by Genevieve Williams
"Come on
Oh baby don't you wanna go
Come on
Oh baby don't you wanna go
Back to that same old place
Sweet home Chicago"
Robert Johnson, "Sweet Home Chicago"
Chicago isn't always the first city people think of when it comes to the arts, but fans of American music are keenly aware of Chicago's well-deserved pride of place in blues and jazz history. As it emerged from the South, in the minds and hearts of black workers heading north to find jobs, blues music in particular took root in Chicago, and from there spread across the country. While Texas, Mississippi, and Tennessee are also important centers of blues music, no other city has had as much influence on the development of the genre than Chicago.
Although it is not entirely certain when, or by whom, the song "Sweet Home Chicago" was written, the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson was the first known musician to record it. Johnson, who traveled widely during his brief career, did play in Chicago among other cities, and the song became a blues standard after his death. It's been recorded by everyone from Foghat to the Blues Brothers, and its seems as though every Chicago blues musician--of which there are many--records it at least once. One of the definitive recordings of the song is by Magic Sam, who helped to define the Chicago sound, and whose megastardom was only prevented by his death, at the age of 32.
However, if one had to point to the most important Chicago musician ever, blues or otherwise, that award would unquestionably go to Muddy Waters. Like Johnson, Muddy Waters, aka McKinley Morganfield, hailed from the Mississippi Delta. His relocation to Chicago in 1943 helped define the course of American music; the story of his influence could fill a book (and has: the recently published Can't Be Satisfied from blues writer Robert Gordon is the most complete biography of the musician thus far). Not only did Muddy Waters write and perform songs that would become staples of the genre; not only did his band include names that would become stars of Chicago blues in their own right; not only did he send guitarist Chuck Berry, who idolized him, to Chess Records; but his song "Rollin' Stone" was adopted as a name by a certain British band. The rest, as they say, is history.
It should come as no surprise, then, that a number of classic songs about Chicago are from the blues and jazz genres. There's "Leavin' Chicago," written by Roosevelt Sykes, a contemporary of Muddy Waters who also worked out of Chicago, and covered by Muddy himself as well as by John Lee Hooker. There's "Nobody Knows Chicago," by Big Joe Williams, who also made the trek from the Delta to Chicago and who mentored David "Honeyboy" Edwards and influenced…Muddy Waters. And there's "Chicago Blues," by Arthur Crudup, another bluesman who migrated north. There's Tampa Red's "Chicago Moan," Eddy Clearwater's "Chicago Daily Blues," Albert Ammons' "Chicago in Mind"…you get the idea. Despite his name, Memphis Slim spent a significant portion of his career in Chicago, and wrote a number of songs featuring the city, including "Chicago House Rent Party Blues" and "I'd Take Her to Chicago." The migration of black people, especially black men, to the north during the 1920s had a profound influence on the Chicago music scene, and on the development of the blues.
It's no wonder, then, that so many Chicago blues songs were about the city--living in it, loving it, hating it, leaving it, and arriving in it, as in the classic Bessie Smith song "Chicago Bound Blues," covered by countless musicians since: "Late last night, I stole away and cried/Late last night, I stole away and cried/Had the blues for Chicago, I just can't be satisfied."
However, Chicago isn't just a blues town, even though luminaries such as Buddy Guy and Koko Taylor make their homes there to this day. By the time jazz recording began to establish itself in the 1920s, there was already a musical feedback loop between Chicago and New Orleans, as musicians such as Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong moved from one city to the other, and eventually to New York. The number "Chicago Breakdown" dates from this period. So does Duke Ellington's "Chicago Stomp Down," even though Ellington was based out of New York and really only stopped in Chi-town on tour. Count Basie's "Going to Chicago Blues" might have been a result of the time he spent there as a result of various concert engagements. Later Dinah Washington would record "New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles," putting the Windy City in fine company indeed; later still, Eartha Kitt sang of "Tea in Chicago."
Of course, Chicago music has its humorous side, embodied in folk singer Tom Paxton's "Pizza That Ate Chicago" (as opposed to Chicagoans eating pizza, one gathers). Well-known humorist and embracer of the weird Dr. Demento has "Eggplant That Ate Chicago," a far less likely prospect. And there's "Jesus Just Left Chicago," which has had the dubious honor of being recorded by both ZZ Top and Phish: "Jesus just left Chicago and he's bound for New Orleans/ Jesus just left Chicago and he's bound for New Orleans/Workin' from one end to the other and all points in between." With references to Mississippi and Muddy Waters, the song acknowledges Chicago's connection to the South via blues and jazz. (Chicago has Irish connections as well, of course, and there's even a "Chicago Reel" in honor of the city.)
And, well, one really can't escape a discussion of Chicago songs, however brief, without mention of Paper Lace's "The Night Chicago Died," its immortality stretched a little further by Jack Black in the film High Fidelity. The song was the band's only U.S. hit; in classic one-hit wonder style, Paper Lace subsequently vanished forever. The song was supposedly based on a shootout between Chicago police and Al Capone, but the shootout in question is apocryphal, if not entirely mythical. Maybe that's why the band disappeared afterward. Fortunately, this has affected Chicago's music scene not in the least; today, rock, reggae, hip-hop, and folk stand shoulder to shoulder with blues and jazz in Chi-Town. When Robert Johnson sang "Crossroad Blues," everybody thought he was referring to his legendary deal with the Devil, but Chicago is the musical crossroads of America.
Genevieve Williams is a freelance writer specializing in music, book reviews, and film. She is a former music editor for Amazon.com and a regular contributor to Blues Revue.
