Milwaukee Blues: The Tumultuous Journey of the Avant Garde Coffeehouse Tapes

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Photo via Avant Garde Coffeehouse - Facebook

Jim Liban and Chris Lorenz from The Unit in Bill Olsen's 1966 short film that features scenes from the Avant Garde Coffeehouse

Jim Liban and Chris Lorenz from The Unit in Bill Olsen's 1966 short film that features scenes from the Avant Garde Coffeehouse

It’s now common knowledge that the African American music known as blues has influenced almost every idiom of American music since the creation of the first blues music at the end of the 1800s. Without blues music, jazz, rock, hip hop, folk, soul and country music would not have evolved in the same way, and much of the music we listen to today would not sound the same.

Although perhaps overlooked by many blues historians, there are numerous examples of the importance of the Milwaukee area on the history of blues music. Blues legends Sonny Boy Williamson II (Rice Miller) and Howlin Wolf’s most influential guitarist, Hubert Sumlin, both made their home here for many years. The Paramount record label, decidedly the most important documenter of pre-war blues music on 78 RPM shellac records, originated in Port Washington, only about 20 miles north of Milwaukee. Blind Blake, credited as the originator of the Piedmont guitar style (and a Paramount artist), settled in Milwaukee and is buried here. There are other examples, but let’s add to this list the Avant Garde coffeehouse, then located on the second floor of a building on Prospect Avenue, two blocks south of North Avenue on Milwaukee’s East Side. The building is still there, right next to the train trestle on the west side of the street.

Counterculture Music

In existence from 1965-1969, the Avant Garde Coffeehouse was the best known of Milwaukee’s music venues that took part in the counter cultural movement typified by the so-called beatniks. The folk revival, beat poetry and literature, fashion and a plethora of other trappings all marked this cultural shift. Coffeehouses in New York and San Francisco spearheaded the movement. Importantly, the coffeehouses gave the blues revival a home. 

The blues revival movement started in the late1950s and was adjacent to the American folk music revival. Aficionados of what was then considered an obscure music form, blues, re-discovered many of the blues idiom’s originators, and helped rejuvenate the careers of many artists long thought deceased. Lightnin Hopkins, Son House as well as the duo Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee were among the best known of these artists.

In Milwaukee, in addition to offering poetry readings and experimental rock, forward thinking owners of the Avant Garde Coffeehouse started booking some of these touring country blues artists, who now had recording careers on record labels like Arhoolie and Vanguard. Among them, Big Joe Williams, Reverend Gary Davis, Fred McDowell, Skip James, Sleepy John Estes, Bukka White and several other country blues artists performed at the “garde.” In addition, more modern electric blues artists like Charlie Musslewhite, Johnny Young, Big Walter Horton, Johnny Shines and Magic Sam also performed there. Local bands like the New Blues, the Baroques and the Velvet Whip also found a home there. While these concerts were perhaps a revelation to the small audiences that this tiny venue held, behind the scenes something else of equal or more importance was happening.

Reel to Reel

James Barker, one of the owners of the Avant Garde at that time, had set up a decent quality reel to reel tape recorder in the club, and created musical documents of these shows by recording them. Until recently, only a very select group of individuals were even aware of their existence. Now these re-mastered tapes have come forward, and with them comes an unprecedented opportunity to hear the Avant Garde performances.

Local musician and luthier Jan Arenas, through a circuitous route, became the person with the technical know-how and the connection to James Barker to digitize the deteriorating 50-year-old reel to reel tapes. The results are nothing short of astonishing. The performances are complete with not just the artist's musical performances, but with all the asides, interactions, and personal touches with the audiences in this intimate venue. Upon listening, it seems clear that these performances are of equal or superior quality to the label recordings these artists made during the revival of their careers in the same time period, the mid-1960s. They also contain stage banter that helps to define the unique personalities of these artists in a way that their studio recordings never attempted to do.

Barker had recorded around 80 hours of performances, plus some more casual recordings made at the homes where these artists stayed while in Milwaukee. According to Arenas, several amateur engineers had discussed with Barker the possibility of digitizing the deteriorating tapes before 1995, but none of these deals were consummated. In the early 2000s, Arenas was led to Barker by Cathy Rippey, a local blues enthusiast and journalist. By then, Barker and most of the tapes had moved to New Mexico. Through the efforts of Rippey, Arenas received an introduction and was able to visit Barker. He was eventually able to convince Barker to allow him to clean up, re-master, and digitize the tapes. At first, Barker released the tapes to Jan just one at a time, but over time, as his trust was gained, Arenus was able to borrow the tapes in larger quantities.

Arenus felt it was a stroke of luck to be able to work with these tapes at a time when they were reaching the end of their viability. Some tapes were only able to be played and re-recorded once before they crumbled into dust.

At the end of the process, Arenus was able to salvage 1600 individual tracks (!). He then made efforts to make this treasure trove available to the public by soliciting numerous record labels, some in America, some in Europe and Japan. Several record labels were definitely interested. However, one former owner of the Avant Garde, (there were several over the years), got wind of the possibility of commercial release, and threatened a lawsuit if the tracks were publicly and commercially made available.

Arenas’s reaction was to suspend negotiations and publish them individually on Facebook. For a period of several months over the last year, Arenas has posted, and continues to post one track a day on his Facebook page. You can access these posts by contacting J.a.Arenas on Facebook.

There has been discussion of making this music library available to the Smithsonian Institute, which would certainly validate the importance of this incredible discovery. Negotiations are pending.