Cal-Sag bike tour showcases Chicago’s blues legacy

Steve Buchtel had stopped with a group of about 20 fellow bicyclists at Restvale Cemetery in Alsip to listen to blues riffs when a groundskeeper walked over to find out what was going on.

It was admittedly an unusual sight, and Buchtel was unsurprised by the employee’s arrival.

“Here all of a sudden are all of these bicyclists standing around one of the grave sites while Harmonica Neil is wailing on his harp,” he said.

Rather than kicking the group out, the groundskeeper began telling about other people who visit the final resting spots of some of the cemetery’s more prominent clients.

“He said when the Rolling Stones are playing in Chicago, always, a limo will pull up at Restvale and Keith Richards and Mick Jagger will get out of the car and walk over to Muddy Waters’ gravestone, just to pay their respects.

“The irony is most people in the Chicago Southland still don’t realize the treasures that are there and ready for a graveyard visit. But the Rolling Stones do.”

Buchtel, of Homewood, has been doing his best to change that for almost 10 years, leading the annual Cal-Sag Graveyard Blues Tour. The 9th edition of the bicycle tour is set to kick off at 10:30 a.m. Sept. 9, departing from Rock Island Public House in Blue Island.

A fundraiser for the Friends of the Cal-Sag Trail, the tour offers a chance to pay homage to many of the men and women who carried musical traditions from the rural South to a larger audience in Chicago and in the process laid the foundation for rock ’n’ roll music.

Three cemeteries in particular hold the remains of an inordinate number of blues icons. At Restvale, Muddy Waters’ monument joins those of blues musicians such as Magic Sam Maghett and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith. Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island holds Big Bill Broonzy and Jimmy Reed, among others. At Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Willie Dixon’s grave isn’t far from those of “Queen of the Blues” Dinah Washington and Otis Spann.

The three historically African American cemeteries were established at the height of the Jim Crow era, according to information compiled by Linda Swisher, president of the South Suburban Genealogical & Historical Society in Hazel Crest. Rampant discrimination in Chicago, even as the city’s Black population swelled amid the Great Migration, wasn’t restrained to the living.

“It became a tradition to come out to the suburbs to be buried,” Buchtel said. That included not only famous blues musicians, but people who made tremendous contributions in all facets of society, such as poet Gwendolyn Brooks, aviator Bessie Coleman, baseball legend Rube Foster and basketball trailblazer Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton. Burr Oak also is the resting spot for Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till.

That legacy is evident throughout the suburbs, but the concentration of blues artists buried at properties along the Cal-Sag Channel made the Graveyard Blues Tour a natural fit for a group that worked for years to establish a bicycle trail along the canal.

Buchtel said there are consistent stops on the annual tour but organizers try to delve into some unexpected nooks of blues history among the plots.

“There’s not enough time to get to everybody,” he said. “Of course you will see Muddy Waters — can’t miss that. But it’s really nice to rotate these characters and give people a fuller view of that music and where it came from.”

Harmonica Neil, a blues historian and performer whose non-stage name is Neil Florek, is on hand every year to add context, recounting tales from musicians’ histories and offering graveside performances of their songs.

Some of his stories illustrate the “raucous” nature of life on the South Side blues circuit.

“Hound Dog Taylor literally shot his bandmate Brewer Phillips and might have been tried and convicted if he had not passed away before the legal proceedings could conclude,” he said. “Details are sketchy, but it seems that Phillips came to Hound Dog’s hospital bed before he died and they reconciled.”

Florek, who had the benefit of learning from and playing with Blues master Jimmy Johnson, a Harvey resident who died late last year, said his earliest memory is of seeing Muddy Waters perform in the early 1980s at Navy Pier. Now a professor of philosophy at the University of Dayton, he’ll once again reprise his role as Harmonica Neil at this year’s tour.

“Nothing is more gratifying for me than passing along a little knowledge and appreciation of a great African American art form that has been rooted in Chicago and the Calumet region for at least 100 years,” he said.

The associated folklore is still being generated in the 21st century.

“When at the grave of Big Bill Broonzy, I love to remind the folks that the Rev. (Joseph) Lowery alluded to Broonzy’s original song ‘Black, Brown and White’ while delivering the benediction at President Obama’s January 2009 inauguration,” Florek said.

Buchtel said while the tour is generally lighthearted and fun, the history that’s presented can be “mind opening.”

“At it’s core, it’s about raising these artists back up in peoples’ imagination and tying this place to the larger story of Chicago’s place in music history, particularly with the blues,” he said.

An integral part of that is “the story of the Black experience in Chicago, and why these graves are here in Blue Island and Alsip.”

The graves aren’t immediately evident. Muddy Waters, perhaps the most recognizable name globally in the genre, is buried under a “small unassuming stone,” Buchtel said.

“You can’t stand at Restvale and point out where blues artists stones are,” he said. “They look like hundreds of other stones out there. They, by far, aren’t the most prominent ones.”

That physical context drives home the very nature of blues music itself, the sentiments that came together to forge an art form.

Standing by Waters’ modest gravestone, Florek said, helps one “understand that blues people were real, historically situated individuals whose artistic achievements and world influence were not easily won.”

The unmistakable geographical parallel of the famous grave sites and the path of the Cal-Sag bicycle trail is joined by philosophical similarities as well.

Started in the early 2000s by a group of Palos Heights residents who wanted to easily connect pedestrians from the south side of the Cal-Sag to a new Metra station on the north side of the waterway, the effort has grown into advocacy for a dedicated pedestrian route that would connect the I&M Canal trail system in Lemont through Palos Heights, Crestwood, Alsip, Blue Island, Dolton and Riverdale to the Burnham Greenway system near the Indiana state line.

“It’s not just a recreational trail, but something that’s tied to community history and the area’s legacy and economic development of the area,” Buchtel said.

“It’s a corridor that creates common space. When you’re on the trail, there are other people there using the same trail for the same reason you are. It creates a sense of community and personal safety.”

And for at least once a year, it’s a route that serves as a sort of time machine to when the Blues was being created by the genre’s original masters. It ties an art form celebrated and loved around the globe to our little part of it.

“Perhaps we cannot be blamed for being a little proud of the fact that the physical, industrial and cultural environment of Chicago and the south suburbs was sufficient for these blues people to create, perform, and make their mark on the world,” Florek said.

The 9th annual Cal-Sag Graveyard Blues Bike Tour is from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 9, starting and ending at Rock Island Public House, 13328 Old Western Ave., Blue Island. Information is at www.calsagtrail.org/calendar/graveyardblues23.

Landmarks is a weekly column by Paul Eisenberg exploring the people, places and things that have left an indelible mark on the Southland. He can be reached at peisenberg@tribpub.com.