Preserving the Chess building is essential to preserving the whole legacy of Chicago blues, she said. We are very glad that Hilary Clinton has an appreciation for and understanding of the blues and that the Chess Studios have been saved and rehabbed. If preserving the Chess Studios is essential to the legacy of the Blues, certainly Maxwell Street must be preserved also.
Blues is, at root, a folk idiom.
Its creation comes from the folk at the grassroots street level. There are 60 old buildings on about eight blocks, half with businesses still in them, selling polish sausages, zoot suits, derby hats, stratazookies, blues tapes. Street vendors there are still there carrying on a tradition over 150 years old. Help save Maxwell Street. It is an American Blues Treasure and is at great risk of destruction by a public land grant university that receives federal funding.