Blues Before Sunrise: The Radio Interviews

John and Grace Brim

John and Grace Brim John and Grace Brim, a husband-and-wife team, were the king and queen of the Gary, Indiana, blues scene. John was renowned for a pair of sessions organized by blues harmonica virtuoso Little walter. walter arranged for these sessions to take place and accompanied with his own band. the tunes recorded at these sessions—“Ice Cream Man, ” “rattlesnake, ” “Be Careful , ” and “You Got Me where You want Me”—rock and lope along as first-rank classics of postwar Chicago blues, fueled by walter’s high-octane harp and Fred Below’s drums. these recordings are held in rightful regard by blues fans worldwide. But it’s the obscure earlier recordings John and Grace did for the Fortune, random, and J.O.B. labels that truly define their identities as blues musicians . Grace Brim may be the only woman of the postwar era to sing pure, unadulterated down-home blues, untainted by pop influences, picking up where Memphis Minnie left off and Minnie’s one true heir for the years afterworldwar II. Fans lament her limited output—only six sides featuring her vocals. John Brim. Photo by Frank Zirbel. Despite the celebrity blues status generated by his classic Chess label recordings, a truer profile of John Brim would see him weigh in as one of the rare “deep” bluesmen to record in Chicago in the years after the war. It was a short list: Muddy waters, Floyd Jones, and perhaps Big Boy Spires. Deep blues is a genre devoid of most of the usual hooks that attract the casual blues enthusiast: it doesn’t rock or swing, no string bending or guitar pyrotechniques . It’s played at a deadslow tempo and can—at points—sound atonal.Yet to those who understand the genre it packs an emotional charge and burns like a slo-mo lava flow. It took me years to appreciate this genre of blues and to comprehend its power and emotional impact.these are the kinds of recordings John Brim made in the earliest years of his career. the relationship between John and Grace Brim was a curious thing to observe. I don’t know to this day whether or not they were ever officially divorced . I guess the best way to describe their relationship was as a longtime couple who lived apart. Grace lived in the family home on Hanley Avenue in Gary, while John had his own apartment. Grace once told me that John had his own girlfriends and she kept her own boyfriends, but I don’t know when they found the time to entertain outsiders. Anytime you wanted to contact John you called Grace, because that’s where he always was—at the house on Hanley. whatever differences had arisen between them over the years apparently didn’t prevent them from hanging out together a majority of the time. And it was clear from his conversation that John considered Grace his wife, regardless. John never did stop performing or trying to make it even though Grace had pretty much quit performing, but I do recall they showed up one weeknight where I was playing in Chicago, at Lily’s on Lincoln. John came up and did a set, and Grace actually came up and sang a number—a real rarity. In the last years of her life Grace told me she promised her mother, on her grace Brim. Photo by Illinois Slim. 72 post war glory deathbed, that she wouldn’t sing anymore blues. As far as I know, she never did. this interview was recorded in the Brims’ living room on September 27, 1993. Grace Brim died on September 25, 1999. John Brim died four years later on October 6, 2003. ■ ■ ■ Let’s go back to the very beginning.Tell me when and where you were born. john: April 10, 1922—Hopkinsville, Kentucky. I don’t know, Steve, I just liked the blues from a youngster on up. I always did want to meet a lot of guys I never dreamed when I was a teenager that I would meet, like Sonny Boy, Tampa, Big Bill Bronson [Broonzy], Big Maceo and Dr. Clayton—all those guys I would hear down home. Oh, I thought those were the greatest guys ever, you know! And the Seeburg [an early jukebox brand name]— Chet and I, we’d go out downtown. At that time—you know, seventeen, eighteen—you could...