Uptown swing and downtown grind are the flipsides of the Chicago Blues coin. The aforementioned
Muddy Waters being my favorite practitioner of the latter and the incomparable
B.B. King (27 children by 20 women and he takes care of them all) is the champion of the former (though he now lives in New Orleans).
Chicago is the finest blues city in the world. New Orleans and Austin, TX might argue, but New Orleans doesn't have the blues -- that jazz has always sounded like R&B to me. Austin OTHO has had some great players come through it, but the Austin scene is so diversified that the blues are just one element of a great music scene. Blues dominates the Chicago music scene.
Some good places to see blues in Chicago on any given night are:
- B.L.U.E.S.
- B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted,
- Kingston Mines (open till 6AM)
- Buddy Guy's
- Checkerboard Lounge
- Beale Street Blues Cafe,
- Mulligan's
- the Blue Note (make sure its blues not jazz... then again it's all good)
- Rosa's
- Maccaw's
- The two Blue Chicagos