Open Rehearsal: The Court Theatre Blog
July 8, 2009
Blues on the North Shore
I missed the Chicago Blues Festival and I will also have to miss Blues on the North Shore this Friday, June 12. This is an interesting festival because it celebrates the 30th anniversary of Earwig Music, a landmark Chicago blues record label sporting names like Sunnyland Slim, Big Jack Johnson, the Jelly Roll Kings, and David “Honeyboy” Edwards. You might have heard about Earwig, like I did, in that Eight Forty-Eight story on WBEZ.
I’m just beginning to pick at the historical research for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and I’m already overwhelmed by the vast amount of information that’s available. What I’m finding is less a history of the blues than a raw archaeology: of artists, venues, events, styles, anecdotes, sub-movements and spin-offs. The bulk of it is going to be useless for Ron OJ and the actors, no matter how interesting… but hopefully this blog will benefit from any dramaturgical table scraps that I or Anastasia (our dramaturgy intern!) pick out.
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