The Chicago Blues In Images Of America
The Images of America Series offers short photographic histories of local American places. As the series' website states in explaining the value of local histories in understanding the United States: "each town, city, and neighborhood of America has its own piece of the puzzle to offer when it comes to the bigger picture."
Some of the histories in the series are much broader than local. Among them is this short photographic introduction, "Chicago Blues" (2014). The blues and Chicago blues have become integral parts of American culture. Chicago blues has a long, varied tradition and it has been the subject of long and continued study and scholarship.
This book by Wilbert Jones is not a scholarly work, but it offers a good, moving overview of its background, places and people by a writer with a love for the music. Jones is a Chicago entrepreneur who has written soul food cookbooks and other Images of America books about African American Chicago. His book on the blues is written from the perspective of a blues lover more than a scholar.
The book offers a good background to the Chicago blues. I found the first section of the book the most moving. Jones offers many photographs of the Mississippi Delta, its plantations, small towns, fields, juke joints, and people. Many performers who became famous in Chicago had roots in the Mississippi Delta and came to the city as part of the Great Migration. The book captures this move to Chicago well in pictures in a small space.
The second part of the book similarly offers photographs of the lives the immigrants faced and made for themselves in Chicago. There are photographs of tenements, streets, boarding houses, churches, and nightclubs. The book shows places such as the Maxwell Street Market which became a haven for newcomers to Chicago and for the performance of the blues. Here again, the book gave me a feeling for the city and of the lives of the people who made, played, and loved the blues in "Sweet Home, Chicago."
The final part of the book shows Chicago blues after the music had achieved worldwide recognition. It includes photographs and discussions of famous bluesmen and blueswomen even though many are through limitations of space, left out. The book shows further iconic blues sites in Chicago including Buddy Guy's nightclub, Willy Dixon's Blues Heaven Foundation, the former building of Chess Records, where many blues artists recorded, and the home of Muddy Waters. There is a brief discussion of the Chicago Blues Festival, the largest event of its kind in the United States. In sum, the book offers a good compilation of photographs of the origins, people, and places of the Chicago blues that introduces and that respects the music and that is probably not duplicated in longer studies.
This is a fine book for what it does as part of a photographic series devoted to local American history. It shows something of the music and it celebrates its deserved place in American culture. The book reminded me of why I love the music -- as well as our country and the many different types of art and cultures it has encouraged. The book might encourage its readers to explore both the music and the Great Migration in more detail. A short bibliography for those moved to do so would have been a welcome addition to the book.
