In this installment of my radio show (called “Reclaimed Soul”), I feature interviews with some Architects of the Classic Chicago Soul sound who are “scratching and crawling” today to restore the South Side Clubs and Venues that made them who they are as artists. Two such architects are profiled below:
Tom Tom Washington (pictured here) is basically my hero. He’s also a very humble and cool individual to be around.
As a Chicagoan and a music lover, his distinctive Horn and String Arrangements are like home to me.
Tom Tom came up in Chicago’s Ida B. Wells Projects and studied music under the tutelage of James Mack (an awe-inspiring arranger in his own right). He wound up arranging dozens of records for Chicago Music Heavyweights such as Earth, Wind, & Fire, The Emotions, Tyrone Davis, Deniece Williams (who is from Gary, IN), The Staple Singers, Ramsey Lewis, Leroy Hutson, The Chi-Lites, Otis Leavill, Betty Everett, Jerry Butler, Loleatta Holloway, and many, many, more.
We also talk to Gene Barge, a legendary Producer/Arranger who worked at Chess Records (working with Etta James, Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters, Billy Branch, and many more). A saxophonist, he was also a session man on recordings all over town. He later received a Grammy for his work in Chicago with Natalie Cole. He also starred as “Percy” in Andrew
Davis’ “Stony Island” (1978) recently released on DVD for the first time.
For more on Reclaimed Soul, visit: http://vocaloreclaimedsoul.tumblr.com
for more on Tom Tom Washington, click here
for more on Gene Barge click here
darkjive.com 
Electric Mud: Electrified Delta Blues got a New Jolt
(“Tom Cat” by Muddy Waters)
Roaring blues, sophisticated jazz, gritty garage rock, smoothed out vocal pop, and shimmering soul (among other genres) all “jus grew” here. Chess Records (based near 22nd and Michigan) was, in fact, the epicenter of the Electrified Delta Blues that changed the sound of popular American music FOREVER. That was the music that served as rock-and-roll’s bassinet. So it was no surprise that Chess Records, nearing the end of the 1960s and reinvigorated with fresh young talent (producer/arranger Charles Stepney, drummer Morris Jennings, and guitarist Phil Upchurch among them), decided to have their living legend artists (i.e. Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf) re-record their groundbreaking 1950s work in an updated funky psychedelic blues style.
White psychedelic rock artists had been ripping off their artists’ work for years. Now they were, in effect, reworking their own art. Muddy and Wolf weren’t feeling it. Critics of the day panned the works. Yet, today, the albums born out of this time (including “Electric Mud”) have an almost cultish following. Produced by Marshall Chess and the legendary Gene Barge, this body of work is just another example of good old Chicago invention….. For a sample of Howlin Wolf’s psychedelic blues tryst, click here.
Drummer Morris Jennings discusses Muddy Waters’ album “Electric Mud” with Ethnologist Jeff Thomas.
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5 Comments | tags: 1968, Blues, Cadet Concept, Charles Stepney, Chess Records, Chicago Blues, Chicago Cultural History, Electric Mud, Gene Barge, Howlin Wolf, Local Chicago Music, Morris Jennings, Muddy Waters | posted in Arts & Culture, Chicago Cultural History, Commentary, Jive Culture, Local Chicago Music, Music, the Goodness