News & Updates — Chicago

The speed metalist of the hard bop saxophone players, the tenor runs of Johnny Griffin could waste most competitors and his stretch in the '50s/early '60s with Blue Note, Riverside and Jazzland is hard to beat. He co-led a band with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and was a memorable feature with some of Thelonious Monk's best line-ups. He came out of that jazz factory of Chicago's DuSable High and got early gigs with T-Bone Walker, Lionel Hampton and Arnett Cobb. He was old enough to have been part of the bop generation, despite not making a record 'til '53. He joined...

Here's a birthday nod to the soulful tenor man Gene Ammons. "Jug" was one of the fathers of the soul-jazz genre and was a popular and prolific recording artist before spending most of his last fifteen years incarcerated on drug charges. He was the son of pianist Albert Ammons and he studied with the infamous Captain Walter Dyett in Chicago and joined the Billy Eckstein band in '44, blowing in that group with Charlie Parker and Dexter Gordon. From '47 onward he led his own groups and sessions, which would employ future greats such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Donald...

McKinley Morganfield's name was awesome enough but he had to go and start being called Muddy Waters, which is like the old bluesman equivilent of a punk rock name. But that is an appropriate analogy since his loud & electrified folk-blues was the punk of its generation. Without Muddy, the path to Chicago blues, rock, metal and punk might've taken other roads. Of questionable birth year, Muddy came from the musically fertile area of Clarksdale, Mississippi. He started playing harmonica but switched to guitar after hearing Son House. Alan Lomax was the first to record him (in '41, right in...

Despite being two years younger than the other Sonny Boy Williamson (II), this one (born John Lee Curtis Williamson in Tennessee) was on the scene in the '30s and '40s before his murder in a robbery after a gig. He was only 34.  His early travels came alongside Sleepy John Estes and Yank Rachell. Settling in Chicago around '34, his first record was "Good Morning, School Girl" (1937), which became a blues standard for ever after. He cut a bunch of sides for the Bluebird label as a leader and also appeared as a sideman on hundreds of recordings. His...

A fine vibraphonist (and pianist) and a visionary producer, conductor and arranger, Charles Stepney was the psychedelic soul man over at Chess Records and their subsidiary Cadet Concept. Producer of classics by Ramsey Lewis, Minnie Ripperton, The Howlin' Wolf Album, Muddy Waters (Electric Mud), Terry Callier, Marlena Shaw, The Dells, The Emotions, Phil Upchurch and more, he was co-founder of Rotary Connection and Earth, Wind & Fire (although due to his contract with Chess could not always be listed in the credits). As a sideman he performed on many Chess songs, as well as played on albums by Eddie Harris,...