- Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1915 - April 30, 1983), better known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician and is generally considered "the Father of Chicago blues". He is also the actual father of blues musician Big Bill Morganfield. Muddy Waters is generally considered one of the greatest bluesmen of all time, and in 2004 he was ranked #17 in Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". - Tim Kinsella
Tim Kinsella (born October 22, 1974) is a musician from Chicago, Illinois. He has been a part of many bands including Cap'n Jazz, Joan of Arc, Sky Corvair, Make Believe, Owls, and Friend/Enemy. He has also recorded solo under the name Tim Kinsellas. - Ray Charles
Ray Charles (born Charles Raymond Offenberg, September 13, 1918 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, vocal arranger and conductor who is best- known as organizer and leader of The Ray Charles Singers. The Ray Charles Singers were featured on Perry Como's records, radio shows and television shows for 35 years. - Billy Corgan
William Patrick "Billy" Corgan, Jr. (born March 17, 1967 in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, U.S.A.) is an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter best known for his work in the alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins. The Smashing Pumpkins is one of alternative rock's biggest acts and is known for their complex, layered style, and Corgan's distinctive vocals and guitar solos. - Liz Phair
Liz Phair (born Elizabeth Clark Phair on April 17 1967 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. - R. Kelly
Robert Sylvester Kelly (born January 8, 1967 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American Urban R&B singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and occasional rapper. He first appeared on the music scene as the founder and lead singer of Public Announcement whose smooth mixture of hip-hop beats, soul, and funk propelled the group's 1992 debut album "Born Into the '90s" to platinum status. - Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley (born December 30, 1928) aka "The Originator" of Rock 'N' Roll, is an influential American rock and roll singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He is often cited as the key figure in the transition of blues into rock and roll, by introducing more insistent, driving rhythms and a hard edged guitar sound. He is also remembered for his characteristic rectangular-shaped guitar. - Jim O'Rourke
Jim O'Rourke (born January 18, 1969) is an American musician and producer. He was long associated with the Chicago experimental and improv scene. Around 2000 he relocated to New York City. Known for his idiosyncratic tastes, and regarded as something of an expert on modern experimental music, he has released albums of jazz, noise and guitar rock music. O'Rourke has collaborated with the likes of Thurston Moore, Derek Bailey, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Nurse With Wound, … - Ken Vandermark
Ken Vandermark (born September 22, 1964 in Warwick, Rhode Island) is an American jazz composer/arranger and saxophone and clarinet player - Mike Kinsella
Mike Kinsella (born March 4, 1977) is one of three Kinsellas (brother Tim Kinsella and cousin Nate Kinsella) involved in many Illinois-based bands. First recognized in the music scene in Cap'n Jazz, a big player in the refinement of post-emo indie rock, he has since stepped into many new projects. From Cap'n Jazz, he became part of Joan of Arc, a band taking a bit more of an abstract, experimental approach to the indie music where Cap'n Jazz left off. - Common
Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr. (b. March 13, 1972 in Chicago, Illinois), better known as Common, is an American hip hop artist known for lyrics that focus on spirituality, poverty, and other issues to do with social awareness. Common debuted in 1992 with the album "Can I Borrow A Dollar?", and maintained a significant underground following into the late 90s, after which he gained notable mainstream success through his work with the Soulquarians. - Wesley Willis
Wesley Willis (May 31, 1963 - August 21, 2003) was a musician and artist from Chicago. A diagnosed schizophrenic, he gained a sizable cult following in the 1990s after releasing several hundred songs of unique but simple music, with emphasis on his humorous stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Most of his exposure came as an internet phenomenon during the early days of peer-to-peer file sharing (via Napster). - Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12 1940 in Chicago, Illinois) is an Academy Award and multiple Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist and composer. Hancock is one of jazz music's most important and influential pianists and composers. He embraced elements of rock, funk, and soul while adopting freer stylistic elements from jazz. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet", Hancock helped redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section, … - Patti Smith
