The place evokes the spirit of the South Side Chi-Town joints that Corritore haunted during his youth, blowing his mouth harp alongside legends like Honeyboy Edwards and Big Leon Brooks. Corritore has also provided a home for Arizona's blues and R&B practitioners - ranging from Windy City-style trio The Rocket 88s to Texas transplant Big Pete Pearson - as well plenty of Americana, country, rockabilly, and other roots-oriented bands. A number of renowned artists have also recorded live at the Rhythm Room, including the Fabulous Thunderbirds' Kim Wilson and the late Robert Lockwood (stepson of the famed Robert Johnson). It's become a hallowed ground of sorts, having featured gigs by such giants as Pinetop Perkins, Leon Redbone, and Jimmy Rogers. Meanwhile, Corritore has also devoted the past 18 years to making his CenPho joint the Rhythm Room the preeminent spot for blues and roots music. Since 1984, he's served as Phoenix's reigning blues guru, broadcasting choice cuts from his ample album collection and sharing an infectious fervor for the American-born art form every Sunday during his weekly KJZZ 91.5 FM program, Those Lowdown Blues. He's been plenty busy in that time, using his lifetime love of the blues to help the Valley get hip to the down-home genre personified by B.B. Alwun's a three-decades-old mainstay among those of us who need an alternative art fix.Д«ob Corritore arrived in Phoenix in 1981, figuring he'd be here only for a year, at most.ДЄlmost three decades after the fact, the Chicago-born harmonica player is still around, and local blues connoisseurs are grateful he decided to stay put. Alwun's annual Exotic Art Show showcases uncensored and frankly naughty works, and its bar and cafe make this a jumping joint for any kind of off-hours party. Its central floor houses an art gallery its basement is home to a multi-media theater, and its rambling backyard gardens and patio are the settings for poetry slams, music concerts, and exhibits by local visual and performance artists. Following its funky restoration, Alwun House quickly became the first gallery in downtown Phoenix, and has stayed on as a maverick torchbearer for the downtown arts community. Built in 1912 by shop owner John Sedler, Alwun originally rested on five acres on the northeast corner of 12th Street and Roosevelt, overlooking alfalfa fields south of Roosevelt, before there were even sidewalks out that way.

The name is phonetic for 'all one,' as in 'we're all in this together,' a principle that Alwun House founders Kim Moody and Dana Johnson have clung to since purchasing the old, dilapidated property and commencing their rehabilitation on the house and property in 1971. The first independent non-profit art space, Alwun set the current trend of galleries' advocating for artists with its Alwun House Foundation, the first local arts organization to address the significance of historical buildings.

Folks looking for a funky, big-city art scene had only Alwun, downtown's first gallery, to rely on for 'something different,' art-wise. Before there was a First Friday or a Roosevelt Row, the best - and for a while, the only - place to find alternative contemporary art was Alwun House.

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