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Home to the blues...and Tony Mangiullo planned it that way.

Tuesday Jun 07, 2005.     By Jacob Knabb

Music Feed

Tony Mangiullo has a few good reasons for his excitement about Rosa's Lounge, the venerable blues club he co-owns with his mother. But like most bluesmen, in order to explain them, he must start at the beginning.

Mangiullo met Junior Wells in Italy when he was 19-years old, and Junior gave the young blues aficionado his address and phone number in Chicago. "Junior said, 'Come to Chicago and I'll be responsible for you.' It was a turning point for me, because Junior was exactly what I imagined a bluesman to be."

Mangiullo took Junior up on his word, and a year later got off the bus to knock on Junior's door. No one was home, so he went to the other address, a bar called Teresa's, where Junior had insisted he could always be found. When Mangiullo entered the bar, he was blown away by the energy between the crowd and the performers. "I absolutely decided at that moment to stay in America for as long as I could. And for the single reason that that night at Teresa's was the first time I ever got a single compliment for playing the drums."

Everything at Teresa's was an expression of the crowd. "They were used to non-black people coming there, and everyone knew if you were in the crowd you came for the blues and you loved the music. I never forgot that."

Several years later, while he was working as a cook in a pizza joint, playing drums two or three days a week, Mangiullo's mother, singularly known to all as Mama Rosa, came to fetch him back to Italy. But instead of packing his bags, he convinced her to stay and try a business. "We had a fruit stand in Italy, and she owned that, so she said we can stay, but I want to open a business. We decided on a bar, and she found this place on Armitage, but I told her I would only agree if it had music. We bought it in the summer of '84, and it opened that September."

Rosa's Lounge is located in Humboldt Park, at 3420 W. Armitage. While the location doesn't provide a lot of foot traffic, it taught Mangiullo and Mama Rosa to become good at what they were doing. Mangiullo quickly attracted the attention of area musicians who were the "only people I knew," and Rosa's Lounge gained almost instant respect for its live shows. People of all ages and races began flocking to what was predominantly a Puerto Rican neighborhood to experience authentic blues.

"I always remembered Teresa's and that's what I wanted for Mama Rosa's. If you come to our bar, you will see me and Mama Rosa working, you will hear unusual music because I like to take chances and people will know that you are here because you love the blues.

With his Italian background, Mangiullo recognizes that he is an outsider to the traditional blues musician. Being Italian forced him to focus his attention on the music. "In Italy in the early '70s there was no blues. We had to travel miles and miles to find a single record. But we recognized the sense of rebellion in the music, and it struck us, because of the very kinds of changes happening in traditional Italian culture at the time. Southern Italians are considered "black," and many of the stereotypes for African-Americans are also there. I just felt like I understood the music, even if I didn't speak English."

And so he has become devoted to promoting riskier acts. While bars like Blue Chicago have "found a formula to fit their needs, based on keeping the blues in a specific form, it would be very stupid for me to adopt this attitude. I'm from Italy." Musicians from Switzerland and Japan, blues players taking risks to forge new sounds, performers who can't always speak the language but have a passion for the blues, hold down the stage at Rosa's Lounge most nights.

Mangiullo is proud of the positive attention he has brought to Humboldt Park. Each time an article is written about his bar, it brings the neighborhood positive attention, which can be hard to come by with a media focused on violence and crime. "One tool we have is action. We are an Italian family who has come to America to pursue a dream of freedom and a passion for the blues. I have action. I play the drums, and I support people who have the same kind of passion for the music. No bluesman is born a legend, just as a Christian isn't good immediately. It takes passion and work to influence people. I was very lucky when I met Junior Wells and he supported me. I will never forget that, because it made all the difference for me. And that is my goal as well, to keep the blues alive, and to share my passion with others."

Mama Rosa's Lounge opens at 8 p.m. Music starts at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 10 p.m. Saturday. Closes at 2 a.m., 3 a.m. on Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday. Tickets are available on the Web site, or the night of the show.