I’ve been covering underappreciated artists in the Secret History of Chicago Music for more than 18 years, but as I research a subject, I still sometimes catch myself wondering: “Why is this person not a universally beloved household name?” Cleveland Eaton is just such a case. He was a composer, bandleader, producer, arranger, publisher, teacher, […]
Category: The Secret History of Chicago Music
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The Austin High Gang helped birth Chicago jazz in the 1920s
In nearly 20 years of writing the Secret History of Chicago Music, I’ve never tackled prewar jazz. The Windy City has been an important center for bebop and avant-garde jazz, and it was also a major player in jazz’s early history. The “Chicago style” has meant different things to different jazz musicians over the decades, […]
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Soul vocal group the Independents grew out of a powerful songwriting duo
All forms of art speak of their time, and during events of historical significance, art reliably reflects those changes, whether overtly or subtly. Often the artists themselves respond by creating new aesthetics or philosophies. Righteous Chicago soul group the Independents didn’t catalyze a musical revolution of their own, but they still prove the point: they […]
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Art-school punks Poison Squirrel released their lone single in 1980
The early history of Chicago punk is a tough nut to crack. Because the scene here isn’t seen as groundbreaking or cohesive, it hasn’t been nearly as thoroughly researched or documented as the scene in New York City. The 2007 documentary You Weren’t There, directed by Joe Losurdo and Christina Tillman, tried to pick up […]
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Harmonica master Billy Branch deserves to be a household name
It must be surreal to be a towering figure in your field but still have to explain who you are to almost everyone you meet. I’m sure scientists are used to it—their work doesn’t exactly put their faces in front of the public—but I’ll never get why the reputations of blues musicians travel so poorly […]
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It’s never too late to give soul-blues master Bobby Jonz his flowers
We Americans don’t seem to want to deal with this pesky pandemic anymore—not to take precautions and certainly not to grieve our country’s losses, which topped one million lives almost a year ago. Even our president, who at first seemed to have our backs, has declared the crisis over. Meanwhile the body count keeps climbing, […]
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Rockin’ bluesman G.L. Crockett died right before he found his audience
In the world of visual art, it’s not too unusual for, say, a painting by a French artist who died a pauper to sell through a New York auction house for millions of dollars. Blues and soul artists from the States sometimes encounter a similar fate. After decades spent underpaid and underappreciated on their home […]
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Linsey Alexander started a second career in the blues at 58
It’s important to pay tribute to our living legends, and I like to think that the Secret History of Chicago Music does so at least as often as it honors the departed. Guitarist and singer Linsey Alexander has been laying down blistering electric blues in the Windy City for five decades, but he didn’t become […]
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J.T. Brown’s ‘nanny goat’ horn still echoes through the blues
When you think of the blues, you probably think of guitars (acoustic and electric), piano, harmonica, maybe even the bass and drums in a full band. Saxophone, on the other hand, is much more closely associated with jazz and R&B. Sax players do exist in the blues, of course, but you usually see them only […]
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Remembering the Big Boss Lady
“I’m the mother and the grandmother of the blues,” Johnnie Mae Dunson declared in a 2005 interview with the Chicago Tribune, and I won’t argue. “When I first started playing in Chicago, in the ’40s, people said ugly things about a woman who plays the blues,” she recalled. “They said, ‘She must not be a […]
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John Primer is a living link to the departed giants of Chicago blues
It’s barely January, and already a “bomb cyclone” storm has frozen pipes, disrupted travel, and much worse, all while a “tripledemic” tears through the population. Every year the Secret History of Chicago Music undertakes its annual Winter Blues series, and every year the season seems to find new ways to give us the blues. This […]
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Local soul sensation Jo Ann Garrett disappeared from the biz in her 20s
Sometimes the Secret History of Chicago Music reads like a novel, with an interesting origin story, lots of detail spanning the artist’s entire career, and a satisfying conclusion. But sometimes I hit a wall, and SHoCM feels more like a mystery story. Even when I don’t ask, those columns are essentially a plea to anyone […]
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Witchslayer have finally released the album they should’ve made 40 years ago
I’m choosy about metal. Thrash and technical metal don’t often move me, and as unhip as it makes me sound, I don’t care for most death metal or black metal either. (The latter’s well-documented Nazi infestation doesn’t help—but yeah, I do have Venom’s first album.) I like my metal sludgy and epic, preferably with lyrics […]
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Walter Jagiello defined the polka sound of Polish Chicago
I’m part Polish, but in 18 years of the Secret History of Chicago Music, I’ve somehow never covered a polka musician. By certain generous estimates, around 1,900,000 people of Polish descent live in the Chicago metropolitan area—it’s the largest such community in the United States and the second worldwide only to Warsaw. Polka originated in […]
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Saxophonist Clifford Jordan epitomized the Chicago tenor sound
When tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan died in 1993, he hadn’t lived in Chicago for nearly 40 years, but he was still beloved here. “Clifford’s personality was warm and sincere, just like his tone on the saxophone,” Chicago tenor titan Von Freeman told Howard Reich at the Tribune. “He was a beautiful person—he helped me and […]
