| August 27th, 2005 06:22 PM |
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| Hannalee |
Chess still making the right moves
Marshall Chess is selling the sound of the blues to a whole new generation, reports John Clarke
"Young black kids today should be walking around with Muddy Waters T-shirts. How many people have affected the sound of modern music as much as he did?” Marshall Chess leans back from the table and smiles. At the age of 63, he is still energised by the music of his youth, all of which appeared on the record label that bears his name.
“The first time I met Muddy Waters,” he says, “I was about eight. A big black Cadillac drew up and this guy got out and said: ‘I’m Muddy Waters. Is your daddy home?’ ”
It was to be the start of a beautiful friendship — Waters, the king of Chicago blues, and Chess, the son of the man whose label had put Waters and electric blues on the musical map. Waters would go on to become the most revered bluesman of the postwar era, while Chess would be responsible for Electric Mud, the 1968 LP that sold Waters to a whole new generation. The record was to prove the swansong for the Chess label, which was sold to the American giant MCA the following year. Now, though, thanks to a continuing programme of re-releases, many of the classic Chess recordings are available on CD.
The legend began in the late 1940s, when the Chicago bar-owners Leonard (Marshall’s father) and Phil Chess bought into a local record label called Aristocrat. They soon took control of it, and in 1950 renamed it Chess Records. The label became most famous during its early years for its amazing roster of blues artists, including Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter, artists from America’s Deep South who brought their own brand of electrified Delta blues to Chicago. As the soul era loomed, Chess prospered with a new set of soul stars. The label soon became the home of some superb “symphonic soul” records, including Mitty Collier’s I Had a Talk with My Man.
Ironically, as Chess became a premier soul label, the white rock world was waking up to the label’s rich blues heritage. The Rolling Stones made a pilgrimage to the Chess studios in 1964. Keith Richards claims that he entered the studio and saw a rumpled-looking black man in overalls shuffling through the studio. This, the story goes, was Waters.
“It’s not true,” says Marshall flatly. “Muddy Waters was always a sharp dresser, so Keith’s image of him in overalls is totally bull****.”
As the 1960s wore on, musical tastes changed, and Chess attempted to keep the label ahead of the game, founding Chess Concept records in 1967, along with a new group called Rotary Connection. The group’s first album stayed in the charts for 34 weeks. A year later, Chess hired several of the same men that he had used for the Rotary Connection sessions to back Waters on new arrangements of his old songs. The critics hated the album, Electric Mud, and a similar one he did with Howlin’ Wolf. But over the years both records have gained an increasing number of fans. “Chuck D of Public Enemy told me that Electric Mud was a fav- ourite album of his,” says Chess.
But it was a time of changing tastes and increasing black awareness. “It was not an easy time to be white and running a black business,” says Chess, and when the company was sold he was devastated. “I was blown away. It was like I’d spent all my life training for an Olympic event and all of a sudden the Olympics were cancelled.” Chess went on to run the Rolling Stones’ record label, but maintained his role as keeper of the Chess flame. A job he is still performing with aplomb more than a quarter of a century later.
Chuck Berry’s After School Session and St Louis to Liverpool, and Bo Diddley’s Is a Gunslinger are re-released by Chess on Monday
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