I’ve been delving into Windy City jazz for most of my life, beginning with the out-there, Afrocentric sounds of the Sun Ra Arkestra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and the like. These days, as an old man, I’m also drawn to soul jazz—an earthier, groovier style that incorporates elements of hard bop, blues, gospel, R&B, […]
Category: The Secret History of Chicago Music
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In a scene full of big personalities, Jim Post was a giant
Once again, Chicago has lost a legendary musician, and in this author’s opinion there haven’t been nearly enough public tributes. Jim Post was a crucial part of the Old Town folk scene in the 1970s, but compared to John Prine, one of his contemporaries on that scene, he’s barely been memorialized. Both men had long, […]
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Boogie-woogie 2, pandemic 0
We won’t know the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for many years, not least because they haven’t stopped piling up. Bodily sickness, mental illness, financial loss—everyone seems to have been afflicted differently, and the effects on our medical, political, social, and economic systems compound those individual misfortunes. New variants, vaccine updates, and long COVID are […]
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Soul band the Kelderons pulled a 30-year disappearing act
It’s sad when a talented band’s closest brush with fame is almost finishing a soundtrack for a movie that never existed, ending up with nothing but demos where one of the guitars is out of tune. To make matters worse, they’d recorded under a new name that almost nobody knew. The history of recorded music […]
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Genius bassist Richard Davis is so ubiquitous he’s almost invisible
I can’t rattle off a list of my most beloved guitarists, despite being a so-so guitar player myself, but I can quickly tell you my top ten bassists. One of my favorites has played with famous musicians across many genres, but most folks don’t even recognize his name. As far as I know, my first […]
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Young-Holt Unlimited were more than Ramsey Lewis’s rhythm section
Most musicians use their first professional endeavors to find a voice and develop their chops. So I love it when artists “spin off” into new sounds, even if they break up beloved bands to do it. Curtis Mayfield and Jerry Butler both left the Impressions to follow their own soulful muses, and jazz-funk ensemble the […]
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Rescuing Paradoxx from the record collectors
I’m a lifetime fan of vinyl records, but “record collecting” continues to befuddle and annoy me. I know I might sound like a pretentious gatekeeper pontificating about a trivial problem, but despite the huge number of records I own, I won’t even call myself a “collector.” It seems like the folks who do use that […]
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Chicago’s greatest postpunk obscurity returns from oblivion
Lately it seems like every “lost” recording, no matter how inconsequential, is getting pushed on limited colored vinyl for a crass Record Store Day cash grab. Beneath the hype, “archival releases” are too often just so-so live jams or half-baked outtakes by established artists—and it’s usually clear why they hadn’t been released before. That’s what […]
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Soul singer Barbara Livsey cut one star-making album and vanished
I love a good mystery. Sometimes even my most exhaustive research turns up nothing more than a few details about a great musician, not enough to tell the full tale. As much as I might want to blast that story from the mountaintops, I also respect the value in leaving an artist’s mystique intact—a rare […]
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Jazz pianist Denny Zeitlin has developed a vision of mind-blowing breadth
Secret History readers often assume I know every Chicago musician who ever lived, but luckily I’m still capable of experiencing the joy of discovery. One of my bigger thrills in life is buying a random LP by an act I barely know, being floored by the music, and then discovering the artist is from the […]
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The Devil Bell Hippies: Chicago’s greatest avant-garde band that only kind of exists
When I finished college downstate and moved to the Windy City in 1995, the Chicago no-wave scene was breaking apart. While still in school, I’d often driven three hours to catch gigs here, and after my move I caught the last shows by local no-wave stars the Scissor Girls and Lake of Dracula. The original […]
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Groovy jazz trio the Three Souls produced a legendary basketball coach
The Secret History of Chicago Music has produced plenty of offshoots over the 18 years that it’s run, and I’m pretty proud of some of them. I published the book My Kind of Sound: The Secret History of Chicago Music Compendium in 2016; I’ve facilitated reissues and archival releases of music by artists I’ve covered […]
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Prog rockers Apocalypse debut with a dazzling 46-year-old demo
Having been a midwestern rock fan my whole life, I’ve come to the conclusion that folks around here don’t just love “heartland classic rock” like John Cougar and Steve Miller—they’re also unusually fond of progressive rock from the UK and Europe. I grew up landlocked and surrounded by mostly featureless landscapes, so I was drawn […]
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Blues guitarist Byther Smith made the long haul count
So little in the world seems to be going right that I hardly feel the need to explain why the Secret History of Chicago Music is extending its annual Winter Blues series into April. Sticking to the calendar is less important to me than eulogizing an important bluesman who recently passed away. I hope this […]
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Why did blues singer Lil Green end up forgotten?
It’s officially spring, which is always a relief in Chicago, but the threat of World War III, the stubborn persistence of the pandemic, and the new flood of horrifying Republican anti-trans legislation more than justify continuing the Winter Blues series for a few more entries. No underrecognized Chicago blues artist deserves a spot in the […]