The Night President Carter Visited the Get Me High Lounge in Chicago
Date Night at the Get Me High (Courtesy of Butchie Dakuras.)
The Get Me High Lounge was completely down to earth.
The tiny storefront jazz club was nestled at 1758 N. Honore near some train tracks in Chicago’s Wicker Park. The Get Me High flourished in the mid-1980s when gob-smacked noir nightlife was all over Wicker Park like a street hustler.
Neighborhood folks could check out the original Artful Dodger punk club on North Milwaukee Avenue and the Double Door when it was a workingman’s bar lined with commemorative Elvis decanters and Webb Pierce on the jukebox. I lived in a graffiti-laden Wicker Park apartment building on Wicker Park Avenue in the mid-1980s. At night my Beagle-Shepard mix chased cockroaches through the kitchen. In the morning I walked across the park to the Busy Bee diner for a hearty Polish breakfast.
The Get Me High was off the chain. And the chain was unlocked.
The club was run by Butchie Dakuras, a fast-talking raconteur who claimed to be a former professional stuntman. Customers had to walk across the stage to get to the bathroom. One night I climbed across Butchie. He was reading poetry face up while sprawled out on the stage like Sonny Liston, post-Muhammad Ali. A nearby piano was propped up on wobbly milk crates.
From the author’s collection.
Butchie booked top-notch jazz acts in the mid-1980s and I remember him once complaining to me that he was losing them to the Green Mill in Uptown. Butchie said other clubs played songs. He maintained the Get Me High played sounds.
I last heard from Butchie several years ago. He found my phone number and I learned he was residentially challenged in Key West, Fla. He still sounded happy. He had found the sun. Butchie died in 2018. The kind folks at the Heartland Cafe organized a memorial jazz jam for him.
I started thinking about Butchie when I did my forever story on Sergio Mayora and Weeds Tavern for November’s New City magazine in Chicago. There was an outsider simpatico between Butchie and Sergio and the Get Me High and Weeds. Several jazz musicians and poets moved back and forth between the two clubs. Weeds was just several blocks southeast of the Get Me High.
Around Thanksgiving, I decided to roll through my files in search of a bit of Butchie’s soul. And then I found a Polaroid picture Butchie had given me.
Someone took a Polaroid of President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn enjoying jazz at the Get Me High. How great is that? A Polaroid of an American president at a Chicago dive bar. That doesn’t happen anymore.
In April 1986 President Carter and his wife were out on the town, later to be joined by author Studs Terkel and WFMT-FM’s Ray Nordstrand. President Carter had asked someone about the best jazz bar in Chicago and the Get Me High came out on top. Saxophonist Ed Peterson and his band were squished onto the small stage. The Carters arrived around 10 p.m. and were later joined by Studs and Nordstrand. The quartet stayed until the last set ended around 1:30 a.m.
Butchie Dakuras working the door at his Get Me High Lounge.
Butchie couldn’t wait to tell me how it all went down.
“I’m sitting there having a soda with my sisters, who are in from Joliet,” he explained. “This guy walks in and calls me outside the front door. He says he’s from the Secret Service and I say, ‘Sure.’ He then asks if there are any loaded weapons in the room, and says Jimmy Carter and his family will be arriving in approximately an hour and 15 minutes. Fine. He asks if there was any special place Mrs. Carter can sit and I said, ‘Sure, next to my sisters over in the corner.’ I still didn’t believe the guy.
“But then I started believing when these guys started arriving with earplugs in their left ear as they were talking into their right wrist. They told me to jam the telephone because it was a family night out and they didn’t want any reporters around.”
At one point President Carter gently inquired about the name of Butchie’s establishment.“I just told him, ‘Get me high, what’s cookin’ and I hope you dig the music’,” Butchie said. “It was weird. There were eight Secret Service men in the room, five on the curb outside, and men in the alley. Four cars were blocking the street. So Studs and Ray drive by and Ray sees all the squad cars and thinks, ‘Butchie’s getting raided; we better help him out.’ He saw those patent-leather shoes outside the door. Anyway, he comes in to give us the squeak and I go, ‘Ray, let me introduce you to President Carter.’ He goes, ‘My, oh my, oh my.’ Then Studs writes a note that says something like ‘Are you selling peanuts?’ So I deliver it to President Carter and he cracks up. Everybody zoomed into outer space. The Secret Service men were all asking for Get Me High bumper stickers. They sincerely dug it.”
Sometimes the world zoomed too fast for Butchie. The mid-1980s is also a blur for me. I think Butchie was at my bachelor party. I’m guessing Butchie’s Get Me High closed in the mid-1990s. He dabbled in a Rush Street Get Me High with some nefarious characters and in the early 2000s someone opened a gentrified version of the Get Me High that had nothing to do with Butchie. That closed in 2005. The ultimate irony is that in 2014 the Get Me High space became a three-story $1.3 million “luxury home” that was featured in the Wall Street Journal.
My last real hang with Butchie was in the winter of 1995. He was living on the southwest side with his father Jimmy Dakuras. Jimmy was crooning lounge songs accompanied by a Wurlitzer organist at the Park Lounge/Lee Choi Restaurant at Harlem and Madison in Forest Park. Regulars believed it was the only Irish bar/Chinese restaurant in the Chicago area.
On that distant winter’s night, Jimmy Dakuras talked about the warmth of the standards. In firm tones, he said, “You could dance to those old songs and the words seemed to have meaning and that was the magic.” And Butchie listened in as a man with unchained magic that attracted presidents, poets, and paupers like me.
I remember Butchie’s well and hung out there often before Jimmy Carter. It would be some local artists and a handful of musicians sitting around. I would show up after my 3-11pm shift. After Carter’s visit there would be a line to get in. Me being one of the pre Carter regulars, the guy at the door would wave me in, no waiting. I enjoyed everything about living in that neighborhood in the mid 80s
Thanks Steve! That neighborhood was the goods back then. See you soon I hope.
I’m a regular reader of Neil Steinberg’s EGD . A link to this piece was offered by a commenter. My friend Lois was a waitress at the get me high a place I occasionally frequented. Lo and behold your photo of butchie working the door includes my sister wearing the glasses and lois kinda out of the picture though I’m sure it’s her hair. Such good times