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Sixty years ago the famed arranger set the record straight on the blues, the avant-garde and the origins of jazz

Last modified on Fri 28 May 2021 07.55 EDT In the 1960s, musicians and music fans across the world began to be intrigued by the blues. Searching for it, they would inevitably be led to Chicago and, once there, to two Chicago institutions: a store called the Jazz Record Mart and a record label called Delmark. At the store, visitors found not only records, but informed guidance to who was playing where on the city’s vibrant club scene. On the label they discovered multiple voices of the blues, from veterans of the 1920s and 30s to the new generation of Windy City artists such as Magic Sam, Ju...

Bob Koester in the stacks at the Jazz Record Mart in 2009 Michael Jackson Bob Koester, who died May 12 at age 88, knew what he liked—and what you should like too. For nearly 70 years, he owned Chicago's Jazz Record Mart (and the Delmark label), and it was completely in character for him to snatch an album from the hands of an earnest young shopper. In 1968, that shopper was me—I'd picked up a copy of Muhal Richard Abrams's debut LP, Levels and Degrees of ...