I See Dead People

SouthSIDE Glen

SouthSIDE Glen

independentrecording.net
I have the dubious distinction of living in a neighborhood that, thanks to the local geology, is surrounded by a sea of cemeteries. Many of these cemetaries, all within a mile or two of my house, are populated by a fairly large number of old Chicago-based blues and jazz musicians (as well as others of notoriety). After many years of procrastination, I have started a summer project for myself of finding and photographing as many of these grave sites as I can find. Included below are the first two (and among the biggest names) of them that I got yesterday.

You have any famous artists or musicians buried or interred near you? Post the images here. It doesn't *have* to be music related, though that would be the most appropriate to this BBS.

a.k.a. Muddy Waters. NOTE: This is not a staged photo, the fresh flowers and fresh beer were already there when I got there. :)
Muddy_Waters.jpg



Willie_Dixon.jpg


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Zaphod B said:
People leave guitar picks on Muddy Waters' grave marker. Very cool. :cool:
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Would you believe I didn't even notice them until I brought the picture back and put it up on my PC? :P

I wonder whether they come back to get them, hoping that some of Muddy's mojo rubs off.

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That's pretty cool that they're remembered like that.

Imagine leaving a legacy of sorts when ya pass on.
I guess to the greats that move on...they left their mark.

Awesome.
 
Dogbreath said:
That's pretty cool that they're remembered like that.

Imagine leaving a legacy of sorts when ya pass on.
I guess to the greats that move on...they left their mark.

Awesome.
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There a few of them that I haven't gotten to yet who were buried without any headstone, either because they had no relatives left around here, or because they died flat broke, or both. But some blues foundation or some other movement (I forget the exact details offhand) actually collected and/or donated funds some years ago to have headstones placed on the proper un-marked graves.

Some of the main ones I know are within walking distance of here that I still have to "bag" include Hound Dog Taylor, Big Walter, Otis Spann, Dinah Washington. Magic Sam, Valerie Wellington and - while not exactly a musician, he hired enough of them - Al Capone.

Funny enough, I also found a "Freddie King" when I was out hunting Muddy yesterday, but it was just a coincidence. "THE" Freddie King died in '76, this Freddie King has 2001 marked on the headstone. But for a few minutes I thought I had struck a surprise find by accident.

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Glen,
What a neat idea. I'll have to trek up to Elmwood and take some photos next week - there's a bunch of old Kansas City musicians who are buried there, plus some old political cronies (e.g. Frances Reid Long, etc.)
 
KineticSound said:
Glen,
What a neat idea. I'll have to trek up to Elmwood and take some photos next week - there's a bunch of old Kansas City musicians who are buried there, plus some old political cronies (e.g. Frances Reid Long, etc.)
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Oh yeah! Some great musicians and music to come out of Kansas City (along with some GREAT BBQ ribs, I understand :D). I'd love to see what you could come up with and add to our little thread here (along with anybody else reading this.)

I did some more searching today, and unfortunately found that Eddie Taylor and Johnny "Daddy Stove Pipe" Watson's graves are there but unmarked. Most people here may not be familiar with their names, but they were seminal performers that helped shape the blues we know today, and have played and recorded with just about every big blues name we have all heard of. That they are laying in unmarked graves is just a crying shame (hmmm...I think there's a blues song in there in and of itself...!)

There's still more to come, but for today a real funeral procession came in and I figured I'd get out of their way.

G.
 
Just a morbidly interesting update:

You may have seen the story on the news in the past 24 hours or so from this post about the cemetery workers that have (to date) moved, removed or destroyed as many as 300 grave sites in their cemetery so that they could re-sell those grave sites to others.

This cemetery is in fact Burr Oak cemetery, the very cemetery where I took the Willie Dixon picture above, and also where Dinah Washington and many others are (or at least were) buried.

The place is today an absolute madhouse. There are thousands of people walking the place looking for their buried family members and checking to see if their sites are intact, many of them bussed in by a good dozen Cook County Sheriff Department transport buses and rented/borrowed (?) RTA public transportation buses commandeered for this specific task, the rest arriving with cars parked in every empty field and street space for blocks around the cemetery entrance. Of course there are Cook County Sheriff's Police and local Alsip Police everywhere, including a large Sheriff's Winnebago mobile command post and sheriffs patrolling the cemetery grounds in official sheriff's department *golf carts*, while forensic teams work under tents and behind screening fences on a few graves and discarded grave remains found in one remote area of the cemetery. And of course, microwave news vans from every local TV and cable station and national network parked outside. It's just an incredible (and sad) scene to behold.

I can say personally that when I visited Burr Oak back in April to get that Willie Dixon picture that I found the condition of that cemetery pretty despicable. We had a very wet spring here, and probably 1/3rd of the roads in the cemetery were underwater, along with a substantial number of gravesites, and where things were dry, many grave sites were next to impossible to find unless you knew where you were going because grove markers, row markers and other guideposts were often missing or fallen on the ground, with many of them being nothing but old wooden stakes with numbers written on their side in faded or otherwise mostly unreadable magic marker. It's not like this is an old cemetery that is no longer used; they were still burying people there today, believe it or not.

There's almost no way of knowing just how many blues legends and fathers of American roots music may have been lost to the sheer criminality and incompetence of the people running the Burr Oak cemetery, as it is one of a small number of main cemeteries around here that were the preferred resting place of the vintage Chicago music scene.

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Apparently in the spirit of Burr Oak Cemetery burying two or more people in one gravesite, I double-posted two duplicate messages in one spot in this thread. Please move on to the next post.

I swear, officer, it was an accident!

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VSpaceBoy said:
Wow how crazy is that?

Crazy the things ppl will do for money.
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Ain't it the sad truth :(.

This story has turned into an incredible legal and logistical nightmare since my last post on it. The entire cemetery has been closed off from the public now, as the *entire cemetery* has now been turned into an official crime scene. There are one or two Sheriff's Department Mobile Command Winnebagos and a similar FBI Mobile Command Winnebago unit there 24 hrs a day, along with a full contingent of police for security.

Major parts of the cemetery have been blocked off from view by tarped chain link fencing while they go through the incredible task of having to check as many as 100,000 (!) gravesites. The FBI has brought in the same forensic scientist they used for discovering and IDing the remains from the NY 9/11 attack, and are dividing the cemetery into search grids where they are using just about every technique from sticking poles into the ground to ground-penetrating radar to systematically try and figure out just what they're dealing with, photographing and noting everything they find and compiling into a huge database that they're putting up on the Internet, so the public can help confirm what is correct or not with their deceased loved ones.

The cemeteries own records are useless, BTW. They showed a picture of them on TV about a week ago or so; A vertical filing cabinet that looks like it was dragged out of the ocean with rust all over, and virtually every paper record inside all caked togeter into one solid mass from waterlogging and mold. I'd be afraid to even touch the thing without a Hazmat suit on, myself.

What a nightmare. I drive by the place almost every day (often a couple of times) as it is just a couple of miles from my house, and every time I drive by there during the day I can see at least 40-50 marked and unmarked squad cards parked inside - and that's just what's outside those fenced-in areas I mentioned earlier - just for the officers they have there working the scene. And that's also not including any officers they have bussed iin via the County Sheriff school-bus-style buses, of which there are usually one to three to be found somewhere inside. All working on overtime after their regular "day job" beats, BTW. What a nice expensive crime to hit us in the middle of the financial meltdown recession, when our state's budget is already $11 Billion in the hole for this year :eek:.

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