Back in the day when this writer was an uninhibited youth, there was no area in Chicago that was off-limits when searching for the blues.  Whether it was the southside scene of The Checkerboard Lounge or Lee’s Unleaded Blues, the westside settings like the Delta Fish Market, up north on Lincoln Ave. or Halsted St. at Lilly’s or B.L.U.E.S., or at eastern outposts such as East Of The Ryan, the blues was everywhere, and when I was young and foolish, I thought that it would go on forever.  The scene for my carousing blues herd was one we thrust ourselves into with any thought, and along the way the situations encountered, and the blues artists we saw and established relationships with, now results in shaking heads and wistful smiles. 

One Chicago venue mentioned above, the Delta Fish Market, at Jackson and Kedzie just east of the West Garfield Park neighborhood (I think the official address was 228 S. Kedzie), was an especially lively setting for the blues.  The Market’s original location was at Washington and Kedzie, but in the 1980s, the owner, Oliver Davis, moved the store a number of blocks south to the new address.  Davis, himself something of a slide guitar player, figured he was on to something when, at the original location, Chicago blues luminaries started to visit the old location in the evenings and over the weekends for impromptu blues gatherings.  It became a blues scene unto its own.

Once at the new location, Davis constructed a stage in the parking area, becoming the city’s only outside location for the blues.  And, as they say, the rest is history!  The location became very popular for both blues artists and fans of the music, with such bluesmen such as slide guitar giant Johnny Littlejohn, piano patriarch Sunnyland Slim, Howlin’ Wolf-ish vocalist Taildragger, and drummer Kansas City Red, among so many others, pursuing their blues trades at the Market.  That was the inherent beauty of the Market; it had an air of randomness as to who would be showing up to play, or just to hang-out and be on-the-scene, for that matter.  I recall Louisiana Red, Detroit Junior, Maxwell Street Jimmy Davis, Vernon Harrington, and so many others milling about the Market’s location.  And, the Market attracted various Caucasians like myself who were so strongly pulled toward the blues.  Often seen there was Bob Corritore, an astounding White blues harmonica player who now owns The Rhythm Room in Phoenix, Arizona, a man who established the Blues On Blues label to record Little Willie Anderson.

A bluesman I saw perform at the Market and whose sound I was very fond of was Boston Blackie.  As I find myself reminiscing about the Market and Blackie, perhaps a deeper dive into his music is in order.

He was born Benjamin Joe Houston in early November, 1943 in Panola, Alabama, a location in Sumter County in the state’s west central area.  His family was large with 11 children, and he was the ninth child in the line.  By all accounts and research, his father was something of a jack-of-all-trades, being a barber, a farmer, and a building trades person (both a brick mason and a carpenter, it is said).  Though little is known about Houston’s impetus to have an interest in the guitar other than the reasoned supposition that there was music all around his childhood locale, it is asserted that by the time he was six years of age he had taken up the instrument.

Again, research yields little information about Houston’s years up to the age of 19 when he relocated northward to Chicago.  The justification for this move was that three of his brothers had already moved to Chicago and formed a band that went by the colorful name of Sweetman and the Sugar Boys, and he left his home to become part of the group. 

Houston stayed with the group until an unfortunate fate struck when his brother and bandmate Nathaniel passed away in the early 1960s, causing the family group to cease playing.  But this did not stop Houston from pursuing his love of the blues and the active scene he found in Chicago, and he continued to work whatever gigs he could find to continue to sharpen his guitar playing and singing.  For a bit during this period, Houston took the stage moniker “Dog Man” but would later adopt the stage name “Boston Blackie”.  This new stage name was both based on the fictitious pulp noir star of the same name, and because of Houston’s very dark skin pigmentation.  It is said that Blackie would light-heartedly defy an audience to produce a darker-skinned individual to the stage.  This became a running joke at his performances.   

Houston remained quite active in Chicago’s clubs, including Pepper’s Lounge, the Majestic Lounge, and others, where he got the valuable opportunities to play with the day’s best bluesmen such as Otis Rush, Freddie King, Magic Sam, Little Milton, and Little Walter, to name but a few.

The exposure to the tough Chicago blues sounds, particularly those from the emerging westside guitarists Jimmy Dawkins, Otis Rush, and Buddy Guy saw Blackie forge an insistent, direct, and case-hardened style. 

Blackie’s great brand of blues is heard on the 1998 Boston Blackie & Otis “Big Smokey” Smothers – Chicago Blues Session Volume 1 release (Wolf Records 120.847 CD).  A collection recorded in 1992 in Chicago at ACME Recording that includes Willie Kent (who produced Blackie’s cuts) and Michael Riley on bass, Luther Adams on guitar, and Cleo Williams on drums, Blackie’s six cuts on this 13-song outing features fleet guitar dexterities and emotive declamatory vocals.  One particular cut, “Find Me Another Babe”, is especially exciting, as it finds Blackie in a vocally soulful vein.  All his songs here highly please.

But fate was not to be kind to Blackie.  A fight broke out in July, 1993 over money between Blackie and the blues singer Taildragger (James Yancey Jones).  It is said that the dispute centered around funds supposedly owed arising from an appearance at the Chicago Blues Festival one month prior.  During the altercation, Blackie was shot and killed.  Taildragger claimed the shooting was self-defense in nature, but he was found guilty of murder in the second-degree and received a four-year prison term, of which he ultimately served a total of 17 months. 

Blackie was one of those great unsung blues artists that Chicago was full of at one time, a performer of abundant talent, a musician whose work deserved a broader recognition.  His ample skill set placed him in a position that he could’ve recorded much more and possibly become better known on the blues scene, in Chicago and beyond.  At 50 years of age, perhaps his star was on the rise.  His Wolf Records output suggests such was the case.