Chicago's Checkerboard Lounge returns

CHICAGO, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- The Checkerboard Lounge, a fabled Chicago blues club, is ready to reopen in the Hyde Park neighborhood thanks to help from the University of Chicago.

The city closed the celebrated South Side club where blues legends Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon performed regularly in 2003 for code violations, so owner L.C. Thurman moved his New Checkerboard Lounge for Blues 'n' Jazz to the upscale University of Chicago neighborhood, where he told the Chicago Tribune most of his customers are from anyway.

The new jazz and blues venue will seat around 145 people and is scheduled to open Nov. 17 with bluesman Vance Kelly onstage.