Patricia Lee ("Patti") Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American musician, singer, and poet. Smith came to prominence during the punk movement with her 1975 debut album "Horses". Called "punk rock's poet laureate", she brought a feminist and intellectual take to punk music and became one of rock and roll's most influential musicians. - James Iha
James Yoshinobu Iha born March 26, 1968 in Chicago, Illinois, USA) is a Japanese American rock musician. He is most famous as a guitarist in the highly successful alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins and his eclectic musical projects of recent years, including A Perfect Circle. - Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman, born Benjamin David Goodman, (May 30, 1909 - June 13, 1986) was an American jazz musician, known as "King of Swing", "Patriarch of the Clarinet", "The Professor", and "Swing's Senior Statesman". - Patrick Stump
Patrick Stump (born Patrick Martin Stumph on April 27, 1984) in Glenview, Illinois, is an American musician, composer and producer. Most notably, he is the lead singer, rhythm guitarist and occasional pianist of the band Fall Out Boy. - Lonie Walker
Lonie Walker is an American Acid Blues singer, whose music is a mixture rock, soul, funk, jazz and blues. Walker's stories has been explained as very similar to her music. Her performances are described as emotional journeys. She sings about relationships of intense interaction with the audience. She has been a jazz artist for several decades and is the leader singer of her Big Bad Ass Company. - Lupe Fiasco
Wasalu Muhammad Jaco (born February 16 1982), better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco, is an American rapper. He came to fame in 2006 following the success of his debut album, "Food & Liquor", which received three Grammy nominations. - Quincy Jones
Quincy Delightt Jones Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American music impresario, conductor, record producer, musical arranger, film composer and trumpeter. During five decades in the entertainment industry, Jones has earned more than 70 Grammy Award nominations, more than 25 Grammy Awards, and a Grammy Legend Award in 1991. He is best known as the producer of two of the top-selling records of all time: the album "Thriller", by pop icon Michael Jackson, … - Curtis Mayfield
Curtis Mayfield (June 3, 1942 - December 26, 1999) was an American soul, funk and R&B singer, songwriter and guitarist best known for his anthemic music with The Impressions and composing the soundtrack to the blaxploitation film "Superfly." From these works and others, he was highly regarded as a pioneer of funk and of politically conscious African-American music. He was also a bassist, pianist, saxophonist and drummer. - Mat Devine
Mathew Devine (April 16, 1974) is the lead singer, pianist and guitarist in the band Kill Hannah. - Von Freeman
Earl Lavon Freeman Sr.(born October 3, 1922 in Chicago, Illinois) is a hard bop tenor saxophonist. He is also the father of Chico Freeman. He learned saxophone as a child and at DuSable High School his band director was Walter Dyett. He began his professional career at age 16 in Horace Henderson's Orchestra. He was drafted into the Navy during World War II and played for a Navy band while in the service. - Sam Cooke
Sam Cooke (January 22, 1931 - December 11, 1964) was a popular and influential American gospel, R&B, soul, pop singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur. Indeed, musicians and critics today recognize him as one of the founders of soul music, and as one of the most important singers in soul music history (Greene, 2006). He has been called "the king of soul" by many, and while some may dispute this title, … - Freddie Keppard
Freddie Keppard (sometimes rendered as Freddy Keppard) (February 27, 1890 - July 15, 1933) was an early jazz cornetist. Keppard was born in the Creole of Color community of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana. His older brother Louis Keppard was also a professional musician. Freddie played violin, mandolin, and accordion before switching to cornet. After playing with the Olympia Orchestra he joined Frankie Dusen's Eagle Band, … - Robbie Fulks
Robbie Fulks is an American alternative country artist originally from Raleigh, North Carolina but who is a longtime Chicago, Illinois resident. Fulks is known for his disdain of mainstream modern country and the country music industry, as exemplified by his scorching rebuke of Nashville titled "Fuck This Town." His live performances feature improvised rearrangments of his original songs, off-the-cuff musical humor, and covers of songs by Michael Jackson and Cher, … - Marty Casey
Martin Xavier "Marty" Casey (born September 26, 1973) is an American rock musician who is the lead singer, primary songwriter and second guitarist of the band Lovehammers. After years of building a strong local following in Chicago, Illinois and the Midwest, Casey achieved international fame on the first season of the hit reality show "Rock Star: INXS". Casey made it to the final two of the competition, finishing as the runner-up to winner J.D. Fortune. - Jon Weber
