Howlin’ Wolf harmonica, 1950’s (On loan from Bettye Kelly.)
SPRINGFIELD, Il.–”The State of Sound: A World of Music From Illinois” has been called one of the most ambitious exhibits in the 16-year history of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM) in downtown Springfield.
“The State of Sound” features Miles Davis’s custom-made red trumpet, Steve Goodman’s handwritten lyrics to “City of New Orleans,” Mahalia Jackson’s first Decca record from 1937 , and Curtis Mayfield’s 1970s paisley pants and vest suit. There are more than 125 artifacts that relate to the [...]
The Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis, Tn. is one of my favorite music museums in the country. I’ve been chronicling the museum since 2003 when it opened on the site of the original Stax studio, which was razed in 1989.
I’ve leaned into the way the museum connects with local students through their Stax Music Academy. I had some of the inspired students on my WGN radio show in 2017 as they prepared to go to France, England, and Ireland to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the historic Stax/Volt European Tour.
I’ve also made a minor nuisance of myself wondering aloud for 25 years why Chicago hasn’t been able to [...]
John Prine collection (Image courtesy of Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, items on loan from the John Prine family.)
Singer-songwriter John Prine traveled around the world.
But he performed with the comforts of home.
A collection of heartfelt treasures were always on a black-draped table at the center of the stage behind Prine. The materials provided comfort and emotional support for Prine as he faced large audiences.
The items celebrated his roots in Maywood, Ill. as well as his family and friends in Nashville, Tn. They included:
* A plastic motorcycle man [...]
Baseball Hall of Famer Bill Veeck thought outside the box.
One of the best ways to understand Veeck’s brilliant mind is to go inside a large plastic storage box of treasured clippings, notes, paperwork, and pictures covering Veeck’s years of owning the Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, and St. Louis Browns.
It is a remarkable archive that has never been made public.
Mary Frances, Bill Veeck, and midget files.
There’s files and files and files: “How Veeck Got the Sox–1975.” “Scoreboard.” “Buys Browns 1951.” “Veeck-Cuba” “Disco Demolition.” “Amputation,” “Veeck in High School (Hinsdale [...]
Lee’s Barber Shop is in a tiny strip mall on the near north side of Naperville, Ill. A seasonal Dairy Queen sits south of the barbershop and a shuttered dry cleaner is on the north end of what is known as Modern Way Center. Lee’s has as much in common with the Las Vegas Strip as hair on Bruce Willis.
The new master barber at Lee’s is Noe Hernandez, Jr.
Hernandez grew up in the Naperville area, about 40 miles west of Chicago, before embarking on a career that took him to the Palmer House in Chicago, H.R.H. Truefitt, and Hill Barbers in London (the oldest barbershop in the world) and most recently master barber at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
I have many lovely books about Chicago baseball in my library.
One of my top ten favorites is “You Should Have Seen The Ones I Turned Down (Tales from a Life Spent in Hotels and Locker Rooms with everyone from Jerry Vale to Leo Durocher),” a 2008 autobiography by former Chicago Cubs traveling secretary Blake Cullen. I found the 156-page paperback in 2012 in the corner of Prince Books in downtown Norfolk, Va.
I couldn’t turn down a book with that title.
I learned that Cullen was born in Chicago and that his father George Thomas Cullen was hotel manager at the Edgewater Beach Hotel. When his father moved [...]
Mark Baier is sitting in his warehouse in an industrial park on the far west side of Naperville, Ill. He picks up a Stratocaster and starts to play the Beatles hit “I Feel Fine.”
And why shouldn’t Baier feel fine?
The warm tones on a cold February afternoon are impeccable through his Victoria Amplifier. Baier created and designed the Victoria, the amplifier of choice for Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, John Legend, John Mayer, and many more. Mayer made the effort to find the Victoria Amplifier Company, lost in a shuffle of nondescript industries like Conley Steel and MidWest Stair Parts near the border of west [...]
Let’s say you assembled a team of friends to make a comprehensive documentary about some precious but overlooked musicians and the unique small-town community that surrounded them. You did this for love. Friends jumped in on faith and fellowship. It took more than seven years and $250,000 out of your own pockets to get this project to the finish line.
Last year, in the middle of a pandemic, you found a distributor who believed in the doc. Wow.
Many DIY documentaries don’t get that far.
Our documentary “The Center of Nowhere (The Spirit and Sounds of Springfield, Mo.)” got off to a [...]
We all need a soulful angel on our shoulders.
That was part of the resume of Danny Ray, the “Cape Man” for soul brother number one James Brown. Ray died of natural causes Tuesday in Augusta, Ga. He was 85 years old.
On Wednesday the James Brown Estate called Ray “the second hardest working man in show business.”
Ray served as master of ceremonies for the James Brown and the Famous Flames Revue, but he was best known for draping a flowing cape over a worn-out Brown in at the end of a concert.
In my career, I always tried to look beyond the stars. That’s how I wound up backstage with Ray after [...]
The road to find out & Larry King radio; 1991. The author at Santo Domingo Pueblo, N.M.
It sounds like a strange thing to bring Larry King into a conversation about the American road.
But I got hooked on Mr. King in the summer of 1991 when I drove Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica, Ca. I was alone and I took my time: Saint James, Mo., Stroud, Ok., Seligman, Az., etc. My soundtrack was country and soul music, regional baseball games, and Mr. King, who had a late-night show on the Mutual Broadcasting System.
