Monday 18th June 2018
The Raffaello was well situated, just a couple of blocks from Lake Michigan and well placed to explore the city’s delights. By the time I was settled in, it was 8pm and I strolled down the avenue to get a feel of the area and find somewhere to eat. A bar about half a mile away looked comfortable and aching for a drink I entered, sat on a stool at the bar, ordered a beer and a Fajita Mexican meal which went down a treat. A chat with the barman enlightened me on the blues clubs also, which was one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Chicago.
Nice way to end the day, but not before I took the elevator in the hotel up to the rooftop ‘speakeasy style’ Drumbar, 17 storeys up. I found it busy with background music and a phalanx of guests providing a relaxed and very cool backdrop.
The Drumbar pamphlet described;
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| View from the rooftop |
‘The moody yet energetic bar boasts an intimate indoor lounge area and a beautiful outdoor terrace with views of Lake Michigan and the Hancock building. Drumbar’s spirits menu is comprised of an unparalleled selection of earnestly sought after whiskeys, scotches, bourbons and cognacs. Many of these are limited released, one-of-a-kind, highly allocated products meant to offer some of the world’s most unique spirits to guests. Drumbar also has a unique partnership with The Scotch Malt Whiskey Society, an organisation that selects and bottles single-cask scotches from distilleries all over Scotland.’
All of which would have impressed my friends back home.. but I settled for a couple of bottles of cold beer. And called it a night.
Tuesday 19th June
Chicago is famous for many things but none more so I guess than the blues clubs, and its gangsters, including the infamous Al Capone. We all grew up watching the great Hollywood gangster movies depicting the 1920s and 30s prohibition era starring James Cagney, Edmond O’Brien, the Dead End Kids, ‘Top of the world Ma!’ and all that. One of my favourite movies was the 1967 ‘St. Valentine’s Day Massacre’ starring Jason Robards. The story of Capone’s henchmen gunning down members of Bugsy Moran’s rival gang in a garage situated at 2122 N. Clark St. in the Lincoln Park area.
Bristling with excitement I bought a ticket for one of the ‘gangster’ tours and joined a gang of around a dozen others on the so-called ‘Black Bus’. Good way to see the city apart from anything else I figured, but it was the mobster sites I was interested in.
Turned out to be, I have to say, slightly disappointing.
The tour guide, a student looking type at the front of the bus, was very informative and amusing but after around 20 minutes it all just sounded like waffle to me. As if he was trying to think of something else to say. First stop on the tour was the Biograph Theatre in North Lincoln Avenue where in 1934 another famous gangster, John Dillinger, was gunned down by the police. Now to most film goers, Dillinger is decidedly second division compared to Capone, probably because there’s not as many films made about him! Dillinger was in fact an interesting character who achieved legendary status ‘of near Robin Hood proportions’, student informed us. America like their ‘gangs’. Think of the Barrow Gang of Bonnie and Clyde fame that rampaged through the States around the same time as Capone was flogging his liquor in Chicago. The Jesse James Gang were another bunch of reprobates who robbed trains in the Wild West days. John’s ‘Dillinger Gang” hit the road in 1933 and robbed dozens of banks AND embarrassingly, four police stations, Talk about extracting the urine. During his career John escaped from jail twice and embraced the notoriety with the media building him up as a ‘right character’ with a ‘colourful personality’, ‘full of bravado’. J.Edgar Hoover, Director of the F.B.I. thought otherwise however and decided he was a pain in the ass and set out to get him.
Dillinger managed to escape from four states with the police hot on his tail for almost a year. Returning to Chicago in July 1934 he found refuge in a brothel owned by a Romanian prostitute, Ana Cumpănaș. Suspicions aroused, if nothing else was, Ana informed the police and federal agents of his whereabouts. It was on July 22 the police surrounded the Biograph Theatre where John was enjoying an afternoon out with his girlfriend Polly, eating popcorn and watching Clark Gable in ‘Manhattan Meldrama’, a gangster film, naturally. Ana had also tagged along, inviting herself without any thoughts of being a gooseberry by the sounds of it. Exiting the theatre, John, Polly and Ana were confronted by the ‘Feds’ led by Melvin Purvis and Samuel Cowley. John drew his gun and made a run for it, but was shot in an alley adjacent to the Biograph.
