Jimmie Lee Robinson performing Boss Man, from the DVD Extras of Electrified

Jimmie Lee Robinson (1931- 2002) was a lifelong resident of Chicago whose musical career was truly bracketed by Maxwell Street. He started playing guitar on Maxwell Street in the 1940s when he was still in his teens, and in 1998 he joined the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition and dedicated himself to the effort to save what then remained of old marketplace. Among his contributions to the cause: the protest song The Maxwell Street Tear Down Blues and two lengthy protest fasts, one in 1998 that lasted 62 days and another in 2000 for 81 days.

Jimmie Lee played with just about every Chicago bluesman, and woman, one can think of, starting with Memphis Minnie and Big Bill Broonzy in the late 40s. In the 50s, he formed his first band The Every Hour Blues Boys, played with Elmore James and eventually joined Little Walter’s band. He left Little Walter in the late 50s and recorded a few singles of his own.

In the ’60s, he worked with Willie Mabon, Sunnyland Slim, Mighty Joe Young, Shakey Jake, and Howlin’ Wolf and went to Europe as part of the 1965 American Folk Blues Festival with John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, Big Walter Horton, Big Mama Thornton and Eddie Boyd. By the 70s though, he had opened a candy store on Chicago’s South Side, and only played part-time, pretty much abandoning his music by the 80s.

Encouraged to return to the blues in the late 80s, he appeared at the Chicago Blues Festival in 1991 and 1993, and eventually recorded his first full-length album, Lonely Traveler released on Delmark in 1994. In the last decade of his life, he mostly performed as an acoustic solo artist, and contributed his energies to the efforts to save Maxwell Street.

Resources:

• Cascade Blues Association profile of Jimmie Lee Robinson
• Delmark, Maxwell Street Blues: Remembering Jimmie Lee Robinson
• NY Times obituary

Technorati Tags: Maxwell Street, Jimmie Lee Robinson, Boss Man, Chicago Blues