Jon Weber is a Chicago and New York City-based jazz pianist and composer (born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1961) whose compositions and performances have met critical and popular acclaim in many countries around the world. Largely self-taught, Weber has perfect pitch and total melodic recall. He began playing at a very young age, and eventually settled in Chicago, with frequent appearances in New York City. - Mel Tormé
A professional singer at the age of three, Mel Torme was a genuine musical prodigy. As a teenager, he played the drums in Chico Marx's band and earned the nickname "The Velvet Fog" because of his smooth, mellow high baritone voice. In the 1940s he formed his own group, the Mel-Tones, one of the first jazz-influenced vocal groups. As a solo musician, he had a number one hit in 1949 called "Careless Love, " and several lesser hits. He also acted in films and wrote several books, including... - Mavis Staples
Mavis Staples (born July 10, 1939 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American rhythm and blues singer. - Archer Prewitt
Archer Prewitt is a musician and visual artist associated with the independent music scene in Chicago, Illinois. Born in Frankfort, Kentucky, he enrolled in the Kansas City Art Institute and began drumming in the band Tunnel Dogs. He then founded a neo-lounge act in Kansas City called The Coctails, who released four albums and moved to Chicago in 1991, only to break up in 1995. By then Prewitt had also been involved with a new project, The Sea and Cake, … - Mike Bloomfield
Michael Bernard Bloomfield (July 28 1943 - February 15 1981) was an American musician, guitarist and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, into a well-off Jewish family on Chicago's North Side. The Bloomfield fortune was built on the back of his father's invention, the sugar dispenser ("shaker") with a flapper lid, which the family also manufactured and distributed, along with salt & pepper shakers, and the classic revolving pie display, developed by his uncle. - Gene Krupa
Gene Krupa (January 15, 1909 - October 16, 1973) was a famous and influential American jazz and big band drummer, known for his highly energetic and flamboyant style. - Mc Chris
Chris Ward (born September 2 1975), otherwise known as mc chris, is a nerdcore rapper, voice actor, and improvisational comedian born in Illinois, USA. He currently self releases on his own label Jet Pack Industries, LLC. His trademarks include the synthesis of his "geek" heritage with the "gangster" image associated with hip hop artists, and the high pitch of his voice, … - Dennis Deyoung
Dennis DeYoung (born February 18, 1947) is an American singer, songwriter, keyboard player and producer best known for being a founding member of the rock band Styx, a tenure which lasted from 1962 to 1999. - Rachel Barton
Rachel Barton Pine (born October 11, 1974) is a violinist from Chicago. Considered a child prodigy at the violin, she started playing at 3 and a half, and played at many renowned venues through her child and teen years. She regularly plays with the Chicago Symphony and on her own, tours worldwide, and has an active recording career. On January 16, 1995, Barton was severely injured in a train accident. As she was exiting a Metra commuter train in the suburb of Winnetka, … - Rachel Barton Pine
Rachel Barton Pine (born October 11, 1974) is a violinist from Chicago. Considered a child prodigy at the violin, she started playing at the age of 3 and a half. She played at many renowned venues through her child and teen years. She currently resides in Chicago with her husband Greg, plays regularly with the Chicago Symphony and on her own, tours worldwide, and has an active recording career. - Dinah Washington
Dinah Washington (August 29, 1924 - December 14, 1963) was a blues, R&B and jazz singer. Because of her strong voice and emotional singing, she is known as the Queen of the Blues. Despite dying of a drug overdose in 1963, Dinah Washington became one of the most influential vocalists of the twentieth century. - Bob Nanna
Bob Nanna Nanna Fo Fanna Fe Fi Fo Fanna Nanna (born June 14, 1975) is a Chicago native who was very influential in the 1990s Midwestern indie rock movement. When Nanna was in high school, he was influenced by such bands as Jawbreaker and Fugazi. He played drums and sang lead vocals in a band called Friction up until August of 1993. - Promise
Promise Jj Shepherd (born on September 16) is a Canadian Hip Hop/Soul artist known for his conceptual songwriting and potent lyrical content that focuses primarily on life, love and the consciousness of mankind. Managed by artist management firm S4 Entertainment Promise's world premiere boasts guest appearances by Rhymefest, Tonex, Montell Jordan, Elzhi of Slum Village, Really Doe, GLC, Award-winning poets J. Ivy, Malik Yusef and many more.
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