Harp player and singer Golden "Big" Wheeler. Wheeler was a wonderful harp player and singer in the Little Walter tradition, one of many bluesmen who never pursued a full-time career in music, preferring to work a steady day job to support his family. To the left of Wheeler is Mark Brumbach (who later opened The Smokedaddy BBQ) on "bottom" guitar, and in the foreground on the right is Dave Waldman on the "top guitar". No bass players allowed in the Ice Cream Men!
Guitarist and singer Jimmie Lee Robinson, with Dave Waldman blowing harp. Although it's kind of hard to tell from the look on Jimmie's face, he loved Dave Waldman's harp playing.
"Jew Town Burks" on harp, with Steve Cushing on drums. Burks wasn't no helluva harp player, as they say, but he put on a good show, and pretty much never stopped moving, as you can see by this shot. This was the least blurry of the photos I have of him!
Guitarist and singer Joe Carter. Joe used to be known as "Elmore James Jr." back in the 1950s, thanks to his great slide playing and heavy vocals, and he was pretty popular for a few years back then, although he never recorded anything back in those days. The first time I saw him was at The Checkerboard Lounge on the night of Muddy Waters' funeral. He did some Muddy tunes and Elmore tunes, and blew me away. Then I didn't see or hear anything else from him for years. When we hooked up with him in the late 1980s, he hadn't been playing much, but he became one of our regular cast members at Lilly's for a short time. He didn't have a car, so I used to have to pick him up and drop him off every time we played together, and after a while it got to be a hassle so we stopped calling him. But he was great those times we got him...and I heard lots of great stories about the old days on the way to and from those gigs! That's my raggedy 1954 National amp in the background that he's playing through, and it sounded EXACTLY right that night.
By 1991 we'd been featuring "guest stars" at Lilly's for a while, and the gig started to get a reputation as a place where you could catch some of the old timers of traditional Chicago Blues. As a result we got booked onto the 1991 Chicago Blues Festival, doing a "revue" featuring three of the guys we'd worked with, John Brim, Jimmie Lee Robinson, and Big Wheeler. The week before the fest, we did a "rehearsal" gig at Lilly's featuring all three of them. In the photo above are, L-R, John Brim, Big Wheeler, Steve Cushing and Jimmie Lee Robinson.
A special treat that night was having John Brim's wife Grace sing a few with us. She had not performed in public in many years, after making a deathbed promise to her mother that she was giving up the devil's music. But it must have got good to her that night while sitting in the audience, because she came up and did a few numbers and sounded exactly like the records she'd made in the early '50s. As far as I know, that was the last time she ever sang blues in public.
Because a lot of the older guys we worked with knew each other, often he'd hire one guy, and end up playing with two or three others who came by just to hang out with old friends and cohorts. I think Taildragger might have been our special guest this night, and the others were there just to hang out and sit in. In this photo, L-R, are Dave Myers, Taildragger's stepdaughter Peggy, Taildragger, and Jimmie Lee Robinson.
In addition to the people above, we worked with a lot of other guys at Lilly's too - unfortunately I didn't always bring a camera with me. Among the others who we had as guests at one time or another were Little Willie Anderson, Big Smokey Smothers, John "Moose" Walker, Booba Barnes, Bobby "Top Hat" Davis, Acee Payton, Kansas City Red, and I'm sure a bunch of others that I can't think of right now (and don't have any pictures to remind me.) I wish I knew then what I know now...I'd have had a camera and a tape recorder at every gig.
