EXTRA: Matt "Guitar" Murphy gets to "Think" about consequences of his life

Matt "Guitar" Murphy was a long-time studio session blues guitar player, appearing with such legends as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Memphis Slim, Etta James and James Cotton.

Yet let's be honest -- the reason most people would ever have heard him play was because he was one of the guitar players sought out by John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd when they put together their parody of a blues band, The Blues Brothers. And the memory most of us would have of ever seeing him?

HE WAS THE "husband" to Aretha Franklin's Maxwell Street diner operator who was told (in song) to "Think" about the consequences of his actions. A scene from "The Blues Brothers" 1980 film that may well be played over and over on that future date when Franklin departs this realm of existence, but which wouldn't have been complete without Matt's presence.

And now, it's all over. Murphy died this week at age 88. In more recent years, he had put together his own self-named band. But a stroke had essentially pushed him into retirement. And now, he gets that eternal rest, where he can "Think!" about the lifetime he had, perhaps engage in a few afterlife guitar riffs with Jimi Hendrix, and maybe have Belushi himself doing that goofy little "fat man" dance of his while listening to the beautiful music being made.

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‘Twas a sad, sad day; can we just hide under the covers for a little bit longer?

President Donald J. Trump has given us the first federal budget proposal of his term, and it truly is sad.

 

TRUMP: Our source of national gloom and doom

To come up with more military spending (maybe he really wants to be a “wartime” president because he figures that’s the only way the country will unite behind him) out of the $1.1 trillion available, he has made many cuts – particularly to anything related to the environment.

SUCH AS THE demolition of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative – a project whose purpose is to preserve the continued use of Lake Michigan and its sister Great Lakes as the largest fresh water system in the world.

Then again, maybe the Trumpites are figuring the Great Lakes are already gone, on account of those dreaded Asian Carp being on the verge of entering the lakes and mucking up its natural ecosystem.

There also were the cuts to the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment of the Humanities – although conservative ideologues whose idea of “art” doesn’t extend beyond a painting of yellow daisies have been ranting on this area for so long it would have been a miracle if Trump hadn’t done something silly.

As a Washington Post report contended, the $54 billion proposed increase in defense spending for federal fiscal 2018 could have funded both arts agencies for the next 183 years. Or perhaps kept a few more of the 2.4 million elderly individuals who have to rely on Meals on Wheels workers to bring them food because they can't really cook for themselves any longer. While Chicago-area educators could be heard grousing about the 18 percent cut in funding for federal education programs -- which when combined with the delays due to a lack of a state budget will result in some serious funding issues for public schools.

NOT THAT THIS was the only negative news we had to endure Thursday.

 

MADIGAN: Telling us how bad healthcare is

Down in Springfield, an Illinois House appropriations subcommittee held hearings whose purpose was to tell us just how much the Trump-inspired American Health Care Act will wind up costing Illinois and harming our residents.

Many of whom are able to get medical coverage under the Affordable Care Act but that Republicans are all eager to repeal because, after all, it was the idea of the former president, Barack Obama.

A plan whose fate in Congress is uncertain because even many of the GOPers who openly boast of wanting to dump Obama don’t want their names being attached to this stinker.

 

RAUNER: We don't like him any better than Mike

EVEN OUR STATE’S Republican excuse of a governor, Bruce Rauner, is reluctant to come out in favor of it, and Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., the most prominent Chicago-area GOPer in Congress, speaks against it.

Considering that Rauner has an approval rating of 31 percent (barely better than Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s rating of 28 percent, according to a study from Southern Illinois University), the man doesn’t need to do anything to dig himself any deeper.

The man still has dreams of winning himself re-election in 2018, and now the billionaire J.B. Pritzker has started kicking in his own money for an exploratory committee to see if people would actually vote for him over Rauner.

All in all, it was one of those days where we’re better off if we keep ourselves clueless as to the happenings of the news. The only problem is that those happenings take place even if we try to ignore them.

AS IT TURNS out, even the ideologues amongst us are feeling peeved – there’s that judge in Hawaii who struck down Trump’s second attempt at imposing a ban on certain foreigners who might have desires to travel to the United States. They’re already spewing the nonsense that Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu consulted with Obama just prior to issuing his ruling. We’ll have to endure their paranoia.

Which means our only chance of self-preservation is to keep ourselves informed. There might be one group that benefits – psychiatrists, if we all wind up having to go for therapy to help us cope with the chaotic times our society now faces.

