Debbie Nathan

Last week I was lucky to be doing some business in Chicago during the city’s annual blues festival. At a Jazz Record Mart party on Sunday morning – where bands played inside the store – I spotted what appears to be a new trend: old blues musicians dressed as Texans. Or, more precisely, Texicans.

“What’s with the Dubya look?” I asked a fellow white audience member as Chicago guitarist James Wheeler did a set. He played gutbucket Mississippi while sporting black boots and a black Stetson. Did he hail from Texas?

“I doubt it,” said my audience friend. “He’s lived here 30 years at least, and his playing sure doesn’t sound Texas.”

I corralled Wheeler later and asked about the duds and his origins. “Nope, not Texas,” he said. “This is just my style.”

Minutes later I spotted James Yancy Jones, aka Tail Dragger, outside the store. His musical signature is a Howlin’ Wolf-like growl. Wolf, of course was from the Mississippi Delta. But there were the boots again, and the Stetson. Again I asked. “I got a right to dress like this,” Jones said. “I was raised in Dallas.”

“Oh yeah? What part?”

“Oak Cliff.”

“Whoa! I’ve been there a lot lately. Everyone in Oak Cliff now is Mexican!”

“Yeah!” he said, and went on to note that he buys his accessories at a vaquero store “out that way” (he wagged his finger in the geographic and existential direction of Kedzie).

“They speak enough English so I can get by. I got these boots there — you can tell, by the heel cut on the slant, that they Mexican.

“I’ve had them 15 years. And look. They as good as the day I bought them.”

“The Stetson, too.” He doffed it to show me the quality sweatband and other fine interior detail.

And there she was, shining like a milagro. “Hey!’ I said. “That’s the Virgin of Guadalupe!”

“Oh yeah?”

He wasn’t Catholic, or at least not Mexican. Still, he was tejano enough.