GREATER GRAND CROSSING — A giant photo of Muddy Waters — flanked by three adoring Brits named Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood — graces the wall of the soon-to-reopen Lee’s Unleaded Blues.
The photo encapsulates Chicago blues’ global impact on popular music, as the Rolling Stones wouldn’t have their name — nor, perhaps, their sound — without Waters’ influence. Just out of frame is John Primer, the last guitarist in Waters’ band before his 1983 death.
Primer, fresh off a 2024 Grammy nomination for his album “Teardrops for Magic Slim,” rings in the newest era of Lee’s Unleaded this weekend with his band, the Real Deal. It’s the first show at Lee’s since it closed in 2015.
Primer’s band will hit the stage 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Lee’s, 7401 S. South Chicago Ave. in Greater Grand Crossing.
The 9 p.m. shows are $25, while the 11 p.m. shows are $20. For tickets and more information on the performances, click here.
Owner Warren Berger took over Lee’s in 2018 at the request of then-Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th), he said. The project was a finalist for a $136,000 Neighborhood Opportunity Fund grant in 2020, according to the Sun-Times; but work stalled for about two years amid the pandemic and a laundry list of city requirements, Berger said.
With renovations nearly complete, Berger appreciates how the local blues scene has united to celebrate Lee’s return, he said last week. The North Sider also owns Club Escape, the pioneering Black gay bar nearby, and for years ran the defunct South Chicago Seafood.
“We have not had one [Chicago blues] club not be supportive,” Berger said. “Most people are reaching out saying, ‘How can I help? How can I support?'”
Lee’s aims to honor Chicago’s legacy as “the capital of the blues” — and, hopefully, serve as a hub for new generations of blues musicians, supporters said.
To achieve that mission, there’s little need to look beyond the club’s own backyard, as South Side and other local artists will make up the vast majority of Lee’s concerts, managing partner Jennifer Littleton said.
“Our local guys are everybody else’s big, national acts,” Littleton said. “We’re gonna stick to a Chicago focus. I don’t see a reason not to.”
Though Berger and his friends frequented the Checkerboard Lounge decades ago, he’s no blues historian and will largely focus on the venue’s operations, he said. It’s Littleton who’s tasked with re-establishing Lee’s as a major player in South Side blues.
“There’s an incredible amount of talent that’s out there that needs to be showcased,” said Littleton, a longtime manager at B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted who also works for the independent label Delmark Records.
“It’s just fostering that community. Anybody can have a bar and serve drinks. [Running a blues bar] is really about being supportive of the musicians and the people that support them.”
‘My Favorite Club’
Ray and Leola “Lee” Grey opened Lee’s in 1983. The building’s history includes stints as Queen Bee’s Lounge — a top South Side blues attraction in its own right — and Harper’s Point, a tavern without live music.
In the ’70s, Queen Bee’s bandstand was in a “tiny little corner. The band was very cramped, there was one bar, and there were a lot of small tables and seats,” said Michael Frank, founder of record label Earwig Music Company.
“Everything was all red — red velvet. Not a real great sound system. [The crowd] was mostly neighborhood people, blues fans like me and international tourists that knew about the club. Oh, and no cover charge.”
Relics from Lee’s past lives are now scarce, aside from the exterior sign, Berger said. But regardless of name or ownership, decor and artifacts have never really been the point — even though longtime house bandleader Johnny Drummer wants Berger to “put my picture back up on the wall,” the musician said.
The bar’s “blues vibe” was instead cultivated by its packed houses, artists’ crowd work and on-stage collaborations among Chicago’s galaxy of blues musicians, longtime supporters said.
“We played the music, and there wasn’t no mess, no fights,” said Drummer, 86. “Everybody was comfortable. Everybody enjoyed themselves.”
Born Thessex Johns, Drummer led The Starliters as Lee’s house band from 1994 to 2014.
Musicians’ willingness to sit in as guest performers during each other’s sets — regardless of their relative levels of fame — was one of the pillars of the Lee’s scene, he said.
“Every now and then, one of us would jump out with a hit record, but all of us were pretty well in the same bag,” Drummer said.
Drummer has taken his drum, bass, harmonica and other skills on tours from Lebanon to Latvia. He’s also released four albums on Earwig, as the musician knew Frank as a regular at Lee’s and through the local blues community.
Now living in Mississippi, Drummer won’t make it to the kickoff weekend, but he plans to play at Lee’s and other small clubs like Rosa’s Lounge in Logan Square during his next Chicago visit, he said.
Lee’s was a popular spot for out-of-towners and international visitors during Blues Fest, as it was “an authentic blues club where they [could] see where the roots were planted,” publicist Lynn Orman said.
“That’s what exciting about Blues Fest coming up [June 6-9] — it’s opening right before Blues Fest,” Orman said. “It’s great timing, to let all those people know Lee’s is back.”
Staff were often as boisterous as the audience when musicians like Vance Kelly came to perform, said Linda Mapp, who tended bar at Lee’s from the mid-’90s into the new millennium.
“We had fun working in here,” Mapp said. “When they’re performing, we’d be dancing — everybody had [to serve] their drinks, but we’d be dancing and whatnot.”
Frank attended the 1981 Checkerboard Lounge show with Waters and the Rolling Stones, he said. The show was marketed as an impromptu event, but the stars’ entourages “put word on the street that Stones might drop in there” to pack the place, Frank said.
“It was an interesting show,” but the world-famous artists couldn’t touch what Drummer, the Starliters, Lee’s and other local clubs gave their audiences on a regular basis, he said.
“There were so many nights I saw something much better than [the Stones-Waters collab] — with musicians that weren’t as well known, but they were just as great as any of the greats — in clubs like Lee’s,” Frank said.
“… Of all the clubs I’ve been to in Chicago over [51] years, Lee’s, overall and consistently, was my favorite club because of the vibe and the people.”
Despite hosting plenty of memorable moments over the decades, Lee’s won’t simply be a nostalgia trip, as the local blues scene remains far too vibrant to ignore, supporters said.
“Since this is where Chicago blues originated, on the South Side, that’s something that we need to foster and recognize,” Littleton said.
Littleton and Berger dream of Lee’s hosting the capstone concert for Billy Branch’s Blues in Schools program, through which students write original songs, learn blues standards and practice their musicianship.
They also want to explore a partnership with the University of Chicago, which hosts seminars and concerts featuring local blues musicians, they said. Public jam sessions are among other ideas they’ve floated for preserving and growing the South Side’s love of blues music.
“Trying to keep the blues alive, and perpetuating it and expanding it, obviously means bringing young people and new people into the scope,” Berger said.
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