So on this gloomy day, I can’t help but think this lesser-known recording of Chuck Berry somehow captures the spirit of sadness we’re feeling.

Enjoy!!!

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A ‘blues’ museum on Block 37? They might as well bring back the ice rink

I like the idea of museums, particularly when they pay tribute to something that so many of us know little about.

I also do not have a knee-jerk reaction against real estate developers. And I appreciate just how harmful the story surrounding “Block 37” has been to Chicago’s public image.

HAVING WRITTEN ALL that, let me also say that I think the idea of a museum devoted to telling the story of blues music to be built right in the heart of downtown Chicago (in the block just east of the Daley Center) could well be one of the dumbest ideas this city has ever contemplated.

Somehow, the idea of paying tribute to musicians such as Muddy Waters by erecting something in the heart of the downtown shopping district strikes me as being more oriented toward selling t-shirts – rather than telling the real human stories of the musicians who gave us the blues.

This is musical form where commercialism of any sorts can only trivialize the art form.

And I just can’t help but think that putting a “blues” museum on Block 37 would create a place that would have repulsed the real-life blues artists – even if I’m sure many of them would gladly have accepted any cash that would be generated by such a place.

KEEP IN MIND that I personally love listening to the blues – and I don’t mean rock ‘n’ roll with a heavy blues beat. Anybody who thinks that Eric Clapton is a bluesman, or that there was anything musically intriguing about the Blues Brothers, is probably the kind of person who would like a downtown Chicago blues museum.

They probably also enjoy the “set list from Hell” asked of too many blues musicians these days – the same dozen or so songs that invariably asks for “Sweet Home, Chicago” to be played as an encore.

I enjoy hearing that song every now and then, and will gladly put on my recording of it as performed by Magic Sam. Anybody else is just stunting the blues as a musical form when they try to play it – note for note – as Sam did. And yes, I know that it was Robert Johnson (who really deserves to be labelled as "God" rather than Clapton) who originally came up with the song.

I also believe that a downtown museum would wind up reinforcing those forces that have turned blues music into a musical museum-piece, rather than a thriving musical form being passed along throughout the generations.

TOO MANY WHITE people merely think of the blues as overly-intense guitar solos, while too many black people think of the blues as the music their great-grandparents listened to way back in the days of segregation.

Which is a shame!

Because when it comes to a recording that can make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, I’d say it is Elmore James’ performances of “Dust My Broom.”

There’s something about that guitar intro that is so eerie, yet all powerful. And even though I can match it note-for-note when I play my own guitar, mine sounds like a lame copy.

WHICH IS WHAT I would think of a downtown-based blues museum erected on a city block with a shopping center that is trying to be so upscale. It would be such a gross mismatch that the only people I could see going there would be tourists who literally wouldn’t know any better.

That is a real shame. Because the idea of a blues museum ought to be to inform the public about the music – not to spread a distorted, overly watered-down, form.

If there is to be a museum devoted to the blues, it probably is something that has to go in one of the neighborhoods of the great South Side – the place where such music was once the daily noise that could be heard coming from tavern after tavern.

Along with flat after flat from buildings in the Bronzeville neighborhood that once had way too many people jammed into them because the “establishment” didn’t want all those African-Americans living elsewhere – an attitude that spilled over into the music.

SUCH A MUSEUM could even wind up being an attraction to try to get people to visit those areas, and could help bolster their own economic development. If anything, it is why I respect the idea that some officials are trying to develop a museum to tell the story of gospel music.

The proposed Chicago Gospel Music Heritage Museum is scheduled/expected/desired to open by October at the one-time Pilgrim Baptist Church at 33^rd Street and Indiana Avenue – the place where such religious-inspired music allegedly was created.

Maybe the site of the one-time Checkerboard Lounge on 47^th Street is a blues museum site possibility. I don’t know.

All I do know is that Block 37 seems like a stretch for such a facility. And if that’s the best idea that developers can come up with, then maybe we’d be better off if they just brought back that ice skating rink they used to erect every winter in the heart of downtown.

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EXTRA: Go Cab, not Obama, for blues

I watched the “Red, White and Blues” program broadcast Monday by PBS affiliates across the nation (the one that gives us President Barack Obama singing a couple of lines from the song “Sweet Home, Chicago”), and couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed.

Buddy Guy (to the right) finally got to play the White House -- many decades after his work with the Big Names of the Blues such as Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters.



