From 1989 through 1995 Lincoln T. Beauchamp, Jr., anAfrican-American musician and writer, published a thick journal called the Original Chicago Blues Annual. OCBAincluded poetry and fiction but focused on interviews with blues and jazzartists along with cultural essays on the black experience in America.
BluesSpeak: The Bestof the Original Chicago BluesAnnual (published by University of Illinois Press) is the late periodical’sgreatest hits collection. Featured are transcriptions of long interviews withmusicians such as Koko Taylor, Big Daddy Kinsey and Lester Bowie and AlligatorRecords’ founder Bruce Iglauer. Some of their reminiscences are fascinating.Bluesman Pinetop Perkins described how he avoided the draft in World War II (“Iain’t ever knew I had an uncle named Sam”) by driving a tractor on agovernment-run plantation in Mississippi.Afterward, he worked for a “hoodoo doctor” and recalled a white man who waslynched because he “loved colored people.”
Although the interviews occupy the greatest number of pages,some of the essays are quite good, especially a revealing article on Maxwell Street asan incubator of Chicagoblues.
Talk About the Blues
The Best of the Chicago Annual
