Tom Palazzolo approached me in late 2007 with the idea of turning his 1983 cinema
verité documentary, At Maxwell Street, into a book. We had just published Water Tanks of Chicago: A Vanishing Urban Legacy, by Larry W Green, and that book was striking a chord with people who had never noticed these aging wooden behemoths in their midst. Tom, like Larry, was a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In fact, I had taken Tom’s filmmaking class during the summer of 1977 at SAIC, so we had known each other for 30 years. One of Tom’s most remarkable films is called Caligari’s Cure
(http://www.facets.org/asticat?function=buyitem&catname=facets&catnum=/207), and I actually had a bit part in that movie.
Tom’s concept for the book was to approach his friends and acquaintances and get them to write about their experiences of the old Maxwell Street marketplace. He got veteran arts journalist Jack Helbig to write the introduction, and Lori Grove of the Maxwell Street Foundation, and coauthor of Chicago's Maxwell Street (IL) (Images of America) to write the foreword. The other contributors are the eminent painter Robert Guinan, the Sun-Times critic Bill Stamets, local merchant and wonderful prose stylist Lionel Bottari, poet John Platt, local artist Linda Platt, and an oral history from old-timer Leland “Sugar” Cain, Jr. A DVD of Tom’s original movie accompanies the book, along with a slide show of extra images with harmonica and guitar music, labeled Maxwell Street Blues by local musicians Little Jukela and Willie Poor Boy, recorded at Jimmy’s Woodlawn Tap in Hyde Park.
For those who are not familiar with it, Maxwell Street is an avenue that runs E/W two blocks south of Roosevelt Road (12th St) and is intersected by the Dan Ryan expressway leading into downtown Chicago. The open-air marketplace started there around the turn of the 20th century, and was active up until 2000, even though it was undergoing painful urban renewal in the last 10 years of its existence. It is now under the auspices of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and is called University Village. The city kept moving the marketplace, and it got smaller and more insignificant with each displacement. I’m not sure exactly where it’s located now, but it was in the news this past week because the city was considering raising the vendor fees for selling at the marketplace, and people thought that would spell its ultimate demise.
The market on Maxwell Street was a unique and colorful place, where shoppers could get just about anything extremely cheaply. It was a photographer’s paradise, and this is where Tom and his wife Marcia cut their teeth as artists in the mid 1960s. The book also includes amazing photographs by Tom’s friend and fellow SAIC classmate, the painter Bernard Beckman. He has a keen interest in blues and gospel music, and there are many poignant photos in the book from Beckman of the street performers at Maxwell Street. The book as delayed because we kept adding and changing things right up to the last minute, even while the book was at press. We wanted the best book possible, and now that it’s finally published we feel like we accomplished putting together a great book.
Bob Sirott of WGN AM 720 radio called this book, “quite a nice little keepsake.” http://wgnradio.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46757&Itemid=557 – I had a call yesterday from the painter Robert Guinan who loved the book, and lamented that there were no surviving pictures of Johnny Young, a pioneering blues artist who made Maxwell Street his main hangout, and who Guinan profiles in the book. Guinan told me he thought a book of this kind on Maxwell Street was long overdue. There are some good promotional things coming up for this book, an event at the Oak Park (IL) Public Library at 7 pm on December 18 where Tom and his wife Marcia will sign books and they will show the movie. Tom will appear on Ray Hanania’s Radio Chicagoland show WJJG AM 1530 on December 5 at 8:30 am. And, this is big, Tom will be live on WGN TV (channel 9 in Chicago, and nationally syndicated on cable TV) on the Midday News program on December 18 around 12:20 pm, where they will interview Tom about the book and show snippets from the movie.
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