Energy Never Dies

Afro-Optimism and Creativity in Chicago

Ayana Contreras

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780252053009
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziologie

From Afro Sheen to Theaster Gates and from Soul Train to Chance the Rapper, Black Chicago draws sustenance from a culture rooted in self-determination, aspiration, and hustle. In Energy Never Dies, Ayana Contreras embarks on a journey to share the implausible success stories and breathtaking achievements of Black Chicago's artists and entrepreneurs. Past and present generations speak with one another, maintaining a vital connection to a beautiful narrative of Black triumph and empowerment that still inspires creativity and pride. Contreras weaves a hidden history from these true stories and the magic released by undervalued cultural artifacts. As she does, the idea that the improbable is always possible emerges as an indestructible Afro-Optimism that binds a people together.

Passionate and enlightening, Energy Never Dies uses the power of storytelling to show how optimism and courage fuel the dreams of Black Chicago.

vi

it’s a tom tom, part 1

tamales, barbecue, and 45s

Culture, especially Black culture, is a moving target. Ever-evolving, the idea of purity within Black culture is strictly a myth. The myth of purity is applied to Black culture by cultural gatekeepers who don’t understand that, by our very nature, we create from what is already before us, constantly remixing and reworking ideas. Part of the allure of Sly Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On is that even as the drum machine–propelled sound of the songs has a perpetual degree of momentum, the ghosts of previous recordings reside in the master tape. He reused the same tapes over and over again, resulting in a murky sonic quality.¹

I think that gatekeepers who are preoccupied with determining and maintaining “purity” or “authenticity” in Black music and culture have a deep misunderstanding of the core of Black culture. Black culture at its heart is both pulling from our past and forward leaning.

In the cases of both jazz and hip-hop, improvisation shows up prominently (in hip-hop, it’s known as freestyle). Every exclamation of “that’s not jazz” or even “that’s not hip-hop” ignores the African trait of constant remixing, of improvisation as being instrumental to our culture. The very birth of hip-hop is rooted in the remix. Every record is pregnant with the possibility of a radical rearrangement. But that’s something that hip-hop also shares with jazz: every night at the club, a composition has the possibility of being reborn in the musicians’ deft hands. Unlike the classical Western music tradition that’s reliant on replicating what is transcribed on sheet music, jazz hinges on using sheet music as a jumping-off point. The culture is a muddied, moving, beautiful target.

According to the artist Arthur Jafa, “Black people figured out how to make culture in freefall.”² We are constantly rebuilding, sometimes due to calamity, but usually as a result of necessary ingenuity, pulling from the ghosts of what’s come before us to use as source material for a fresh thing. And it’s those deep-seated roots, a tethering between past and future, that add complexity to Black invention.

Here in Black Chicago, that forward-and-back lean is evident in our music, and even in two of our ubiquitous carryout dishes: barbecue and tamales. Each of those dishes, and even the industry built up around them, is rooted in the notion of making culture with what was available, despite the circumstances.

Blues songs from as far back as the 1920s tout the “hot tamale man,” reflecting the dish’s presence in Chicago (and the American South), even though the very idea of Chicago tamales may sound blasphemous.³ But there are not one but two such creatures, each wholly different from a traditional Mexican tamal.

I have memories of my grandmother (born in Chicago in 1916), boiling Tom Tom tamales in their distinctive white wax-paper wrappers on her avocado green stovetop. Machine-made since the late 1930s, the Tom Tom tamale has more in common with a hot dog than a traditional tamale. The soft cornmeal cylinders filled with beef or soy are often available at Chicago hot dog stands. No familiar corn husk. No shredded meat.

And then there’s the Mississippi Delta tamale that made the Great Migration to Chicago along with so many other children of Mississippi. Another riff on the Mexican tamale, again featuring cornmeal rather than masa. These are cradled in corn husks but feature a spicy red broth.

Barbecue is another culinary tradition that traveled to Chicago from the South. By the 1950s, barbecue pits became far more ubiquitous in Black Chicago than tamale stands. And they even began to eclipse in sheer numbers traditional sit-down restaurants that served southern fare—hot biscuits, and shrimp and crabs—the sort that advertised “Home cooking our specialty” in the Chicago Defender back in the 1920s and 1930s (long before such restaurants used the term “soul food”). But while those southern cafés aimed to serve customers a taste of home, barbecue’s migration to Chicago begat something altogether different, borne mostly out of necessity.

…

Argia B. Collins and his brothers formed a Collins Barbecue empire of sorts beginning in about 1951. But eventually he secured a deal to get Mumbo Sauce into grocery stores alongside household named sauces like Open Pit.

