A 12-year-old kid is at a local Woolworthโs store on Ashland Avenue on the South Side of Chicago. Itโs the early โ70s, and heโs spending his few allowance dollars on cheap โcut-outโ vinyl albums, shelved at the front end of the checkout counter, neatly tiered, four rows high and ten albums deep. That twelve-year-old was…
Blues migrated towards the urban centres, along its way electrifying guitars and gigs, as black musicians fleeing southern racial segregation strived for more economic opportunities and a better life in places like Detroit, Chicago, and New York City.
Barely in my teens, I listened to the very first albums I ever owned on a wide, floor-model stereo console placed prominently in the living room of my home on Chicagoโs South Side. My oldest sister gave it to my mother as a birthday gift in September, 1971. It cost five hundred bucks and was…