When I was a younger man, before church work and before marriage, I was dating a woman who lived in Chicago and was appearing in a play in The Loop. This was a little tricky to manage as I was living 350 miles away in Cleveland. So, on Friday afternoons, as soon as I could escape after teaching my eighth period English class, I would drive my Chevy through the early rush hour traffic, along the flattening highway past Sandusky, Toledo, Elkhart, South Bend, Gary, and eventually Joliet; arriving in The Windy after a little over five hours.
The thing was, the play would be performed until about 11 and that would leave me with some time to kill. For awhile, I was content to hang around backstage, lean against a steam radiator in the wings, and wait. When I reached the point when I could mouth the actors' lines from heart, I realized that I'd have to do something else before I became a nuisance to the production crew.
So, being an aficionado of jazz and blues, and knowing that Chicago was the Mecca for all northbound blues musicians, I found that, a short distance from the Bronzeville exit off of Interstate 90, one could find Buddy Guy's blues club, The Checkerboard Lounge.
Now, it was not the most prepossessing place, although those readers who have perused our Thursday offerings have, I'm sure, noticed that tends to be the norm for the music clubs I would frequent, but it had good music, good parking, and beer that was cheap. [Their special cocktail was gin and ginger ale, so we stuck with the beer.] Bronzeville, having been the historic African-American district, was known for its cultural artists, in fact Muddy Waters himself lived just a few blocks away in an ordinary middle-class neighborhood, and the venue became a popular stage for the local performers and their followers.
While most of the blues musicians were as obscure as was their art form by the 1970's, a casual glance around the club would reveal that there was still an international appeal. While there were certainly neighborhood regulars present, there were also suburban youngsters, college kids, and European tourists.
Among those tourists, one evening in 1981, were a bunch of musicians from England who, after having finished a concert in downtown Chicago, stopped by to hang out after hours at The Lounge. That turned out to be a seminal moment, as they had brought some recording equipment with them, gave Muddy a call and invited him over, and created one of the best albums of the 1980's.
With the success of The Rolling Stones' "Live at The Checkerboard Lounge", suddenly every marquee musician wanted his or her time on the stage, and so Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Magic Slim, Vance Kelly, and Chuck Berry would also creak those boards and lay out some painful chords to the faithful who gathered.
As noted, the building was a bit of a disaster and was condemned in 2003. It was moved to the trendier and self-consciously hip neighborhood of Hyde Park, and that led to its inevitable demise. It was very much the product of Bronzeville, a proud African-American community, and not suited to the transient enthusiasms of Hyde Park. The Checkboard Lounge closed in 2015.
However, in my travels as a luthier, and one who tends to favor the marginal genres of music, it's remarkable how many blues guitarists mention that their inspiration came from that brick building with its rickety stage and dodgy wiring. Those who actually played there enjoy a status akin to that of the Olympians to Greek swineherds. Just about anyone among the younger artists, especially those from Chicago and the Midwest, can trace their chordal lineage to 43rd St. in Bronzeville and the legacy that was founded.
That is beyond bricks and mortar, asphalt and asbestos. There is not a guitarist who has twanged a C, F, and G progression who doesn't owe something to Buddy Guy's original club and the neighborhood pride that it enabled.