Jimmie Lee Robinson, aka “Lonesome Lee” and “The Lonely Traveller”
1931 – 2002
Musician
Jimmie Lee Robinson, also known as “Lonesome Lee” and “The Lonely Traveller”, was an iconic Chicago blues musician who played his acoustic guitar on Maxwell Street religiously. He was celebrated for his 1950s and 1960s session work and a 1990s comeback marked by his 81-day hunger strike protesting the demolition of the historic Maxwell Street Market by the University of Illinois at Chicago. With the Maxwell Street Foundation’s second National Register of Historic Places nomination application for a Maxwell Street Historic District in 2000, Jimmie Lee provided “public testimony” by performing what became his famous “Maxwell Street Tear Down Blues” at the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council (IHSAC) hearing. “It certainly meant a lot to us. He was really one of those stalwarts, one of those people who was always there,” said Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition former President Chuck Cowdery. “He could speak to all the issues: If we said people were playing blues on the street in the 1940s, Jimmie Lee could tell you their names and which corners they preferred.” Born and raised near Maxwell Street, Mr. Robinson was 11 when he bought his first guitar and by the 1940s, he was performing in the open-air market on Maxwell Street.