Chicago’s quirky hero of blues and jazz in NYT

It struck me as fascinating that a gruff black man missing several teeth and with a Southern accent so thick I couldn’t make out a word sat on a stool by the door (this was guitarist-singer Big Joe Williams, who at the time was sleeping in the store’s basement, though I didn’t know that and hadn’t heard a measure of his music yet). I thought it odd that piles of 78s priced at a dime or a quarter took up center tables. But music across genre was pouring from the store’s turntable and there was Koester — a voluble nut who would start ranting about some platter I’d pulled from the “used” section and end 20 minutes later having detailed its obscure provenance and arcane history as if regaling me with information about the Hope Diamond.

He told me I couldn’t possibly understand pianist-composer-clarinetist Muhal Richard Abrams’ Levels and Degrees of Light if I didn’t prepare by listening to Sleepy John Estes’ “Rats in My Kitchen,” which I believed at the time was precisely the folk music I was trying to escape via dramatic contemporary alternatives. Koester’s hipster-beatnik clerks — especially the red-bearded and pony-tailed Man in Black — weren’t as bluntly pedantic when they dropped hints as to what I should hear, but they had a storehouse of information and taste that has guided me to this very day.

I spent a bulk of my free time over the next five years hanging out at the JRM, reading liner notes, listening to music for free, buying what I could afford, awed when Junior Wells, Jimmy Dawkins (with hungry-looking German Shepherds), Otis Rush, Joseph Jarman of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Joe Segal of the Modern Jazz Showcase and diverse visiting musicians would drop in to shop (or sometimes ask for advances, royalties, copies of their Delmark albums to hawk on the road). Attending to the cross-section of Chicagoans who came in to buy their sounds, I learned a lot about the breadth of tastes and the complex continuums of American music. I worked as a clerk at the JRM the year after I got out of college ($60 a week), sweeping the floor and selling records. I loved the place, came to embrace Speckled Red’s boogie-woogie piano as much as the early efforts of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and have never abandoned my wonder at the universe Koester convened, created and has sustained.

I was lucky to spend evenings with Koester in Chicago blues clubs, and to attend Delmark recording sessions. We’re all lucky to have the music he’s issued. Here are my picks of essential Delmark recordings — highly subjective choices and weighted towards the early catalog. Hear them and judge their enduring qualities for yourself. 

• Hoodoo Man Blues — Junior Well sings slyly seductive lyrics spiced by his exacting harmonica breaks; Buddy Guy plays guitar with unusually restrained sensitivity, the rhythm team is also perfect. 
• Sweet Home Chicago — A roundup of the West Side Chicagoans including immortals Magic Sam and Luther Allison and saxophonist Eddie Shaw, retooling electric blues to express their aspirations and frustrations in the mid ’60s. 
• The Legend of Sleepy John Estes — A Tennessee bluesman pre-WWII, rediscovered blind and broke by Koester in ’62 and subsequently gaining 15 more years of a touring/recording career. He’s subdued, withdrawn, hurt but quietly triumphant and indisputably, genuinely blue.
• The Dirty Dozens — Speckled Red was a St. Louis albino pianist, who here performs a wonderfully bouncy solo recital complete with raunchy lyrics requiring repeated listening to decode. 
• A Cold Day in Hell — Otis Rush’s most varied and heartfelt album, may uneven but full of his exciting, lyrical, jazzy guitar work in support of the groan and cry of his voice. 
• Things To Come From Those Now Gone — Muhal Richard Abrams, recently named an NEA Jazz Master, in his third Delmark album strikes a better balance between form and content with lesser-know but stalwart AACM colleagues than in his earlier Levels and Degrees and Young At Heart/Wise In Time, making this a fine introduction to his ouevre.
• Three Compositions of New Jazz — Saxophonist Anthony Braxton’s compositions still sound unique and haunting, with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, violinist Leroy Jenkins, and Abrams playing piano.
• Song For — Saxophonist and poet Joseph Jarman is the leader but with tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson’s band, thorny and meditative, garrulous and touchingly quiet too.
• Sound — Saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell explores micro and macro sonics, displaying a wickedly sense of humor (on “Little Suite” in particular) and complete control of his horn.
• Humility in the Light of the Creator — Saxophonist Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre’s powerful road-seldom-taken beyond the paths forged by Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, beautifully orchestrated but profoundly, organically improvised
• Bluesiana — Koester’s personal enthusiasm for trad jazz (aka dixieland) was inexplicable to me as a youth, but his depth of knowledge has unearthed gems like this one by Kansas City Frank Melrose, the piano-playing, composing and bandleading son of Jelly Roll Morton’s publishers. Very sharp pre-Swing Era jazz, like Chicago’s gangsters enjoyed. See also Delmark albums by Art Hodes, Albert Nicholas, clarinetist George Lewis and trumpeter DeweyJackson.
• Street of Dreams Black Unstoppable — Nicole Mitchell is a world-class flutist and ambitious composer, leading light of today’s AACM (Chicago branch), Muhal’s founding generation having mostly moved to New York. Her Black Earth Ensemble is still evolving; this recording provides a taste of its diversified repertoire. 

This list reflects my own specific favorites more than the breadth of the Delmark catalog, which also contains classic hardbop by Ira Sullivan, accordion jazz by Leon Sash, two tightly arranged early Sun Ra albums, J.B. Hutto’s rough hewn Hawk Squat, trumpeter Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra, brothers George and Von Freeman on the groovy Birth Sign, AACMers including Kahil El Zabar, Ari Brown and Ernest Dawkins who should be more widely enjoyed, three more superb Junior Wells albums (Blues Hit Big Town demonstrates how Mick Jagger hoped to drawl), the most of harp monster Little Walter, underrated harmonicaist Cary Bell and his luminous guitar playing son Lurrie, bumptious piano by Roosevelt Sykes, classic blues by Edith Wilson and much more. I still visit the JRM every summer when I’m in Chicago, to learn about local artists, to pick up on rare imports and to refresh my dose of what Koester has most of all: unbounded joy in what’s old or new but strong and sweet even when rough or sad. 

Thanks, Bob — which was also the message when the Jazz Journalists Association named him to its “A Team” of activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz in 2008. Probably every jazz journalist can point to a figure like Koester who helped them early on. Your nominations of similar important influencers — those who made music clear and/or simply available — are very welcome as comments, especially if they can bring us to understand where such mentors and guides can be found today.