Simply the blues, preserved for you

Joe Kimble is a law professor best known for sticking up for plain language and also for his sprawling collection of blues art and memorabilia.

The Cooley Law School emeritus is putting his blues and rock collection on display again on a Honolulu Blue-free day (the Detroit Lions are off for Sunday, Sept. 20, thanks to a Thursday game).

Kimble’s collection ranges from early pioneers to Chuck Berry, from the ‘Stones to Springsteen and includes posters and paintings behind museum glass. There’s also a 7.5-foot stone guitar, an S-shaped piece that needs a bit more than a shoulder strap.

Kimble grew up in Linden, a small town about 50 miles from Flint.

“Growing up in the ‘50s, rock and roll just hit me like a truck,” he said.

At 13, his parents took him to a Rock ‘n’ Roll Caravan show in Flint. The headliners were Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly and the Crickets. The voodoo bluesman Screamin’ Jay Hawkins emerged from a coffin to start the show. He was hooked for life. “I just loved it, right up through the Beatles, the Stones, Joe Cocker, the Who and all the rest,” Kimble told City Pulse, for a story in 2017, the same year Berry died.