The Chicago Blues Fest featured some incredible lineups in the 1980s. The tribute to Chess Records in 1986 probably ranks the highest, as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon and other blues and rock pioneers performed on the main stage with the city’s skyline as a backdrop.
Sometimes, though, the best events took place on the side stages in the middle of the day.
Imagine, for example, that you could enjoy an acoustic set by two all-time great blues artists who bantered back and forth and seemed to play whatever came to mind. Seat them together on a small stage in a city park at lunchtime, and you have the perfect spot to have a picnic and soak in the atmosphere on a warm afternoon.
That was the treat my friends and some work colleagues enjoyed on June 9, 1989, when Buddy Guy and Junior Wells kicked off the 1989 Chicago Blues Fest on the “Front Porch Stage” in Grant Park. About 20 of us gathered a few blocks from work to sit right by the stage on our blankets. Lunch was from Harold's Chicken Shack, which most of us knew from our days as students at the University of Chicago in the Hyde Park neighborhood.
What songs did they play? Except for the rhythmically infectious “Messin’ With The Kid” I don’t recall much of their impromptu set list. That song was Junior Wells’s signature song, first recorded by him in Chicago in 1960. It usually lasts as long as Junior (on the harmonica) and Buddy (on guitar) feel like taking turns soloing, with Junior’s growling vocals in between. You’ll find one of their best live versions of “Messin’ With The Kid” on the album Drinkin' TNT 'N' Smokin' Dynamite, recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival in the late 1970’s with Pinetop Perkins on piano, Bill Wyman on bass, and Dallas Taylor on drums.
Junior’s defiant stage presence helped make him one of Chicago’s top harmonica players and blues singers from the 1950’s onward. His 1966 album "Hoodoo Man Blues" cemented his status as a star. He and Buddy opened for the Rolling Stones on part of their 1970 tour, and after that the two of them continued to tour together and separately.
Throughout the 1980’s, Junior would perform occasionally at the Checkerboard Lounge, the club that Buddy once owned on Chicago’s South Side. He and I chatted a few times, and some of those talks ended up in my book, Blues Flashbacks: The Legends In Their Own Words. The quote shown below summarizes his feelings in the latter stages of his career. He passed away in 1998 without realizing that Big Break.
Buddy, however, keeps going strong. Next month at age 88 he will once again hold his January residency at his club Legends in Chicago. Tickets for some of the shows sold out within minutes, which I can say from first-hand experience! The picture below shows Buddy playing at his residency in 2016, with the late Marty Sammon on keyboards.
That wonderful Friday afternoon in 1989 was my last hurrah at the Chicago Blues Fest for quite a while. I started a new job in Cleveland a few weeks later and began free-lancing for SCENE, the local alternative newspaper, then moved to Boston, where I worked for the Boston Hearld. The next time I made it to the Chicago Blues Fest was 2015.
But the memory of that day – and that song in particular – stays with me.
Frank Luby is co-founder and CEO of BluesBackroadsBaseball LLC. Photo of Buddy Guy by Frank Luby. Photo of the 43rd Street sign by Robb Perea, courtesy of New City Communications.
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