A young Muddy Waters
The exact corner of the Maxwell Street market circa 1943 when Muddy arrived after failing to be a stand out Delta Blues Man
Maxwell Street Market 1940’s
The Jewish immigrants to Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market were the 'first economically secure class' that didn’t feel threatened by the African Americans and were rather helpful to them in that they both saw that could profit together: The African American’s played their music and got tips. The Jewish merchants sold pickles out off their wooden carts. Everybody worked hard. Everybody profited.
The southern jog the original market… Halsted and 16th Street
In a four blocks of Halsted Street with Maxwell Street defining the North end and 16th Street boundarying the South, every Sunday, was alive with cheap fresh food, new hand-made clothes and jewelry. There was hot honey, onion pork sausages filling the air, giggly girls dressed to attract the boy’s eyes, and those Killer Blues Men…to fill the heart and soul of the endless passing crowd.
Southern African Americans were tired of being treated as second class citizens (It was really more like indentured servitude, bordering on slavery). They wanted dignity, freedom to make their own choices, good schools for their kids, and to not have to cower when they walked down the street….and Chicago was the economic Promise Land.
This is what currently replaces the old Maxwell Street Market, Starbucks… both are/were meeting places
In 1943 the 30 year old cotton picker, turned Delta Blues guitar player, moved up the Mississippi River to Chicago as Part of the Great Black Migration. There were good paying jobs making steel, glass and rubber for the War effort.
The only surviving merchant of the Chicago Blues period
Muddy had tried being a Delta Blues player and was even recorded by the legendary Alan Lomax for the Smithsonian Archives…but the record was stiff and void of heart. Muddy just couldn’t do the Robert Johnson schtick.
Where Muddy ate in the 1940’s
He knew he couldn’t hold his ground with Dizzy and Bird.
What were his choices? Play Country Music? They didn’t let black people do that.
Take up the oboe and play for the Philadelphia Philharmonic?
He had to invent something new. Something no one had ever done before.
Turns out the electric guitar was just being invented.
Turns out there there were a lot of country black people. They were lonely black people, missing their families.…and there were a lot of them packed in together in a tough meat packing town.
Muddy’s favorite meal
How he created Chicago Blues, no one really knows, but...
Muddy got a blues harp player (White people call it a harmonica). He got a stand up bass player (electric bass wouldn’t be invented for over a decade). He got himself a new-fangled electric guitar and then the genius stroke…He got a drummer. The drummer would add something Delta Blues never had…sexiness.
Delta Blues, exemplified by Robert Johnson, Bukka White and Son House, had just been up ended. Delta was now dated and out of style. “Chicago”, electric group music, was “Urban” music because it was written for the folks in the city of Chicago.
The current Maxwell Market Street location… note the Sears Tower directly in the background. During the 1970s, it was the tallest building in the world before America lost her supremacy in auto manufacturing to the Japanese.
Once again the Jewish/African connection would come in. The Jews had immigrated for Europe 50 years before the Great Black Migration. They knew the lay of the land. How could you sell to most Christian nation on earth in terms of percentage and also in terms of absolute numbers?
The Jews set up record companies. The Black guys provided the musical heat.
Hendrix was asked one time “What is the soul of America?” …”The Blues” he replied simply, with sureness of a Prophet.
To our Jewish and African American brothers who showed us and co-created our soul…we are grateful.