Chicago Blues

In the 1940s and ’50s, countless working-class blacks abandoned Southern plantation-life poverty for the booming mecca of factory-town Chicago. Former Delta bluesmen plugged in, turned up, and harnessed the electricity in the Windy City’s very air to forge the fiery template for electric blues as we know it — and still feel it — today. Sex, voodoo, and violence burst from the steel-toed stomp of Muddy Waters’ “(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man,” as he finds the loudest, proudest way possible to tell the world that he and his thunder-crackin’ sound have arrived. Howlin’ Wolf invoked the power of the elements, too, living up to his lupine moniker with a feral growl that would’ve frightened away anything less than Hubert Sumlin’s sky-slashing lick on “Smokestack Lightning.” And the blues walks like a wild-eyed demon, bedeviling Buddy Guy on the spooky stroll “First Time I Met the Blues.”

Hear how Chicago blues gave birth to rock ’n’ roll, in Next Steps.

Besides defining the scrappy, sexy sound of electric blues for the 20th century, Chicago blues provided page after page of rock ’n’ roll’s playbook. Howlin’ Wolf made Willie Dixon’s sinister-sounding “Spoonful” a smash in 1960, and six years later it became Cream’s classic-rock building block. The prolific Dixon’s pulsing plea for aid d’amour, “Help Me,” was a Sonny Boy Williamson II blues standard before finding its way onto the debut albums of rockers on both sides of the Atlantic: Canned Heat and Ten Years After. And though Big Joe Williams originated “Baby, Please Don’t Go” in 1935, it was surely Muddy Waters’ barnstorming ’53 takeover that made the tune a garage-rock standard for everyone from Van Morrison’s Them to Ted Nugent’s Amboy Dukes. Now you know why ’60s blues-rocker Paul Butterfield sounded so proud about being “Born In Chicago.”

In Deep Cuts, piano men hold the keys to the Chicago blues kingdom.

The stinging guitars and howling harps of Chicago blues stole their share of the spotlight, but where would they have been without the piano men pumping their blood, sweat, and soul into the ivories? Muddy’s piano pounder, Otis Spann, stays just a half step ahead of the wages of sin on “Must Have Been the Devil.” Hard-livin’ wild man Little Johnny Jones’ rolling riffs add a brash, barrelhouse edge behind Billy Boy Arnold’s voice on “I Hear My Black Name Ringing.” And when Chuck Berry backed his milestone Chess debut single “Maybelline” with the lonesome blues of “Wee Wee Hours,” his right-hand man Johnnie Johnson — whose left hand was none too shabby either — knew just how to lay into that lamp-lit, late-night vibe.

The classic Chicago sound is what most folks hear in their heads when they think blues, whether they know it or not. The Windy City’s so synonymous with electric blues it’s almost impossible to separate the two. Chess Records put the music on the map, and the visionary label’s regal roster is still the gold standard for the style, whether it’s the sweat-soaked, floor-shaking stomp of Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy,” the sassy, streetwise shuffle of harmonica hellion Little Walter’s “Juke,” or the razor-totin’, night-crawlin’, roadhouse rumble of Koko Taylor’s “Wang Dang Doodle.” Of course, it wasn’t all about Chess — the sensual strut of Otis Rush’s “Homework” and the slashing slide guitar of Elmore James’ “Dust My Broom” got just as many juke-joint jumpers shakin’ their cabooses. And torch-carriers like Joanna Connor and Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials keep that blue light burning on into the 21st century. So, where can you start soaking up the Chicago story? Look no further.