As out of place as the music of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf may seem in the lower level of a public library, this is where Kaye and Hinds have chosen to give a brief history of Chicago blues to an eager audience. ![]() Instead, there’s Paul Kaye, cradling a worn guitar in his lap, and Harmonica Hinds, a microphone in one hand and his namesake in the other. Onstage, there is no upright piano, no extensive drum set, and no former Southern sharecroppers living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to get by on music and a prayer. Listeners sit thankfully in plush seat cushions instead of creaky barstools or high-top tables crammed together to fit as many paying customers as possible. Instead of cumulus clouds of cigarette smoke hanging from the ceiling, one looks up to find state-of-the-art theatrical lighting. The Cindy Pritzker Auditorium at Harold Washington Library is a far cry from the blues clubs of Bronzeville and the West Side. “She Moves Me”: Chicago Blues at Midcentury and the Present Day ![]() As the Chicago Public Library’s One Book, One Chicago (OBOC) program kicks off this month with a series of events related to Thomas Dyja’s The Third Coast, this column seeks to find out what it is exactly that makes Chicago “the city that gives.” Using a critical lens of the city’s tumultuous past and its uncertain future, the articles released in the upcoming months will examine what it is that Chicago contributed to the national American identity fifty years ago and what contributions–for better or worse–it makes to this day.
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