910 MAXWELL ST

“Then, in the’40s, there was Floyd Jones, Snooky Pryor, John Henry, Uncle Johnny Williams, Johnny Young, and Earl Hooker. We built the road for the blues in Chicago before Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and all the rest came. We’d set up early in the morning. Sometimes we'd get here about seven or eight o'clock. Moody Jones and Floyd [Jones] and them always hooked up at my cousin Della’s house, 910 West Maxwell. Moody Jones was my cousin's boyfriend. They'd get the juice from there. They always played right in front of her house. You might have seen a picture of a building with some long stairs going up. That was her house. She lived on the first floor. Little Walter's girlfriend lived there, the one that bought him his first amplifier. He lived with her there at my cousin's house too. We all was together. I was raised up with them, see. I was around Walter when he first played the harp on the electric amplifier. Earl Hooker was there in them days. We didn't call him Earl Hooker, just Zebedee. He lived on the South Side and he used to come all the way over and played on the street. He had a little band with him most of the time. We was together as kids in Jew Town. We all came up together. Little Willie Foster was down here. He had a nice lookin' woman named Josephine and they lived in the basement next door to Ed Newman. Willie killed a man over her, only they broke up some time later. I used to play with Little Willie Foster all along Jew Town. Jimmy Rogers used to live around here too when he first came to Chicago. Homesick James was here. He was a pretty boy in them days. He was young. Every time I played, Homesick was right there. Some of us played all through the week. We used the stands, you know. We’d sit up in these stands and make money all through the week. That was in the late 40's --- '48, '49, around in there.”  (Tom Moon's interview with Jimmie Lee Robisnon -1997)