Chicago Blues the Father of American Rock and Roll

Maxwell Street is significant to the history of blues not just because music was performed there, but because music was created there. Beginning in the 1920s, Maxwell Street was the first stopping place for thousands of African-Americans newly arrived from the Mississippi Delta. There, the newcomers could hear established city musicians, and vice-versa. This continuous interaction over the course of several decades produced, in the period immediately following the Second World War, what is usually called Chicago Blues, but which could just as easily be called "The Maxwell Street Blues." Where in previous decades, recorded Delta Blues had been modified to fit the popular song styles of the day, on Maxwell Street it was left raw and simply amplified, both in volume and dramatic intensity. Musicians introduced amplification intensity at unheard of volumes too stand out above others. When recorded, the result became not only the dominant form of blues, but radically changed the emerging sound of rock and roll. The sound of bands like the Rolling Stones, Cream, Led Zeppelin and many others came about when English teenagers tried to duplicate the music of Maxwell Street Bluesmen.