Boogie-woogie pianist Erwin Helfer has seen a lot of Chicago years

CHICAGO — Twenty years ago, across the Lincoln Park street where Erwin Helfer has lived since 1968, new neighbors moved in and installed a grand piano in their front window — and rarely played it. “A lot of rich people buy grand pianos and use them as furniture,” says the 85-year-old jazz and blues musician who has taught lessons on his upright living-room piano for decades.

Helfer, who grew up in Glencoe and attended New Trier High School, spent his early days on North Magnolia Avenue, near DePaul University. To find the sources of the boogie-woogie music he loved, he lived in New Orleans for a while, then in Chicago, he met influential pianists like Little Brother Montgomery, Cripple Clarence Lofton and Detroit Junior at South Side clubs and collaborated with