Exploring Chicago Blues:: Inside the Scene, Past and Present

Blues history is steeped in Chicago's sidewalks; it floats out of its restaurants, airport lounges and department stores.

It is a fundamental part of the city's heritage that every resident should know and every visitor should be afraid to miss. Allow Rosalind Cummings-Yeates to take you inside the Checkerboard and Gerri's Palm Tavern, where folks like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Ma Rainey transformed Chicago into the blues mecca. Continue on to explore the contemporary blues scene and discover the best spots to hear the purest sounds of Sweet Home Chicago.

Rosalind Cummings-Yeates is a journalist and arts critic with the same Chicago and Mississippi roots that helped create the Chicago blues. She has been an adjunct professor at Columbia College Chicago for over ten years, and she writes a monthly blues column for the Illinois Entertainer, Sweet Home.�A three-time Grammy nominee and retired governor for the Chicago Grammy chapter, Billy Branch is a harmonica virtuoso and legendary Chicago blues musician. With a career that spans forty years, he has performed all over the world spreading the Chicago blues gospel.