Comments (2) Best Blues Club - 2008
Mr. Gino's
Along with the blues themselves, the old-fashioned juke joints that acted as hothouses incubating the music have been on the endangered species list for a while now, but they're not quite gone completely. Located in the Foster Place subdivision about as far south as you can get and still be inside the Loop, the ramshackle converted icehouse is one of the last bastions, if not the last, of real Houston blues of the '40s-'60s Duke-Peacock vintage left in the city. Opened by Louisiana native Eugene Chevis in 1973, in its current location for about half the intervening years, and prominently featured in Dr. Roger Woods's 2003 local blues opus Down in Houston, Mr. Gino's still attracts a decent crowd of curious interlopers and neighborhood regulars, particularly for the Sunday-evening jam sessions headed up by Duke-Peacock veteran I.J. Gosey, where Chevis and staff usually have a batch of beef stew or gumbo steeping so the beer and setups (it's BYOB) go down smooth.