Argia also invested in his community: creating a South Side manufacturing plant at West 91st and South Halsted Streets, and he even bankrolled soul singer Garland Green’s stint at the Chicago Conservatory of Music.

Argia B.’s family lived in a small apartment above the plant. Back in the 1960s, according to Allison Collins, Argia B.’s daughter, “we’d pour warm bottles of barbecue sauce off the assembly line. Throughout the neighborhood you had the aroma of Mumbo Sauce just kind of clinging in the air.”⁴

These families took a tradition begun in Mississippi and reimagined it here in Chicago. Restrictive city ordinances prevented the traditional means of smoking meat over an open flame indoors, so barbecue pitmasters had aquarium cookers (so called because of their resemblance to aquariums) custom-made. The cookers were primarily fabricated by Leo Davis, beginning in 1951.⁵

The enclosed cooking process results in concentrated smoky flavor and particularly moist meat. And, each huge, see-through glass and steel device served as the heart of a miniature economic engine.

The resulting barbecue spawned a number of dynasties, including the one run by the Collins family. Though the Collins Barbecue restaurants are all closed now, Allison has kept her father’s Mumbo barbecue sauce alive, a metaphor for so many of our treasured cultural artifacts.

Allison told this story to my radio audience in April 2008:

My father … was a South Side restaurateur in Chicago in the early 1950s…. Mumbo Sauce was something that he wanted to do to set his restaurants apart. And the sauce, in a sense, also served as a conduit within the community.

For my father, this process took place during the ’50s and ’60s. That had a lot of implications for African American business owners. I think what he realized was “this is a business that I can develop, I can employ people from the community.” And that’s exactly what we did. We had a small manufacturing plant. I have two sisters and a brother, and we all were involved. It was a family business, but it was also a neighborhood business when we initially started out.

The people that he recruited initially to help him were folks from the neighborhood who needed jobs, often high school students that were out of school for the summer, looking to earn extra money.

The first factory was his restaurant. My dad ended up with three restaurants. He started out in Bronzeville, which is a neighborhood in Chicago. The first manufacturing plant that I remember was located at 9350 South Halsted. It was a conveyor belt where we’d … bottle the product, label it. Box it up.

Mumbo Sauce also served as a signifier, for some, representing alliances within the Black community.

Lloyd King, a musician and educator who grew up in near-suburban Oak Park, Illinois, in the 1960s and ’70s also talked about how his family embraced the sauce on my radio program: “Mumbo. It really starts with my old man, you know, my father. He was a ‘race man,’ as they used to call him back in the day. He was all for the Black people getting their voice, getting their power, so he wanted to use Black businesses. But I remember the sauce, and I thought it was the only kind of sauce there was. And I remember you’d go over to the white kids’ house and they’d have Open Pit. And I didn’t even know … what was this Open Pit? To me, barbecue sauce was Mumbo. If it didn’t taste like Mumbo, it wasn’t really barbecue sauce.”⁶

…

According to Allison Collins, Argia B., like the rest of his clan, was always looking for the next logical step forward in business. And he also believed in supporting the community through his business. So, for Argia B. to take a leap by sponsoring a neighborhood singer was not so unusual. After all, just as barbecue has served as an economic engine in Black Chicago, so has the music industry.

Garland Green once told me that in the 1960s he was a fixture at the South Side talent shows that local record executives scoured for fresh talent. He made a name for himself as a growling, burgeoning baritone to be reckoned with. His performances of Chuck Jackson’s “I Wake Up Crying” were his ace in the hole. With that song, he said, “he could never lose.”

Ironically, he wasn’t discovered at a talent show, but playing a game of pool.

When Garland arrived in Chicago from Mississippi, he lived at 6510 South Yale Avenue, in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, with his brother, Wilbur Green. According to Garland, “[Argia B. Collins] heard me singing in the pool room on 63rd and Normal, and he had a barbecue place right next door. And he came over from his business just to hear me play pool and sing. And it just really thrilled him. He asked me if I would like to pursue a singing career, and take voice and piano. So he financed that.”⁷ Argia B. funded Garland Green’s education at the Chicago Conservatory of Music in the late 1960s.

Garland went on to record dozens of sides for various record labels. He hit it big in 1969 with “Jealous Kinda Fella.” Like his wager on the profitability of Mumbo Sauce, Argia B.’s bet on a promising young singer proved to be a successful endeavor.

