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| Crowds To Hit Grant Park For Blues Festival AS CBS informs, Downtown will teeming with crowds all day Friday. Just as the Blackhawks Stanley Cup victory rally gets started at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive, the Blues Festival will kick off just blocks away in Grant Park. The festival officially starts at 11:30 a.m., with a presentation by the Blues in the Schools educational project, featuring guitarist Eric Noden, singer Katherine Davis and the Stone Academy Blues Students. Through Sunday night, the blues will electrify Grant Park at the Petrillo Band Shell and four satellite stages – the Front Porch, the Gibson Guitar Crossroads, the Mississippi Juke Joint and the Zone Perfect All-Nutrition Bars Route 66 Roadhouse, each of them celebrating a different style. This year's Blues Festival honors blues legend Howlin' Wolf, who would have turned 100 on Thursday. The revered blues singer and guitarist spent much of his career in Chicago, where he recorded electric blues classics including "Smokestack Lightnin'" and "Evil (Is Going On.)" He died in 1976. Appropriately, the first headliners at the Petrillo starting at 5 p.m. are musicians who worked with Howlin' Wolf, including Eddie Shaw, who was the blues legend's personal manager. He will appear with fellow Wolf alumni Jody Williams, Sam Lay, Henry Gray, Abb Locke, Corky Siegel and Hubert Sumlin. Also onstage Friday is the Otis Taylor Band, followed by the James Cotton Blues Band. Joining them will be special guest Matt "Guitar" Murphy, whom you might remember from "The Blues Brothers, " but who also worked with Howlin' Wolf in the 1950s. Chicago blues singer Zora Young closes out the night with a tribute to Wolf. On Saturday, Chicago blues diva Nellie "Tiger" Travis is up first at the Petrillo, followed by blues-rock guitarist Bobby Parker. Afterward, Chicago bluesmen Billy Boy Arnold, Billy Branch, John Primer, Lurrie Bell and Carlos Johnson take the stage for "Chicago Blues: A Living History." On Sunday night, the program at the Petrillo starts with pianist Erwin Helfer and his Chicago Boogie Woogie Ensemble. Local blues celebrity Vance "Guitar" Kelly and his daughter Vivian are up next with the Backstreet Blues Band. After them, it's a Chicago Blues Reunion with Barry Goldberg, Corky Siegel, onetime Paul Butterfield Blues Band songwriter Nick Gravenites, Harvey "The Snake" Mandel, and special guests Charlie Musselwhite and Sam Lay. Finally at 8:30 p.m. Sunday, R&B singer T.K. Soul, known as "The Bad Boy of Southern Soul, " takes the stage. There are also plenty of offerings at the satellite stages, including performances, jam sessions, and beginning delta blues harmonica lessons with harp master Joe Filisko each day at the Route 66 Roadhouse stage. There will also be discussions and remembrances of Howlin' Wolf. The first ever blues festival in Grant Park was held in 1969, and featured Koko Taylor, Junior Wells, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and Bo Diddley, among others. The Blues Festival in its current incarnation has been held annually at the beginning of June since 1984. write your comments about the article :: © 2010 Jazz News :: home page |