A note from Tom Roeser about a new addition, Kenan Heise.
Barack Obama is carrying some of Chicago, its image and its reality on stage with him; but what is the image and what is the reality of Chicago?
What is the image of Chicago and the reality, not just in terms of a Presidential candidate, but also ourselves and the world in which we live?
“What does Chicago mean, when we put it before such words as architecture, art, weather, politics, language, hot dog, sports, weather, culture, literature, theater or Presidential candidate?
The Chicago Daily Observer has decided to go to Kenan Heise not so much to answer as to probe that question…
…with your help.
We are initiating an interactive column that uses the question and answer approach to probe not only the who, what and when of Chicago’s past and present, but also the how and why.
Why Kenan Heise?
More than 40 years experience doing just that.
He was a Chicago reporter for 34 years, had a column, “Chicago’s Personal Past,” in Chicago Magazine for 2½ years, wrote or coauthored 14 books and three plays on the city ranging from They Speak for Themselves: Interviews with the Destitute of Chicago and Is there Only One Chicago to Chicago the Beautiful and Chicago Afternoons with Leon (Despres.)
At Chicago’s American, Chicago Today and the Chicago Tribune, he edited the Action Line column for 17 years. For the Trib, he wrote ten thousand obituaries, edited an interview column, “Neighborhood Dialogue” for 2½ years and probably had more bylines in the newspaper than anyone else in history.
WTTW has used him as a resident expert on such programs, now available on tape disc, as “Remembering Chicago Again” and “The Edgewater Beach Hotel.”
Every effort he has made has been to answer, “What makes Chicago different, so distinct?” “And why?”
He has been invited to join the Chicago Daily Observer.
Here is his response:
“Let’s probe Chicago past and preset together!
“I have tried over the past five decades to look at Chicago through both a telescope and a microscope. I have always found doing so interesting beyond all expectations.
“I like the facts and love the details, but the how and why even more so.
“Let me cite an example me cite two sets of facts you probably did not know about the 1920s and 1930s in Chicago.
1. Between 1923 and 1931—the years when Al Capone was considered the Chicago Story—four women associated with the city won (or in one case was named the alternate winner of) the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.
They were:
Willa Cather, who received the award in 1923 for One of Our Own. She had earlier written the lyrical Song of the Lark, a novel about a young female student at the Art Institute and later wrote another Chicago novel, Lucy Gayheart.
Edna Ferber, who received the honor in 1924 for So Big, a novel that took place in suburban South Holland. She also authored a book of short stories, several of them about Chicago. Janet Ayer Fairbanks was named “second” for the award after Sinclair Lewis refused it in 1926.
Her sister, Margaret Ayer Barnes was named the winner in 1931 for her novel, Years of Grace.
2. Between 1929 and 1937, the following musical forms were created or transformed in Chicago.
Gospel Music was born in Chicago in 1932 either with Thomas Dorsey’s “If You See My Savior, Tell Him You Saw Me” or in 1932 with the publication of Dorsey’s “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.”
Swing Music was born at the Chicago Congress Hotel during Benny Goodman’s engagement there between 1935 and 1936.
Country and western music were nationalized through the broadcasts of Chicago’s WLS Barn Dance during this period.
Blues and jazz were urbanized with a Chicago flavor here after Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong moved to Chicago in 1922 and the Mississippi blues musicians who came to Chicago helped form here the National association of Negro Musicians.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra was the only major symphony with a reputation for playing American composers and on June 15, 1933 presented “An Evening of Negro Music and Musicians.”
Folk Music received a strong impetus with the publication in 1927 of Chicagoan Carl Sandburg’s American Songbag.
Even Blue Grass music owes something to the city as John Lair left his radio job with WLS in Chicago and returned to his in Renfro Valley, Kentucky to start the Blue Music, broadcasts and center there.
Quite a city! Share your curiosity about Chicago with us and ask us not only what and when, but also why and how.
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Kenan Heise is the latest addition to the stable of Chicago journalism vets writing for The Chicago Daily Observer…including Dennis Byrne, Mary Laney, Don Rose et al…along with a host of new bylines. Stay tuned for more to come.