In the 1960s, as barbecue restaurants were hitting their stride in Chicago, dotted abundantly across the South and West Sides like fat marbled in beef brisket, the popular recording industry in Chicago (occupied primarily by blues, soul, jazz, and gospel, and to lesser degrees rock, pop, and what was then called “ethnic” music) was booming. Home to larger labels like Chess and Mercury, independents like USA, One-Der-Ful, and Vee Jay, and featuring label outposts for ABC-Paramount and Brunswick, the soul scene in particular was studded with hitmakers, and South Michigan Avenue, known as Record Row, was buzzing.⁸ The record business, not unlike barbecue, was a scalable enterprise. Whether the label was situated in the back of a record store on the West Side or a high-rise downtown, there was a chance for some money to be made in trade for a black plastic disk. Artists, producers, and songwriters were akin to prospectors, hoping to strike gold with the right combination of sound and lyric. Session musicians like Phil Upchurch zipped from studio to studio, playing a blues riff for Jimmy Reed one session, and a gospel riff for the Staple Singers the next. In between, playing sets on the vibrant local club circuit, and lucrative jingle sessions for advertising firms like Leo Burnett kept kids in diapers and talent honed for vocalists and players alike. Fortunes rose and fell on the next big hit.

But by the late 1970s, most labels in town had either gone out of business or decamped and headed for the coasts. One of the biggest losses was the sale and ultimate implosion of Chess Records, which, not unlike the Collins family’s constellation of barbecue enterprises, was a family affair, begun by Leonard and Phil Chess in 1950.⁹

Chess was the home to a variety of the most archetypal Chicago music stars during their artistic zeniths. Their roster included Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, Koko Taylor, Ahmad Jamal, the Dells, Etta James, Bo Diddley, the Soul Stirrers, Jackie Ross, Fontella Bass, and Ramsey Lewis among many others. It was also home to deeply influential arrangers and producers like Willie Dixon, Gene Barge, Richard Evans, and Charles Stepney.

In many ways, Chess served as rock ’n’ roll’s bassinet. The so-called first rock recording, “Rocket 88” (credited to Jackie Brenston [who was actually Ike Turner] and His Delta Cats), was released on Chess in 1951.

And generations of rockers have drawn inspiration from Chess recordings by Bo Diddley (like “Who Do You Love”), Chuck Berry (“Maybellene,” “School Days,” “Back in the USA”), and of course the bevy of electrified delta blues that emanated from the label.

…

In 2006, Marshall Chess, son of Chess cofounder Leonard Chess, spoke with me on Reclaimed Soul.¹⁰ His story is of particular interest here because it’s reflective of the inventive energy that was bursting at the seams of late 1960s Chicago. It also reflects that Chess Records, during its apex, was a family business at its core, and he saw himself squarely fitting into that legacy, echoing Allison Collins and the Collins barbecue enterprise. Lastly, Chess was a family-run label that was arguably the antithesis of the corporate recording industry behemoths that were to come. That’s not to say that large record companies didn’t exist in the mid-twentieth century, but the industry had not yet reached its current state, in which the vast majority of recorded product—past and present—is controlled by only a few corporations. Chess was a relatively small and independent company even at its peak. Still, it had an outsized influence on American popular music broadly and in particular a deep impact on Chicago’s sonic culture. From the inception of their company, Leonard and Phil Chess laid down on wax and distributed the electrified Delta blues that would become one of Chicago’s most enduring calling cards. But by the mid-1960s, Leonard’s son, Marshall, was in his mid-twenties and dreaming of the next chapter of influence.

In 1967, Marshall Chess had an idea.

I’d been born and raised in the record business, I wanted to do my own thing, Now, I was part of that sixties “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll” movement that everyone my age was. And, I got the idea to start my own conceptual label. And the family had no problem. I mean, basically I had the keys to the recording studio, so I could do what I wanted at night. I got the idea for this album, but the name actually came from me and a gentleman named Roland Binzer who was a young advertising whiz in Chicago back in 1967. He had a very avant-garde ad agency called Hurvis, Binzer, and Churchill. He was doing...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface: The Verge of Spring: Optimism in Black Chicago
• i. On Stony Island Avenue: Boulevard of Black Culture
• ii. Sort of a Dream: The Southern Sensibility and Flow of Chicago’s West Side
• iii. Found: Grooves Ghostly White
• iv. Stax Fax: Black Christmas Begat a Black Love Procession
• v. All This Talk about Freedom: Art, Soul and the Blackstone Rangers
• vi. It’s a Tom Tom, Part 1: Tamales, Barbecue, and 45s
• vii. It’s a Tom Tom, Part 2: Iron Sharpening Iron
• viii. Visions of Soul: Afro Sheen, Soul Train, and Black Chicago’s Close-Up
• ix. Brand-New You: Makeover, Mind Over
• x. The Coiling Feedback Loop of Time
• Notes
• Index