What was chess records

Eliminating singles from among hundreds of worthy candidates from the entire Chess roster is bound to draw fire from fans. So, in that spirit of breadth, here are the 50 best Chess Records singles — many famous, some not so famous — for you to discuss and debate, but mainly to hear and consider.

Chess agreed and Muddy reprised these two songs that he had recorded seven years earlier in his cabin for the Library Of Congress. Muddy again played the Delta blues , echoing his plaintive vocals, but on electric slide guitar with an urban rhythm.

The blend of country and city on both tracks connected with Chicago listeners. The disc sold out its initial pressing in two days, becoming the first hit, albeit locally, for both Muddy and the label that would become Chess Records. It was also the first Chess-owned record to include bass player Willie Dixon , the ubiquitous Chess musician, songwriter, arranger, and producer.

The listening public sure embraced it. DJs and jukebox listeners eventually flipped it and the B-side became even more popular. The McGuire Sisters immediately covered it, selling a million copies of their version. But Chess reissued it annually around Mardi Gras time and it grew into a perennial favorite.

The Hawketts never made another record, but The Neville Brothers have never stopped. Diddley recycled it on subsequent hits, all with that watery tremolo guitar sound, and the beat lived on, adopted and adapted by Buddy Holly , Johnny Otis, The Rolling Stones , The Who , Bruce Springsteen , and countless others.

One chord never sounded so good. By then, Chuck, too, had become a cultural hero. Neither of them could have imagined that a dozen years later five lads in London would like that record enough to name a band after it. That is the paradox of the Chess story. But their cheaply recorded, bread-and-butter discs of local street musicians and bar bands still sound as fresh today as they did 60 years ago.

By failing to be timely, they succeeded in being timeless. They were also lucky, and unusually loyal to their artists. Leonard Chess and Waters had a particularly close relationship, and it served both of them well.

When Waters finally persuaded Chess to record his full band, he incidentally brought the label its biggest blues hit-maker: Little Walter was barely out of his teens, and reshaped the course of blues harmonica by amplifying his instrument and playing it like a jazz saxophone. There were some startling one-offs as well: In , a teenage Ike Turner recorded a romping boogie-woogie called Rocket 88 at Sun Studios in Memphis, soon to be the birthplace of rockabilly — but Sam Phillips had not yet started the record label that would spawn Elvis Presley, so the disc appeared on Chess.

It was because Mick Jagger had a couple of Chess LPs under his arm that he was approached by an erstwhile schoolmate named Keith Richards. Once again, that fame is in a large part due to decisions that at the time were simply efforts to wring a few more dollars out of a marginal style.

By , down-home blues singles were no longer hitting, but the Chess brothers had made pretty good money with their first LP, the soundtrack album for a forgettable teen movie, Rock, Rock, Rock. The anthologies did not sell particularly well, but it was all clear profit, so over the next few years Chess recycled older tracks by Wolf, Williamson and John Lee Hooker as well. Their core audience was still buying singles, but some middle-class jazz and folk fans were beginning to get interested in blues and picked up the albums.

As a result, when the Newport Jazz Festival put on a special afternoon of blues in , it included a folkloric segment, a jazz segment, and a fiery electric set by Waters and his band. American listeners thought of Waters and Berry as coming from different generations and styles, and the fact that both were on the same record label was irrelevant. In the UK, there was far less African American music to choose from, so the Chess albums were coveted keys to a mysterious, faraway world.

A bright year-old named Mick Jagger ordered them directly from Chicago, and it was because he had a couple under his arm that he was approached by an erstwhile schoolmate named Keith Richards.

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that Chess Records owes its legendary status to that chance meeting on a Dartford train platform.

Its British acolytes provided it with a unique identity, and today we associate Chess with the handful of brilliant artists whose work was adopted and recycled by the Rolling Stones and their peers. Founded in , Chess Records captured a vibrant new style of American music with roots in the American South that influenced and inspired rock and roll pioneers from Chuck Berry to the Rolling Stones.

It has become synonymous with American rhythm and blues. In the brothers formed the Aristocrat Record Corporation, which reorganized in when they left the nightclub business to concentrate on making records as the Chess Recording Company.

They added a subsidiary blues label, Checker, in By the company had consolidated operations in a move to a two-story office complex at Michigan Avenue. Leonard Chess's son, Marshall, took command in as president of the company, which was sold to GRT later that year.