Ginni Clemmens

Chicago folk and blues singer Ginni Clemmens was born in the city's Evergreen Park area and raised in the south suburbs. The child of a big band musician, she sang in her school choir and learned guitar but pursued a calling in nursing instead of music, working for five years in a California facility for mentally handicapped children. In time, Clemmens dusted off her guitar and began performing as a means of entertaining her young patients, eventually returning to Chicago to launch a professional music career; by day, she tenured at a nursing home, but at night, she was a fixt...