Chess Records is one of my favorite labels for authentic blues. On this episode you'll hear many great Chess cuts plus snippets of Marshall Chess reciting some great Chess moments and stories. Enjoy!
Episode 364, 9 January 2013
1 Little Walter - Blues With A Feeling
2 Sugar Boy Crawford - Jock-A-Mo
3 Muddy Waters - Mad Love (I Want You To Love Me)
4 Little Walter - You're So Fine
5 Jimmy Binkley - Wine Wine Wine
6 Jimmy Rogers - Chicago Bound
7 Big Ed & His Combo (Eddie Burns) - Biscuit Baking Woman
8 Leon D Tarver & His Chordones - I'm A Young Rooster
9 Muddy Waters - Just Make Love To Me (I Just Want)
10 Jimmy Rogers - Sloppy Drunk
11 Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
12 Bo Diddley - Diddley Daddy
13 Clarence Frogman Henry - Ain't Got No Home
14 Bobby Charles - See You Later Alligator
15 Howlin Wolf - Howlin' For My Darlin'
16 Willie Dixon - 29 Ways
Downloadd link for this episode: 364
Brothers
Leonard and Phil Chess were responsible for creating the preeminent blues label of the fifties and sixties. Polish immigrants who settled in Chicago, the brothers formed Aristocrat Records in 1947 before launching their eponymous label two years later. They assembled an unparalleled roster of blues, R&B and rock and roll artists, including
Chuck Berry,
Bo Diddley,
Willie Dixon,
Etta James,
Muddy Waters and
Howlin' Wolf. While Phil focused on jazz, Leonard honed in on roots music, making Chess the greatest repository of blues music by the late Fifties. It was under Leonard's tutelage that Muddy Waters’ electric blues fomented a revolution that led directly to rock and roll in the person of Chuck Berry.
The reach of the label's music extended far across the Atlantic, where a band of impressionable twentysomethings billing themselves as the
Rolling Stones sought to emulate the hard-driving R&B sounds they heard on songs like Waters' "I Can't Be Satisfied," Big Bill Broonzy's "Tell Me Baby" and Berry's "Around and Around" — all songs the group covered when Leonard's son Marshall Chess allowed the band to record at the label's 2120 South Michigan Avenue studio in 1964. More trips to Chess followed, including sessions in 1965 that would lead to
"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."
After working alongside his father Leonard and uncle Phil for more than 16 years, Marshall eventually came to be president of the family's namesake imprint in 1969, while continuing to produce albums, including Muddy Waters' Electric Mud (1969) and Howlin' Wolf's The Howlin' Wolf Album (1969) — both released on Marshall's Cadet Concept label, a division of Chess. Shortly after his father passed away, Marshall left Chess in 1970, and was hired as the Rolling Stones' manager and president of Rolling Stones Records, which was created after the group's Decca contract expired.