And here we were, in this very same alley, listening to this tale of Dillinger’s demise and trying to imagine the scene that occurred here some 70 odd years ago. Fascinating really. Made Capone sound boring!
Well that was interesting but I really did want to find out more about the St Valentine’s Day Massacre which occurred in 1929 and on we continued. Student gave us some info on Al Capone’s exploits, how he virtually ran the whole of Chicago in the 20s and 30s, the speakeasies, the liquor rackets, the lawyers - and his battles with Bugsy’s mobsters, the whole chabang. What he didn’t do, or he didn’t know much about, was the St Valentine’s Day Massacre. Sure, we went down Clark Street where the garage was situated, where Bugsy’s boys met their fate, but we drove right past it! Student obviously thought it wasn’t worth stopping for and Ok, a lot has changed in the intervening 80 years, the garage is long gone, but the wall where Bugsy’s men were lined up and machine gunned was still there. Truth be told, the wall was set back from the street, and nobody would know or be any wiser of its significance other than gangster fans and maybe if a dozen or so people had stepped off a bus in the middle of the afternoon to stare at a brick wall, it might have looked odd. Student wasn’t too impressed that’s for sure, and probably bored, but surely he could have stopped the bus for us all to have a look at it, take a picture, even if it did look innocuous and had been re-painted a million times! I did think though that showing friends back home a picture of a wall wouldn’t have been that impressive. Could be any wall I could hear them say… but not as famous as this one!
Anyway, we moved on, driving around a few streets which I could have sworn we had driven down three times already and eventually we stopped opposite a store where another battle had ensued, ‘you can still see the bullet holes’ Student informed us. We took a look, sure enough, they were there, we stared at them for a minute and then jumped back on the bus to finish the tour off with a visit to a bar where the walls were adorned with framed copies of the front pages of 1930s Chicago Tribune news reports on the gangsters.
I don’t think I was the only one who felt a little underwhelmed, but there you are.
Looking for something more exciting I set off to find the House of Blues Club. A venue of particular personal interest in that my son Gareth had played there with his band Raging Speedhorn just a few years before. Impressive it was too. A large quite imposing building with a couple of floors, plenty of bars, a souvenir shop. It reminded me of the Bailey’s Night Clubs we had in the U.K. back in the 1970s. A fellow called Mike Wheeler on acoustic guitar was entertaining the crowd before he was followed by The Windy City Rebels. A great name, and a great band. After buying a couple of tee shirts from the souvenir shop I settled down for some beers, and a meal, hamburger and fries, which was crap! Didn’t really surprise me. Ive never been that impressed generally with American cuisine. But never mind, the music and beer was good. Most enjoyable way to spend an evening. I was already looking forward to the next day, excited about visiting the famous Chess Studios.
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| The Windy City Rebels |
Wednesday June 20th
Waking up on my penultimate day of this trip / tour around New York, Detroit and Chicago I lay thinking about the highlights and sights I’d encountered so far. I’d had an agenda of sorts, to visit as many of the music establishments/venues I could as well as the obvious points of interest like Central Park, Times Square, Greenwich Village etc.
Being a blues fan since the days of the ‘British Blues Boom’ of the mid 60s and the earlier British R & B scene of the Stones, Kinks, Animals, Downliners Sect, a visit to the Chess Studios in Chicago had always been high on my list. I knew it lay on South Michigan Avenue, number 2120 to be exact. I remembered that from way back when I bought the Stones ‘Five By Five’ EP, which included an instrumental track titled with the address of the studio. Not that I realised it at the time.
