Everybody knows everybody' – what the blues has given Chicago
I was born in Chicago. It’s an amazing city. It feels alive, it has an identity, and I feel connected here. I started playing blues professionally in 1974, with an old boogie-woogie piano player, Jimmy Walker. By the following year I was in the band of the great Willie Dixon, who wrote classics such as Hoochie Coochie Man, I Just Want to Make Love to You and Little Red Rooster. He was an important mentor for me. As a city, Chicago is probably unique for musicians in that you could just work within it and make a living playing blues.
Blues is on the tourist trail now, but that doesn’t mean the money always trickles down to the musicians. For a taste of the old South Side, check out the Odyssey Lounge East at 99th Street and Torrence Avenue. It used to belong to the husband of the “queen of the blues”, Koko Taylor. It has a jam session on Sundays with a house band, a group who play solid Chicago R&B, including Sidney Joe Qualls, a great singer in the Al Green mould.
Blues musicians Eddie Shaw and Bob Stroger on stage at Rosa’s Lounge, Chicago Photograph: Paul Natkin/Getty Images
On the road with Willie Dixon, it didn’t matter how late it was, what you were up to, or who you were with, he’d call up and tell you to come on over. You’d have to drop everything and work with him on a song. He was always writing. He would keep time on his notebook with his pencil, like a snare drum.
There is so much music here – not just blues. There’s jazz, classical, folk, country and ethnic, from Puerto Rican to Irish. There’s a real sense of identity in the neighbourhoods, of belonging. It’s not unusual for me to be playing and someone will come up and say, “I knew your mother as a little girl,” or, “I went to school with your father.” Everybody knows everybody.
Chicago has probably the most extensive parks of any major US city. If you go into the hood you’re still going to find a nice, well-maintained park. Recently I played at the Garfield Park Conservatory, a magnificent place on the West Side, with botanical gardens and a giant greenhouse, trees, flowers and plants, and it’s in the heart of the ghetto. The Lakefront Trail runs all the way from 71st Street in the South Side up to 5800 North Sheridan. That’s 18 miles, all along the Lake Michigan shore. I’ve got a mountain bike, but I need to get something faster – I’m getting overtaken by old ladies.
The Monet Garden outside the Garfield Park Conservatory. Photograph: Alamy
The architecture in the Loop, downtown, is spectacular. And there’s the Bean – it’s actually called Cloud Gate, by Anish Kapoor. People love it. The Art Institute has a world-class collection, and it’s walking distance from the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum. Down at Hyde Park there’s the Museum of Science and Industry, which has a second world war U-Boat. That amazes me – we’re 800 miles from the sea.
Young musicians get experience by sitting in with bands. I sat in with Muddy Waters a few times, and with BB King and John Lee Hooker. These days I’ll sit with African or Mexican artists, at places like the City Winery or the Old Town School of Folk Music.
Cloud Gate. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images
Chicago winters can be brutal. We lived in a high-rise around 32nd Street and King Drive, and I remember one time, walking to school, the wind was blowing so hard I was literally going backwards on the ice. I was like Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk.
Even people from Italy say Chicago pizza is the best in the world. Try Edwardo’s or Giordano’s. I often go with my wife Rosa to Thai 55, on the South Side near where we live – it’s convenient, affordable, you can bring your own wine and the food is great. I perform regularly at The Promontory, which is a relatively new venue. People say the food is good there, but it’s a little eclectic for me – when I look at my dinner I don’t want it looking back at me.
Pizza, Chicago style. Photograph: Alamy
I started my Blues in Schools programme here in Chicago in 1978, and I now teach Blues in schools all over the world. I get invited in to teach, perform and educate the kids about the blues as the root of all American music. Sometimes we give the kids harmonicas – it’s not unusual to have up to 600 kids in an auditorium or a gym, and believe it or not, more often than not, it is not chaotic. At the ribbon-cutting of the BB King Museum down in Mississippi back in 2008 I had 1,500 kids with harmonicas marching down the street.
There is a tight sense of community among Chicago’s blues musicians. They did a fundraiser for Howlin’ Wolf saxophonist Eddie Shaw at B.L.U.E.S recently and we were all there – every musician who was anybody. I said onstage that I was glad we were able to do this while he’s here to witness it: usually when we see each other en masse we’re at a funeral.

Billy Branch’s latest CD, Blues Shock, is out on Blind Pig Records. Alan Harper is the author of Waiting for Buddy Guy (University of Illinois Press, $19.95)