I remember the one trip I took to Chicago. I was very excited because I was eighteen, which was the drinking age in Illinois at the time, which meant I'd be able to go and check out blues clubs to my heart's content. Imagine my disgust that on the day we pull into Chicago we discover that the drinking age had been raised to nineteen.
No grandfather clause for people born before that day; you weren’t nineteen, you weren't getting in a bar. I knew they were going to be checking people closely, and I'm the guy who had to carry his passport with him until he was twenty-eight in order to get served. I knew that I had no hope in hell of getting served or seeing the inside of any of the great clubs lining the streets of that town.
Well, I haven't been back to Chicago since, and I probably never will now, but I finally got to at least see inside one of those great blues clubs. Jimmy Burns Live At B.L.U.E.S. is a live DVD produced by Delmark Records shot one afternoon during a summer barbecue at one of those old clubs that I couldn't get in to. 
Maybe it's a type of romanticism, but the opening location shot showing the bar's beat-up, storefront-style facade gave me a quick thrill of anticipation. Going inside to see the band gathered on a stage so small that only the two guitar players can stand abreast, and the chart on the wall behind them listing that month's acts, like Eddie "Cleanhead" Vincent, in magic marker, only served to heighten the atmosphere of anticipation.
Of course all that meant that I was giving the band and the DVD a load of unfair expectations to live up to. It's not fair to anybody to load your own romantic ideals upon them, but you know what? Jimmy Burns and his band not only didn't disappoint, they brought that old dream of mine of seeing blues sung in a Chicago club to life.
Article comments