Down at Theresa’s – Chicago Blues : The Photographs of Marc PoKempner

Black-and-white photographs capture the people and the vibrant atmosphere at the world famous blues venue, Theresa’s Lounge, in the late 1960s and 1970s. Marc PoKempner’s shots are full of the very vigor that characterized the gritty, garish, good-time, working-class Chicago blues era when legends such as Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Otis Spann, Jimmy Rogers, and Junior Wells performed down at Theresa’s.
The booming industries of Chicago acted as a magnet for rural migrants from the Delta region of northwestern Mississippi in the 1940s and ’50s. The often painful adjustments made by these new arrivals in the Windy City led to the rise of a new musical form, and electrified urban version of the blues that was soon ringing out from the bars and clubs of the city’s South Side.