Eddie Burks

Chicago bluesman Eddie Burks was created Sept 17, 1931, on the plantation outdoors Greenwood, MS — the 14th and youngest child of sharecroppers, his childhood was marked by tragedy, especially his brother’s lynching as a result of the Ku Klux Klan. Burks uncovered the music of Robert Johnson and Sonny Boy Williamson being a prepubescent, and started playing harmonica also before he relocated towards the Windy Town in 1946; there he proved helpful at a metal mill while performing gospel as an associate of the higher Harvest Baptist Choir, famed for also introducing the professions of Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke. Regardless of the pull from the religious life, Burks cannot keep the blues behind, playing frequently at the previous Maxwell Street Marketplace that local people dubbed him “Jewtown Eddie” — still he became an Apostolic minister, along with his very own storefront cathedral on Chicago’s Western world Side. After a lot of the region was demolished by riots in the wake of Martin Luther Ruler, Jr.’s 1968 assassination, Burks empty the cathedral and his metal mill job to try out the blues full-time, passing the glass along Maxwell Road furthermore to support bandleaders Eddie Shaw and Jimmy Dawkins — sometimes, he also sat along with immortals Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Despite his popularity among regional bluesmen, Burks continued to be virtually unknown beyond the Chicago town limitations until 1990, when he and then-wife Maureen Walker founded Increasing Son Records release a his debut LP, Vampire Girl. This Old Street implemented in 1992, but he gained his biggest mainstream publicity showing up in the Academy Award-nominated 1994 documentary Blues Highway. Burks continued to be a staple from the Chicago blues circuit until his loss of life in an car crash outdoors Miller, IN, on January 27, 2005.