SIT A SPELL Bettye LaVette’s exhausting performance at 2006’s Blues Fest remains a highlight.

Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

The Chicago Blues Festival is a summertime tradition, but this free fest’s bookings have become as exciting as unflavored oatmeal. There have been occasional bright moments, such as L.A. sax player Big Jay McNeely (who last year made his Petrillo Bandshell debut the same way he opens shows everywhere else—by entering through the audience). But the worthwhile surprises mingle with too many ubiquitous local acts that can be seen in town almost any night of the week. The fest isn’t the Big Event it once was—the audience is getting older and sparser, and even the daily papers don’t cover it in detail anymore.

Strangely, the fest’s lesser-known cousin, Winter Delights, has upstaged the Blues Fest lineups. Though Winter Delights didn’t happen this year, the previous years have provided stellar moments, like Howard Tate and Bettye LaVette at the Schubert Theatre (2004), and Latimore, Bobby Rush, Theodis Ealey and other jook-joint superstars at the Arie Crown Theater (2006). (A similar lineup took the Arie Crown stage as part of the Chi-Town Blues Festival last month.) Even when these winter events have showcased the usual suspects, the musicians seemed to be at their most focused (including last year’s Albert King tribute at the Cadillac Palace, where a cavalcade of Halsted Street all-stars shared the bill with Sir Mack Rice from Detroit). Don’t get us wrong, we respect Buddy and Koko, too, but Blues Fest needs to embrace the spirit of those hot winter fests.