Mr. King–who died Saturday at the age of 87–featured guest [...]
MILWAUKEE—When you’ve been in lockdown for nearly a year, the only way to go is up.
Last summer I found socially distant minor league baseball in Franklin, Wis., southwest of Milwaukee. I drove along South Howell Avenue near Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport. I noticed a few airport-themed restaurants and bars along the gritty ribbon of highway. It reminded me of the 1980s and going to the Baby Doll Polka Club, across the street from Midway Airport in Chicago. I recalled a simpler time when people might stop to watch airplanes take off into places more exotic than the South Side of Chicago or the South Side of Milwaukee.
So, last Friday I drove back to [...]
Wyonella Smith, 1921-2020 (Courtesy of Marie Ellis.)
Wyonella Smith had a love affair with Chicago. With a forward nature in her eyes, she saw the hopeful texture of its baseball seasons and she navigated local media in its black and white years. Mrs. Smith was the wife of trailblazing newspaper columnist and mid-1960s WGN-Channel 9 sports anchor Wendell Smith. Mrs. Smith died on Thanksgiving Day at the Montgomery Place Retirement Community in Hyde Park.
She was 99 years old.
Mrs. Smith lived in the same retirement center as Mary Frances Veeck, the wife of Baseball Hall of Famer Bill Veeck. Wendell Smith [...]
Phyllis Jaskot at her bar, early 1960s (Courtesy of the Jaskot family.)
In a city known for unique taverns, Phyllis’ Musical Inn, 1800 W. Division, is the full dance card.
Phyllis and Clem Jaskot Sr. opened their Chicago bar in 1954. The club has since taken on at least three historic personalities: the cornerstone of a 1950s polka music strip known as “Polish Broadway,” a minimalist country-rock club that in the 1980s featured live sets from Souled American, Green and many others, and now, the last interesting drinking establishment on gentrified Division Street.
Beloved matriarch Phyllis [...]
Artist Ken Auster’s “Turnin-A-Burnin” (Courtesy of Jack Morris)
The only Ruby Tuesday restaurant left in Illinois is off of Route 66 in downstate Litchfield. I’ve had the chicken and broccoli pasta a few times there over the past year. On every visit, I’ve paid a little more attention to the artwork. The walls contain restaurant themed paintings that recall Edward Hopper’s sparse realism.
On the north wall of the Ruby Tuesday, there is a giclee (inkjet printing process) of a waiter in a creased white shirt serving two men at a small table with a white tablecloth. A chef with a [...]
Build it and they will have supper (Courtesy of the Beloit Snappers.)
The relish tray is Quint Studer’s favorite item at a Wisconsin supper club. That makes sense. Studer is an investor and managing partner in the rebirth of the Beloit (Wis.) Snappers minor league baseball team. He has an appetite for all the seasoning that life can offer.
Studer grew up in Brookfield, a near western suburb of Chicago. He was raised on the Go-Go White Sox. The neighborhood hangout was Joe’s (Butkovich) Saloon on 47th Street. Joe’s sponsored Sunday bus trips to Comiskey Park and Studer would tag along with his parents. Everyone [...]
When a rose blooms in November, you see the hearts of everyone. Doors open and walls fall, with the gift of a rose in your outstretched hand. When a rose blooms in November, its petals will soon fall into a bed of empathy Skies turn soft blue and the angry orange will slide into the horizon.
When a rose blooms in November, people smile at tomorrow. The dark winter is sure to be followed by bright possibilities. Birds come to you. When a rose blooms in November, shouting turns into sharing Thorns, weeds, and dirty deeds will not be considered.
Maybe your father planted roses as did mine. My father was gentle, humble, and full of humor. He also liked dogs. When a [...]
Layne Greene photo courtesy of The Daily Yonder.
The drumbeats of a pandemic, crime, cost of living, and divisive national leadership have planted the seeds for an urban exodus. Should some of that happen, forward- thinking communities in rural America could blossom.
The Daily Yonder is an ambitious online newsletter published by the Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg, Ky. The Daily Yonder covers rural news on a national scope. Tim Marema is editor.
Over yonder from today’s dehumanizing conversations, what are the good things that humans do?
“We’re in a society that allows us [...]
When you are young, the seasons turn like a pinwheel.
Seasons slow over time and become a paddlewheel in muddy water. As you grow old you try to hang onto something. The last flower from a garden. A John Prine song about summer’s end.
Or a place you may never see again.
On the steamy Fourth of July weekend, 2012, I visited the Tommy Bartlett Show in the Wisconsin Dells with my award-winning videographer Jon Sall. The homespun big top on water was celebrating its 60th anniversary and there was a reunion with a dozen Bartlett skiers from the 1950s and 60s.
Jon shares my eye for the simple beauties of Americana and this was something [...]
Ronny’s Steakhouse closed over Labor Day weekend in Chicago’s Loop.
It was another signal in the shift of the urban community as a result of the pandemic. At one time there were six Ronny’s steakhouses in downtown Chicago. The last one standing was on the ground floor of the Thompson Center building. Government workers came to Ronny’s. Bank tellers ate there. There were wayward tourists. The late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was a fan, most notably stopping in around 2010 when he was directing the “Long Red Road” at the nearby Goodman Theatre.
They are all ghosts in 2020.
Ronny’s was a place out of time during its time, which helped explain [...]
