tried to get on the 6 am flight and saw each one of my family members leave to get on a flight home while I was trying to remain positive after being stuck in LAX all day. I wasn’t able to leave until that Tuesday (5/13) in the afternoon. After that painful 40 hours in Los Angeles, I don’t wish my worst enemy to get stuck in LAX and it’s surrounding areas. That whole fiasco certainly put a funky start to my independent research and set me back two days without access to the internet.

It’s as if the big D-O-G in the sky planned it out, because the book I selected for myself to read the first week of the research study was barely resourceful at best. It is titled, The Chicago Music Scene 1960s and 1970s. It was a large collection of photos with small to medium blurbs attached. The blurbs provide some basic history as well as the artists connections to other artists and venues. There was a lack of real insight or intelligent writing. I suppose I could have done a better job of determining that this book was more of an encyclopedia than a narrative book, but the amazon.com subscription definitely did not match what I understood this book was.

It was not all a waste, though. While there was no nitty gritty information contained in the pages, I was able to collect a list of names and venues that kept popping up in the blurbs. One trend that I noticed consistently was that a lot of the folk and acoustic artists of Chicago music scene emerged from universities and colleges above any other music. My immediate thoughts on why this is leads me to Bob Dylan. There were absolutely non-college aged folk and acoustic musicians, but this era of the 60s and 70s saw a population of young students be so influenced by Dylan and other folk masters and wanted to turn it into something of their own.

In addition to the lackluster reading, I have been having a somewhat difficult time getting in contact with DJs and other people in the Chicago music scene. I find it vital to this project that I speak and communicate with the people involved from the ground up, so that I can get the fullest understanding possible. I have gotten one response from Rachael Cain, a House music vocalist from the 1980s, who now runs Trax Records, which was arguably the most important House label in Chicago back in the 80s to now. I have been texting her, but unfortunately, she seems flaky and goes for days without emailing me back. I hopefully will get her on the phone or meet her in person when I get to Chicago. I have also contacted three DJs from Chicago who were heavily involved in the scene. One DJ, Derrick Carter told me that  he doesn’t do interviews but wished me luck. Thanks, Derrick. The luck is cool but your words would have been cooler. The other two DJs have not responded despite my email and Facebook messages. I know the other two have done interviews in the past and I can probably gain some understand from those.

This time period since my last post has been good for me to do a lot of taking care of business things for my upcoming trip. I have been solidifying my sleeping arrangements and planning my days ahead. I can work the best when I have all of my actives laid out in a concrete way, and so in doing that for my trip to Chicago, I hope that I can best utilize my time there.