Chicago blues fest, soggy final chapter

The rain had been intermittent for most of Chicago Blues Fest (June 5-8), certainly nothing like the raging thunderstorms that buffeted much of the Midwest that week and kept me on the ground at the Cincinnati aiport for nearly five hours. (More like underground; travelers were actually evacuated from terminals and herded into a seemingly endless concrete corridor beneath the airport, which, I was told was actually in Kentucky, not Cincy.) Then came Sunday of blues fest, the last day of the four-day event, and dark clouds fulfilled their threat by drenching Grant Park with a biblical downpour.

I had started out the day with the brilliant harmonies and exuberant dance steps of the Victory Travelers on the Front Porch stage, a highly entertaining gospel legacy group that's been around since the '60s, and then made my way to the Crossroads stage to check out Rodney Brown's salute to Louis Jordan, which was everything that Duke Robillard's tribute to Jordan a couple of nights before was not — you know, fun. That's when the skies opened and it looked as though relief would not be coming any time soon.

There really is no shelter to be had at Grant Park, and longtime festgoers know they will get alternately scorched and drenched during the weekend. I darted for a stand of trees, and the thick canopy provided some protection as an announcement on the PA encouraged people to head for the parking garages. I stood my (sodden) ground. After about a half an hour, by which time I was fairly soaked, the rain stopped. Just like that. Within about another half hour, performers began taking the stages again. Remarkable. Imagine that happening at an event in South Florida ...

With a newly purchased festival T-shirt the only dry apparel on me, I squooshed my way over to the Louisiana Bayou stage to catch excellent acoustic blues interpreter Paul Geremia. I was a bit put-off by the usually reliable David Whiteis description in the Chicago Reader fest guide of Geremia as being "rooted in someone else's past." Um, well, yeah, he's playing country blues and he's a white guy; does that invalidate every white player who didn't grow up on a plantation chopping cotton? Seemed specious to me, and Geremia proved as much, with his brilliant heartfelt renditions of songs by the likes of Blind Willie McTell and Mose Allison.

Tony Joe White was as craggy and intriguing as I had always heard he was, his vocals dark and well-lived in, his lyrics equally so and tinged with humor as black and dry as gunpowder. Went back for second helpings of Cedric Burnside and Lightnin' Malcolm, the still-inexhaustible T-Model Ford and Otis Taylor and his excellent band, all of whom were more than worth the price of the previous drenching. (Did I mention the entire four-day fest is free?)

Magic Slim and the Teardrops are among my very favorite Chicago blues bands, and the fellas were as potent as the hot peppers and giardiana gravy on an Italian beef. By this time, the sun was not just back in the sky, but out for vengeance, as it beat down mercilessly on the crowds who were starting to fill the bandshell for the evening's headliner: B.B. King. I was thankful for my old damp shirt, which served as a cool do rag.

Little Willie Littlefield heated up the stage for B.B., his huge personality and boogie-woogie piano filling the enormous Petrillo Bandshell. Once again, off came the right shoe, as Littlefield, a contemporary of B.'s, stomped the stage with his stockinged foot and rolled out the rollicking piano blues that established him as a late '40s-early '50s powerhouse performer.

Then, it was star time. As the bandshell filled, and B.'s band took the stage, Buddy Guy came out to welcome his old friend and presented him with some kind of official city proclamation. The King was obviously moved by this grand greeting, as well as by being back in Chicago, and he reminisced about his time spent in the city amongst giants such as Muddy Waters. He then launched into classics from his heyday, truly feeling it on classics such as "Three O' Clock in the Morning" and "Don't Answer the Door." A concession to age, King remained seated through most of his performance, but was in great voice, as was Lucille, as distinctive a sound as there is in the blues world.

King provided the perfect capper to the festival, which was more than worth the delayed flights, the sunburns and the drenchings. This event is truly one-of-a-kind, featuring many performers you rarely see elsewhere and presented with reverence and respect for a genre that's often reduced to lowest-common-denominator blues-rock clones and cliché.