Getting around these cities is fairly straightforward when you get the hang of it. All grids and blocks. Michigan Avenue was running parallel to the street where my Raffaello Hotel was situated and I assumed by that, that finding the Chess Studio would be a piece of cake.
Rambling along to view the shops, restaurants and bars with one eye on the clock, I decided it was time to get the metro to the Chess studio, which was about five miles away. This was an unexpected delight. The ‘metro’, referred to as the ‘L’ line, is an overhead transport system. The ‘L’ is short for elevated’. The ironwork constructions are exactly like you see in the old gangster movies of Chicago. Gives you a feel and great sense of history.
Nearest station to the studio was Cermak-McCormick Place, opened just a couple of years earlier in 2015. Walking distance from there was about ten minutes. As the studio didn’t open until 12 noon, I roamed the surrounding area, the back streets where you always find items of interest. And I came across a graffiti daubed row of industrial units under the iron works of the ‘L’. Not the usual scribbled and indecipherable mess you normally see, the graffiti was decorative, artful and two coaches parked outside were equally impressive. Think of the days of Sgt Pepper and John Lennon’s psychedelic Rolls Royce and you get the idea.
Standing patiently outside Chess for the door to open I was joined by another chap, a bespectacled intelligent looking guy with a camera slung over his shoulder and a notebook in hand. We acknowledged each other and then the receptionist, a black lady called Mel invited us in.
A brief history of the building and a parting of a dollar or two, Mel proved to be charming and enthusiastic as she took us on our tour. First off she asked us to introduce ourselves. ‘Clive” I said, “from England’. The other guy introduced himself as “Chris Reynolds, journalist for the L.A.Times”. What! Made me feel a dullard! I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d told us he was a Vietnam vet! He looked the part.
Mel had an MP3 player and as we made our way around she played snippets of great blues records that were recorded here in this very studio whilst interjecting stories about Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon and other great blues artists. ‘Johnny B.Goode’ came blasting out, “recorded in this very room” Mel informed us. Then 'At Last’ by Etta James, Bo Diddley’s ‘Down Home Special’. I felt as if I’d been transported to heaven, I really felt quite emotional. Mel told us about when the Rolling Stones recorded at Chess in 1964 as ‘It’s All Over Now’, one of my all time favourites came out of the speakers. And it sounded fantastic! What an experience. I’ve been to Stax and Sun in Memphis, Hitsville in Detroit, Capitol in L.A. For me, Chess was topping the lot. I was in dreamland visualising Charlie set up behind his drums in the corner, Bill, Keith and Brian Jones perched on stools with their guitars, Mick Jagger behind the mic. Spine tingling.
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| Mel showing us around. |
Before leaving I bought a couple of CDs and managed to have a chat and swap emails with Chris Reynolds. Told him about my involvement with world famous session drummer Clem Cattini’s up-coming biography. Disappointingly he hadn’t heard of him. Typical of American insularity I supposed, not many this side of the pond had heard of Clem’s contemporaries in the pre Beatles British era, hit makers like Johnny Kidd, Billy Fury, Cliff Richard, The Tornados… But Chris Reynolds had by the time I was finished!
The rest of the day was spent down by the river and Pier Park. Described:
'The epitome of fun. It’s where you'll find the amazing Centennial Wheel, the Pepsi Wave Swinger, a 1920's inspired musical carousel, and other nostalgic fairground rides. The Centennial Wheel soars to near 200 feet, with year round climate controlled gondolas for the most spectacular Ferris Wheel ride ever. It's an iconic part of the Chicago skyline and treasured piece of Chicago history, harkening to the City's 1893 World's Fair. You can even book a VIP Centennial Wheel experience in a glass bottomed plush seated gondola.'
Indeed. Wonderful. If you like fairgrounds.
Next morning I was picked up by Uber for my lift to O’Hare Airport and my return to Britain. As it normally does, it felt as if I’d been away for weeks. Like to think I’ll return to these places sometime…who knows.