Yes, I saw that B.B. King and Buddy Guy were among the musicians included in the concert that billed itself as the “White House blues All-Stars.” And I’m not trying to claim that blues music is something that ought to be limited to black people.

BUT I COULDN’T help but notice the moment in mid-show where rockers Mick Jagger and Jeff Beck took the spotlight, and the fact that Jagger seemed to have a higher profile in the show than anyone else.

Perhaps the hard-core fans of the Rolling Stones (who in their early days covered a lot of blues standards) liked it. Otherwise, it seemed like a third-rate blues concert that could be heard in many nightclubs across the North Side of Chicago.

Would this Mick Jagger get near the White House?

So third-rate that I must admit to enjoying more the PBS program that followed – an “American Masters” documentary about the life of Cab Calloway, who had such a career even though too many people think he did nothing more than sing a song of jibberish near the end of the film “The Blues Brothers.”

So take it for what it’s worth. Somehow, the “real thing” when it comes to jazz and blues music sounds so much more enjoyable than the modern-day imitators. Then again, Calloway has a way of sounding inspiring – even when he’s in the most harmless of surroundings.

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Should we keep the microphone away from the president these days?

I remember from my stint in Springfield, Ill., the “antics” of now-former state Rep. David Phelps of rural Eldorado.

OBAMA: The singing politico?



He and his brothers were part of a singing group when he wasn't doing the governmental equivalent of making sausages, and the fact that Phelps didn’t have such a bad voice invariably caused him to be called upon to sing something just about any time it could be justified.

IT ACTUALLY BECAME a semi-tradition for the Illinois House of Representatives to have Phelps sing “Happy Birthday” to them on their members’ birthday anniversaries.

It got to the point where I can’t really remember much of what Phelps accomplished as a legislator (he later served a few terms in Congress from Southern Illinois). His voice overwhelmed.

While Barack Obama has a long way to go before he reaches that point, I’m starting to wonder if that’s the direction he’s headed in.

For it seems that Obama is willing to warble a few lyrics whenever a microphone is put near his mouth.

THERE WAS THAT moment last month at Harlem’s Apollo Theater where he did his best Al Green impersonation in giving us the opening lines of “Let’s Stay Together.”

Now this week, he felt compelled by Mick Jagger (of all people) to handle a couple of lyrics from that overly-generic blues tune “Sweet Home, Chicago.”

I call it overly-generic because it has practically become Tune Number One on the “set list from Hell,” the nickname given by many blues musicians of about a dozen songs that it seems like all the tourists visiting blues clubs want to hear so they can say they had a truly seedy experience.

Although on a side note, Obama with Jagger reminds me of the time that then-Gov. George Ryan was at Chicago’s Double Door club and got to meet Stones’ guitar player Keith Richards. Does that make Illinois politicos by nature Rolling Stones fans?

THIS MAY BE the evidence that hanging around too closely with the Rolling Stones leads to “no good.” They’ve got Obama feeling the need to throw his musical “chops” behind such a tawdry song.

If you really want to hear “Sweet Home, Chicago” done properly, you need to dig up the record of the Magic Sam Blues Band – which many decades ago was a big deal on the West Side.

Unfortunately, they’re long gone (deceased). So a recording (which I actually own both on vinyl LP and on compact disc) is what we have to settle for.

Listening to other bands try to cover the song is just such an inferior experience. They turn the song into a blues cliché. Invariably, someone will let their guitar solo skills go overboard.

AND NOW, OBAMA is a part of the over-commercialization of a song about a truly wonderful experience, returning to “Sweet Home, Chicago.” (And no, that line is NOT meant to be sung).

Although I am pleased to know that all those blues musicians were present at the White House, giving a concert in the East Room that the nation will get to watch on Monday on their local PBS affiliates.

For those who would argue against the blues being performed in such an “elegant” setting, I’d argue that it is merely equal time for when assorted country & western singers were at the White House for a similar concert held last year.

It may well be one of the perks of being president that you can get “big name” and “significant” talent to come to your official residence and play music for you.

BUT IT DOESN’T mean you should feel compelled to join in the show – even if Mick Jagger himself (whom I don’t really consider a blues singer, even if the Rolling Stones’ earliest records consisted of covers of old blues tunes) was the one who stuck the microphone in the president’s face.

There is just one good thing, from Obama’s perspective.

Suppose the group had been performing the old blues standard, “I Just Wanna Make Love to You?” Just imagine how harshly the ideologues would be ranting these days if Obama had sung along to that song?

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