“Man, I gotta buy me some sex! I ain’t seen a prostitute in three goddamn days!”
Outside a raw wind sends garbage swirling through the gutters and vacant lots of what used to be the Maxwell Street Market. These days the area is pretty deserted, even on Sundays. But on this Sunday, beneath a gray sky, a stream of blues musicians, friends, hangers-on, and street people is making its way toward the taco joint. Some go inside, others brave the icy wind. They gather next to the building on Liberty, where a space has been cleared and folding chairs have been set up.
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Robert Jr. Whitall, editor of the Detroit-based Big City Blues Magazine, is dividing his time among several tasks: positioning a stepladder in front of the cleared-out area, greeting people with hearty handshakes, and keeping an eye out to make sure none of his camera equipment gets stolen. Catching his breath, he explains how he set up this occasion the same way he organized an earlier photo shoot in front of Detroit’s old Fortune Records building. He says he patterned both after Art Kane’s famous 1958 group portrait of jazz musicians in New York; the photo, published in Esquire magazine, is now known as “A Great Day in Harlem.”
Bonnie Lee, resplendent in a gold-sequined cap, enters escorted by bassist Willie Kent. In her usual manner she stands demurely, a little apart from the group, graciously accepting the greetings of those who come by to pay their respects. “I like seeing my old friends,” she says with a smile, “all the peoples I knew from the clubs and places where I used to sing at. People be saying, ‘Bonnie, I ain’t seen you!’ Well, of course you ain’t seen me–I stay on the west side. I always did, even when I used to be singing in those nightclubs out south.”
“How they gonna build buildings and can’t nobody afford to live in ’em?” he asks. “We’re gonna end up like the Indians; you know, they took their land and built homes and couldn’t none of ’em live in ’em! Only thing black people really had was blues and gospel to really survive. Many blues singers have played down here. When they died, there was no money to bury ’em; they were homeless. The mayor of Chicago should be put up for war crimes. I think it’s genocide unto the blues singers, put poor people back in the category where they can’t survive. We need to demand a foundation to help with support and expenses, like funerals for blues musicians.”
The shoot itself takes only a few seconds; the wind-whipped crowd disperses as rapidly as it assembled. Before everyone’s out of earshot, Piano C. Red has an announcement: “I’ve brought music to Jewtown,” he hollers, “Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, all of ’em! I want you to know I play, keep on, we all got to support…” The rest of Red’s message is drowned out by the roar of a CTA bus, the farewells of his fellow congregants, and an icy blast of wind.
