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Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs, by David Grazian. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003. 303 pp. $32.50 cloth. ISBN: 0-226-30568.
If a set of authentic urban blues is your idea of a good time, add a star to my rating of David Grazian's study of Chicago's blues clubs. Add another if you are fond of reading extremely well crafted ethnographic research. But beware; this masterful study by a young sociologist trained at the University of Chicago will also make you wonder if "authentic urban blues" is anywhere to be found.
Grazian began hanging out in Chicago blues clubs for his own pleasure and to escape the "rigorous demands of the academic world." He soon realized, however, that many of the issues he was reading about in the sociological literature, especially "the growing commodification of popular culture in America, the contemporary relevance of urban subcultures, the fate of race relations in the post-civil rights era, the shifting emphasis in cities from factory production to entertainment consumption, all manifested themselves in the richly textured world of the blues bar" (p. 10).
Once he found the theoretical hook on which to hang his growing interest in the urban blues, Grazian "began working on what amounted to a year-long ethnographic study based primarily on participant observation and interviewing." He began his research in two Northside clubs, B.L.U.E.S. and its satellite, B.L.U.E.S Etcetera. "About two or three times a week," he writes, "I would arrive at one of these clubs shortly after their house bands began their first set, order a beer, and strike up open-ended barroom conversations with audience members, during which I would ask them about their general tastes in music, expectations of the club, and their reflections on Chicago. At the same time I would try to document the surrounding social worlds existing within these clubs, with special attention given to the onstage performance of the entertainers employed by them" (p. 19). On the participant side of his research, Grazian bravely began participating, as a fledgling alto horn player, in weekly jam sessions in different bars. This brought him closer to the musicians themselves, and he began concentrating his efforts on "interviewing black and white blues musicians in order to understand...