History
CHICAGO BLUES & THE HISTORY OF
THE CHICAGO BLUES TOUR™
Chicago is the home of the blues, one of three icons of artistry (along with cutting-edge architecture and deep-dish pizza) that every visitor to Chicago should experience and enjoy. While many of the historic locations of the heyday of blues in the 50s and 60s are gone, with a knowledgeable guide you can still walk on hallowed ground and get the true “blues experience”. The true cradles of modern blues are the Chicago blues lounges in the heart of the South and West sides, featuring a neighborhood clientele, an engaged and interactive audience, and a wealth of vocal talent eager to strut their stuff.
Blues music grew roots and developed in the American South, but it came of age in Chicago. From 1954 to 1957, no less than 30 #1 hits came out of the vibrant Chicago blues scene, which included the pre-eminent Chess Records, as well as smaller labels like VeeJay and Chief. After a lull in the 1960s and 70s, during which even stars like B.B. King fell on hard times, a new generation of fans began to revitalize the Chicago blues scene. Many of the movers and shakers worked at one time or another at the Jazz Record Mart, including the founders of Alligator and Earwig records, the original publisher of Living Blues magazine, and quite a few moonlighting blues musicians. By the late 70s, blues clubs had established a firm footing on the North side, with clubs like Kingston Mines, Wise Fools Pub, and B.L.U.E.S. attracting a largely white, college-educated audience, as well as blues tourists making pilgrimage. By the late 80s, blues clubs had even gone downtown, including clubs run by blues legends Buddy Guy and Koko Taylor.
The neighborhood lounges on the South and West side, meanwhile, had languished as the talent moved north with the audiences. By 1990, with interest in blues music flourishing, a retro blues lounge on the near West Side, Rosa’s, began offering multimedia classes on blues history developed by Blues U.®, and the first Chicago Blues Tour™, dubbed the West Side Blues Tour, was staged with Rosa’s as the sole sponsor, and other West Side blues lounges offered as stops on the shuttle routes. The tours proved so popular that they became an annual, and later a semi-annual, event. Championed by the alternative weekly publication, the Chicago Reader, and brought to the attention of a new generation of blues fans by the tours, the lounges once again showed their vitality, spawning a new generation of entertainers cutting their teeth and earning their pay in the tough South and West side blues clubs.
In 1998 the City of Chicago added the Chicago Blues Tour™ to its featured public events for the WinterBreak (later Winter Delights) Festival, and it has become a popular tradition among blues fans as part of the Winter festival as well as a prelude to the annual Chicago Blues Festival. Chicago Blues Tour™ began offering private blues tours in 2000, and its satisfied clients have included everything from small parties to corporate clients.
