40 years ago this month: Chuck Berry, Keith Richards take stage for a star-studded Chicago Blues Festival

Crowds turned out this past weekend for the Chicago Blues Festival in Millennium Park, braving the occasional rain for a tribute to Alligator Records, a performance by some self-described divas honoring Mama Yancey and Big Mama Thornton, and at the top of the bill, the legendary Taj Mahal.

Forty years ago last weekend, crowds also turned out for the Chicago Blues Festival — then only in its third year as an annual event, and studded with a roster of stars for a spectacle that's still talked about today. Chuck Berry took the stage and Keith Richards joined him in a surprise appearance.

The Chicago Blues Festival: Since 1984, with roots going back to 1969

The first blues festival on the downtown lakefront was held on Aug. 30, 1969, in the first Petrillo Band Shell — then known just as the Grant Park Band Shell — located at the south end of Hutchinson Field south of Buckingham Fountain and facing south toward what we now call the Museum Campus.

As recalled by WDCB, the 1969 concert was produced by Willie Dixon and George "Murphy" Dunne, later known as the keyboardist for the Blues Brothers. It featured an all-star lineup that included Bo Diddley, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Big Walter Horton, Koko Taylor, Big Mama Thornton, and Muddy Waters, who closed the festival with "Got My Mojo Workin'."

And that was it.

The blues carried on in Chicago, of course, with an active and vibrant scene through the '70s and early '80s at a variety of venues around the city, and at the Maxwell Street Market. The Rolling Stones famously joined Muddy Waters for a concert and live album recording at the Checkerboard Lounge on 43rd Street in November 1981.

Meanwhile, ChicagoFest, the annual festival at Navy Pier that drew scores of musical acts a day, featured blues legends from Waters, Hooker and Dixon to Sunnyland Slim, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Mighty Joe Young and Luther Allison. And that's just off the 1978 roster. The festival, which featured every genre of music alongside blues, ran through 1982 at Navy Pier and had a final year at Soldier Field in 1983.

But after that 1969 event, there wasn't another free blues festival in a Chicago lakefront park until June 8-10, 1984. This was the Chicago city-sponsored festival that we know today. Muddy Waters had died the year before, and the first festival honored him with a special tribute.

Dixon, Hooker, Junior Wells, Bobby "Blue" Bland, and Koko Taylor were among the headliners at that first multi-day festival. Taylor returned in 1985, and Dallas guitarist and blues rock innovator Stevie Ray Vaughan also took the stage that year.

A big expansion in 1986

By 1986, the Blues Festival had expanded to three stages — two temporary stages in addition to the Petrillo Band Shell, which by then had been rebuilt in its current site north of Buckingham Fountain. Food stands also debuted that year, with ribs sizzling along with the blues licks.

Bo Diddley appeared on opening night, Friday, June 6.  His soundcheck — witnessed by CBS Chicago reporter Bob Wallace — became a mini-concert hours before he officially took the stage. 

Willie Dixon also appeared with his standup bass and his Big Three Trio that he'd first formed in the 1940s. Blues guitarist Otis Rush also played that first night of the festival, as did pianist Memphis Slim, joined by guitarist Matt "Guitar" Murphy of "The Blues Brothers" fame.

But the most famous performer was Father of Rock and Roll Chuck Berry, then about four months shy of his 60th birthday. Berry was from St. Louis, but had made all his best-known recordings in Chicago with Chess Records beginning in the mid-1950s. He had also made regular concert appearances in Chicago throughout the '70s and into the '80s — including a New Year's Eve 1978-1979 concert at Park West where Bob Sirott introduced him for Channel 2's New Year's Eve special, and appearances at ChicagoFest in the summers of 1979 and 1980.

That Friday night at the 1986 Blues Festival, Berry played all his classic hits — "Roll Over Beethoven," "School Day," "Sweet Little Sixteen," "Memphis," "Around and Around," "Maybellene," "Rock and Roll Music" — along with a couple of blues covers. Then, he introduced a surprise guest: Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, who joined him for "Johnny B. Goode," "Reelin' and Rockin'" and a couple other numbers.

There was no live album released of this legendary concert. But audio recordings are floating out there to this day, and a few of the tracks on which Richards appeared were released on the 1992 bootleg "Bloody Red Rooster."

Berry had been on the roster for the 1986 Chicago Blues Festival from the beginning. Richards had not. They were actually meeting in Chicago for another reason that June, along with filmmaker Taylor Hackford, with whom they were preparing to make a documentary about the preparations for Berry's 60th-birthday concerts at the Fox Theatre back in St. Louis that October.

Richards organized the St. Louis concerts and served as musical director for the project, which became the acclaimed documentary "Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll." The documentary, released in 1987, ended up being a display of how difficult the revered Berry could be as well as a tribute to him and his genius. But at the Chicago Blues Festival, many were thrilled just to see Berry and Richards onstage together — and many others remain sorry they missed it.

For those who didn't make it, WBEZ offered a live radio broadcast that some people might have been inclined to record on cassette tape for future listening. The mother of the then-5-1/2-year-old author of this story was one of those people.

The Neville Brothers took the stage at the Petrillo Band Shell that Saturday at the 1986 Blues Festival. On Sunday, Albert King and Robert Cray were among the headliners, along with Roebuck "Pops" Staples and The Staple Singers.

Mayor Harold Washington awarded Pops Staples the Medal of Merit for his 50 years of recording.

Speaking to Dave Hoekstra for Newcity this year, former Chicago Blues Festival deputy director Barry Dolins said 1986 was the year the festival really took off, showcasing Chicago as the world's blues capital to an international audience, and even providing an opportunity to use blues music as an international tourist draw to Chicago.

As the years went on, the Chicago Blues Festival became the unofficial kickoff to summer in Chicago.

Berry played at the Chicago Blues Festival again in 2001. The late Berry's son, Charles Jr., and grandson, Charlie, played the festival in a tribute to Chess Records just last year.

While Richards has been back to Chicago plenty of times with the Rolling Stones since 1986, he has not played at a Chicago Blues Festival since.

Today, having moved to Millennium Park from Grant Park in 2017, the Chicago Blues Festival is known as the largest free blues festival in the world. Early June in Chicago may be sunny and beautiful, chilly enough for the radiators to kick in, or rainy and even stormy. But blues fans continue to brave it all.