Checkerboard Lounge Archives

An illustration of blues guitarist and singer John Primer embedded in the title card for the Secret History of Chicago Music

John Primer is a living link to the departed giants of Chicago blues

by Steve Krakow January 4, 2023January 6, 2023

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 […]

Music

Blueswoman Joanna Connor honors beloved Chicago blues club Theresa’s with 4801 South Indiana Avenue

by Salem Collo-Julin March 26, 2021August 18, 2021

If you’d stumbled unawares into one of Joanna Connor’s regular gigs at the House of Blues or Kingston Mines in the 2010s, the blues singer and guitarist might’ve seemed like some sort of hidden treasure. But Connor has been playing all over the local blues scene for almost four decades, and she’s attracted devoted fans […]

Music

Andrew ‘Big Voice’ Odom sang for blues stars but never became one

by Steve Krakow March 25, 2021August 18, 2021

Andrew “Big Voice” Odom toured internationally—and also used to drop by Maxwell Street and overwhelm the makeshift sound systems.

Music

Chicago’s Countess Williams summons the theatrical panache of classic blueswomen

by David Whiteis September 26, 2019August 18, 2021

Blues singer Jean Williams, known as the Countess, delivers her music with a theatrical panache that recalls the classic blueswomen of Bessie Smith’s era; skilled thespians as well as gifted vocalists, they often transformed their songs into melodramas that they carefully acted out onstage. Born in Chicago in 1966, Williams cultivated her musical tastes by […]

Music