You would expect a town that introduced the world to Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Chuck Berry and so many others to have a great blues festival and Chicago does. It has been going on since 1984.

The Chicago Blues Festival is an annual event held in Grant Park, downtown along Chicago’s lakefront. Dozens of blues artists perform on multiple stages during the day and there is a headliners show each night at the park’s band shell. The festival runs Thursday through Sunday, always in early June. For 2005, it is June 9 through 12. Admission is free. It is the largest free blues festival in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people will attend, a crowd about evenly divided between locals and visitors.

The festival is organized by the city and funded by various sponsors. The man behind it all is Barry Dolins, a genuine blues fan and walking archive of blues knowledge. Dolins does a terrific job, programming the festival to appeal equally to casual fans and hard-core enthusiasts.

Some of the highlights of this year’s line-up are David ‘Honey Boy’ Edwards 90th birthday celebration, Kim Simmonds’ celebrating Savoy Brown’s 40th year, John Mayall and the Blues Breakers (with Mick Taylor), Jody Williams (with the Willie Henderson Horns), Hubert Sumlin (with ‘Steady Rollin’ Bob Margolin, Pinetop Perkins, Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith and Mookie Brill), Koko Taylor, Erwin Helfer, Billy Branch and the Sons of Blues (with Pete Crawford, Lurrie Bell and Steve Freund), Howard Scott (with Miss Jessi and Stan Mosely), the Lucky Peterson Band, and Mavis Staples.

As great as all the music is, the festival also has booths selling food and drink, even beer and other adult beverages, and panel discussions and workshops for people who can’t get enough of listening to and talking about the blues. The audiences are relaxed and friendly, and the weather is usually comfortable. The band shell stage has theater seating close to the stage and lawn seating beyond. Access to the seating area is controlled so it doesn’t get overcrowded, but it’s all still free. An insider tip is to gain admission to the band shell seating area early in the day and get your hand stamped. That way you can use the re-entry entrance for the rest of the night, and blow right past the long line of unstamped masses.

Some of the smaller day stages have seating on benches or picnic tables. The one in a wooded grove has just the lawn. People bring blankets and folding chairs. You can bring in coolers with your own food and beverages, except for alcohol, which you have to buy there. In addition to music and food, there are booths where you can buy t-shirts, posters, CDs and other souvenirs. The various local blues clubs usually have booths too, where you can pick up their show schedules if you are ready to keep going after the official festival wraps each night.

Another pleasure of the festival is its location in Grant Park, which is located between downtown Chicago to the west and Lake Michigan to the east. It is one of Chicago’s gems, famous for Buckingham Fountain, which many people know from the opening credits of the TV show “Married, with Children.” It is a large, formally-arranged park based on geometric shapes. You enter it from downtown over a series of wide bridges across artfully hidden railroad tracks. There are lawns, trees, flower beds and monuments, including a 1908 statue of Abraham Lincoln by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The paved path along the lakefront, used by runners, walkers, bikers and rollerbladers, can be followed for about seven miles in either direction, leading to Lincoln Park on the north side and Jackson Park on the south. To the east is a Lake Michigan harbor full of sailboats.

Just south of Grant Park is the Museum Campus, which consists of the Field Museum of Natural History, Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium. South of that is Soldier Field, where the Bears play, and beyond that is the McCormick Place convention center. If you follow the lakefront path to or past these institutions, to your left will be another picturesque harbor, this one for motor boats, including yachts. After McCormick place you have park space again, including ball fields, picnic areas and a skate park. Several miles further south along the same path (which parallels Lake Shore Drive) is the Museum of Science and Industry.

Another of Chicago’s major museums is on the western edge of Grant Park, immediately adjacent to the festival grounds. It is the Art Institute of Chicago, home to such iconic paintings as Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” and Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.”

Another pleasure of the Blues Festival is the city skyline itself. Chicago is the birthplace of the modern skyscraper, the greatest showcase of 20^th century architecture, and still an urban architecture trendsetter. Grant Park is one of the best places to view the downtown skyline and as you enjoy the festival, you can watch the light change on the spectacular Michigan Avenue street wall.

Just north of the festival grounds is the new Millennium Park, with its Frank Gehry band shell and other cutting-edge public art.

If you are a blues fan and want to get out of the festival area, a trip over to Maxwell Street may be in order. Maxwell Street is significant to blues history because this was usually the first stop for new arrivals from the Mississippi Delta. It was a neighborhood of tenement apartments, with shops on the ground floor, and depending on the era the vast street market was either a daily or weekly occurrence. Blues musicians, newly arrived and veterans alike, played in the market for tips. Because Maxwell Street was where new arrivals could hear the “city men” perform, and vice versa, a new style that became known as Chicago Blues was synthesized there.

If you visit the old Maxwell Street neighborhood you will have to use your imagination because most of it has been destroyed (or, if you prefer, “redeveloped”) by the University of Illinois at Chicago. The market still operates nearby on Canal Street, every Sunday morning through early afternoon. One highlight of the current market is the wide variety of Latin American street food available there. All in all, it is a lively urban experience, and especially if you are an early riser it is fun to visit it before the day’s festival program begins. To check it out, head south from the festival grounds to Roosevelt Road, then go west to Canal. It’s a long walk or an easy drive/bus/cab ride.

In the old neighborhood a bit further west, at Halsted and Maxwell Street, a few of the original buildings remain, along with the fronts of others that have been tacked onto new structures. While façades are a paltry kind of historic preservation, they are better than nothing. If you cut through the campus, where Maxwell Street once continued west, you can see the old Maxwell Street police station, a historic site in its own right, made famous as Hill Street Station on the old “Hill Street Blues” TV show.

Another typical stop for blues pilgrims is the Blues Heaven Foundation, which occupies the building that once housed Chess Records, at 2120 S. Michigan Avenue, about two miles south of the festival grounds. The Blues Heaven Foundation was established by Willie Dixon, who was the principal producer, songwriter and talent scout for Chess. The great classic blues and early rock n roll recordings of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, Etta James and Buddy Guy were all made there between 1957 and 1967.

Key parts of the building have been restored to the way they looked in the Chess era. The rest is used by the Foundation for its headquarters. Tours are available and during Blues Festival there is always something special happening.

Chicago’s many blues nightclubs operate seven days a week all year, they all have special acts booked during the festival, and where do you think the featured festival artists go after their shows? Some of the clubs include Buddy Guy’s Legends (on Wabash, behind the Hilton), Blue Chicago (two clubs, both on North Clark Street), B.L.U.E.S., Kingston Mines (those last two right across the street from each other on North Halsted), and Rosa’s Blues Lounge (my personal favorite, on Armitage just west of Kimball). This is just a partial list and many non-blues venues will program blues during the festival.

The week of the Chicago Blues Festival is a great time to enjoy this fun and exciting city. It is usually some of the best weather of the year, always some of the best entertainment, and when the music is over a great city is right there in front of you, waiting to be discovered.

Charles K. Cowdery is author of BOURBON, STRAIGHT: The Uncut and Unfiltered Story of American Whiskey, which covers American whiskey from its colonial origins right up to the present day. Buy the book. Learn the story.