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Spinning Blues into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records |
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Monday, 06 February 2006 05:50 |
Spinning Blues into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records
Nadine Cohodas
St. Martin's Press
By John Sinclair
The Chess Records story is a fascinating tale of two first-generation Polish-American Jews who built a multi-media empire in Chicago's South Side ghetto after World War II by servicing the musical needs of their African-American neighbors and then the entire world by recording and marketing blues, jazz, rhythm & blues, rock & roll, gospel and soul music for more than two decades.
Spinning Blues into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records by Nadine Cohodas is the first full-length investigation into the life and times of Leonard and Phil Chess and their remarkable record company, one of the most important cultural forces in American life during a period of turbulent social and cultural change.
Founded in 1947 as Aristocrat Records and renamed when the Chess brothers bought out their partners in 1950, the tiny operation first featured the swinging saxophonists and blues shouters who entertained their patrons at the Chess-owned Mocamba Lounge. But the brothers were soon moved to capture the deep blues sound of Mississippi Delta expatriates like Robert Nighthawk, Sunnyland Slim, and their first bona fide star, Muddy Waters.
During the first half of the 50s, Chess established itself as an urban blues powerhouse, following Muddy Waters early hits with a stunning array of now-classic recordings by Little Walter, Howlin Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Rogers, Elmore James, Eddie Boyd, Willie Mabon, Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) and a host of Chicago-based bluesmen who set the standard for what blues would sound like for the next 50 years.
Working closely with bassist, composer and producer Willie Dixon, the musical brains behind the Chess operation, the Chess brothers began to branch out into rhythm & blues, gospel and jazz. They recorded a series of vocal group masterworks by the Moonglows, the Flamingos and other teen sensations and sold millions of copies of the sermons of Rev. C.L. Franklin.
Chess and its subsidiary, Checker Records, ushered in the rock &roll era in 1955 with smash hits by Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, and the Argo imprint was created to market jazz LPs by Gene Ammons, James Moody, Sonny Stitt, and the company's two best-selling album artists, pianists Ramsey Lewis and Ahmad Jamal.
New Orleans and Louisiana were well represented on Chess, Checker and Argo by artists like Paul Gayten, Eddie Bo, Clarence Frogman Henry, Clifton Chenier, Bobby Charles ( Later Alligator ), Dale Hawkins ( Suzie-Q ), Charles Hungry Williams and others. Mardi Gras Mambo by the Hawketts and Jockamo by Sugar Boy Crawford & the Cane Cutters were both Chess releases still heard in the Crescent City today.
The golden age of Chess Records as a dominant power in the record industry and the shaping of modern culture came to a close in 1969, when the brothers sold their recording operation to GRT Records in order to concentrate on their radio and television interests. Leonard passed away shortly after the sale was concluded, and the course of popular music veered sharply to the right with the institution of the rock era.
But Chess ruled during its golden years, establishing the electrified sound of the Chicago blues as the most influential musical force in the second half of the 20th century. The blue-and-white-label Chess 78s and 45s by Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Chuck Berry and the Moonglows led a whole generation of American youth to discover the wonders of rhythm and the emotional depths of the blues and lent them entry into a world where the possibility of feeling and the triumph of the imagination were what made life worth while.
By the turn of the 60s, the impact of the Chess recordings had spread across the Atlantic Ocean to inspire legions of British teenagers in like measure. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals and scores of English bands ate up the Chess legacy and strove to make a music and life of their own in its image.
But it all started in a little liquor store on the South Side of Chicago, the Chess brothers first business venture, and Nadine Cohodas carefully traces the development of the Chess operation from beginning to end. Her detailed portraits of the Mocamba Lounge, where the brothers entered the music business, and the Chess-owned radio station, WVON ( Voice of the Negro ), add a new dimension to the Chess saga.
There's little of the sensational to be found in Spinning Blues into Gold, just a straight-forward, meticulously informed account of the growth and impact of a little independent record company in the Midwest that flowered beyond all expectation into a potent cultural force that helped change the shape of modern life and created a musical legacy that will endure as long as humans have ears.
New Orleans
July 24, 2000
(c) 2000, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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