Jim Schwall born 12 November 1922

Jim & Corky

Jim Schwall was born in Evanston, Illinois. A singer-songwriter, he played guitar, as well as mandolin, bass guitar, accordion, and other instruments. He studied music at Roosevelt University. There he met Corky Siegel, and became interested in electric blues music. Schwall and Siegel formed a blues duo in 1964, playing at Chicago bars and clubs. They performed regularly at Pepper's Lounge and at Big John's, where well known, established blues musicians such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Willie Dixon would often sit in. The duo expanded to a quartet and became the Siegel-Schwall Band. Schwall's amplified Gibson B-25 acoustic guitar was a distinctive component of the band's sound. 

The Siegel-Schwall Band became quite popular, and by 1967 were touring nationally, performing at large venues like the Fillmore West and sharing the bill with well-known rock bands. They would go on to take over the Paul Butterfield Blues Band's residency at Big John's on the north side of Chicago. Between 1966 and 1974, they released at least ten albums. Most notable though, was Three Pieces For Blues Band And Symphony Orchestra, the band's unique collaboration with Seiji Ozawa of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. First performed(opens in new tab) in 1968, it demonstrated the full spectrum of Schwall's vision as a guitarist and – upon its release on record in 1973 – became one of the band's most successful albums. 

Billboard magazine once referred to the band as “one of the best acts in America” and the Boston Globe called Schwall “undoubtedly the best electric guitarist in the country.” It came as a surprise to many when the Siegel-Schwall Band broke up in 1974 after releasing five more albums with RCA's Wooden Nickel imprint. Schwall would continue to live on a Wisconsin farm for a time with a wife and a dog; in Davenport, Iowa, working in shipping at a gas station supply distributorship; and for a lengthy time in Madison, Wisconsin. 

It wasn’t until 1987 that Scwall and Siegel were reunited. They played occasional live dates and released two albums of new material over the following decade. Schwall was also the leader of his own blues-rock band, the Jim Schwall Band. This band formed in the mid-1970s, and versions continued playing live on an intermittent basis into the 2000's. 

Schwall was also involved in numerous other musical projects. He played guitar and accordion in the band So Dang Yang, and was the bassist for the Cajun Strangers. He hosted a weekly radio folk programme on WORT in Madison from 1994 to 2015.He earned a Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.) degree in Music Composition from the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Music in 1994, submitting his composition Triptych: Dance Music in Three Acts for Eleven Players in partial fulfillment for the requirements for the degree. He taught music at the college level. As a composer, he specialized in ballet, opera, and other music for the stage. 

Schwall was also a professional photographer, and did different types of photography. In his later years he worked at creating art prints that combined human figures and natural landscapes. He sometimes used 19th-century photographic techniques such as kallitype, cyanotype, and gum printing, non-silver techniques that predate the gelatin silver process. Schwall was also active in progressive political causes. In 2002 he ran for mayor of Madison, Wisconsin. 

Schwall released three solo albums beginning in 2007, including 2014's Bar Time Lovers for the Conundrum InterArts label. He gave live performances at various Madison-area taverns and coffeehouses. Eventually he retired and after settling in Tucson, he took to writing. At the urging of friends, he wrote a memoir titled "My So-called Career(s)" and was working on a novel tentatively titled "Organ Pipe Incident." 

(Edited from Wikipedia, Guitar World & Chicago Tribune)