Ida Cox

It had, you know, uh, Big Bill Broonzy.

It had, uh, oh, gosh, uh, Ida Cox and Chippie Hill and some of these great, great blues piano players, a lot of boogie woogie and, and stuff, uh, Wesley Wallace and great old stuff, Cripple Clarence Lofton, you know.

And I listened to that a lot, but I, I listened to Bob Dylan, too.

And the first time I played, I played in front of the whole school.

Chicago's jazz scene was a male-dominated space.

Yet women like Ida Cox were touring the same clubs, playing blues that fed into the jazz vocabulary.

Black musicians still had to navigate segregated venues while trying to get a record deal.

Nightlife was the crucible where these ideas were tested.

But it wasn't just music.

The clubs were arenas for race politics.

Black musicians had to negotiate segregated venues while white patrons paid premium seats, and women such as Ida Cox found spaces to perform blues that seeped into jazz vocabulary.

The tension between who could play and who could listen made every performance a political act.