Chess Moves

By Harvey Kubernik

In 2008 the legacy of the famed Chess Records has not been lost on current silver screen movie executives. Two feature films were produced in 2008 and one, Cadillac Records, just released that focus on the remarkable and still influential Chess label distributed by Universal Music Enterprises. 

Cadillac Records was theatrically released last December 5th in the U.S. via Sony TriStar Pictures, produced by Sofia Sondervan and Andy Lack, the former chairman of Sony/BMG music. The other Chess-themed film, Who Do You Love is still seeking distribution. Both flicks were screened simultaneously at the recent 2008 Toronto Film Festival. 

Marshall Chess, the son of Leonard and nephew of Phil Chess, the dynamic duo who founded the seminal Chicago-based blues label, is serving as Executive Producer of the Steve Jordan produced soundtrack to the movie Cadillac Records. The movie stars Oscar-winner (The Pianist) Adrian Brody based on Leonard Chess, Jeffrey Wright “portraying” Muddy Waters, and Beyonce modeling herself from Etta James, and Mos Def depicting Chuck Berry. Darnell Martin is the director. 

Marshall is happy to see two movies dramatizing his colorful family history but ambivalent about the celluloid results. And he’s miffed that Cadillac Records sliced Phil Chess, the co-founder of the company, from being portrayed in the film. Welcome to Hollywood…

These days music business veteran Marshall Chess is now a DJ on the subscription radio waves, hosting a weekly blues music program exclusively on SIRIUS Satellite Radio.  The Chess Records Hour debuted in November 2006, and airs each Sunday at 12 pm ET, with a repeat broadcast on Tuesday at 5 pm ET, on commercial-free channel 74, SIRIUS Blues. It is linked globally and heard in England on BBC programming. 

One of the last true surviving breed of “record men,” an active participant in the new satellite radio world in 2008, Chess also remains a music publisher, overseeing the Arc Music Group, which administers and represents catalogues of some of the greatest classic rock and roll, R & B, gospel, big band, jazz and surf music, including much of the timeless material from the Chess and Vee-Jay records labels.  Songwriters in these catalogues are Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker, Memphis Slim, Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton.          

Marshall Chess, born in Chicago, IL. on March 13, 1942, and was raised during the heyday of the independent record business. Leonard Chess had a piece of a record company named Aristocrat Records in 1947, and later in 1950 he brought his brother Phil into the fold and the brothers assumed sole ownership of the company and renamed it Chess Records.

Marshall “started” in the family business at age 7 initially accompanying his father Leonard on radio station visits. For sixteen years Marshall worked with his dad and his uncle Phil, doing everything from pressing records, applying shrink wrap and loading trucks to producing over 100 Chess Records projects, eventually heading up the label as President after the GRT acquisition in 1969. Over years the monumental Chess catalog has had various homes, including a 1975 sale to All Platinum Records, and eventually a couple of decades ago the Chess master tapes were purchased by MCA Records, now Universal Music Group. The UMG label for many years has re-released and issued top-notch Chess Records packages, compilations and boxed sets continually manufacturing the product configurations for radio, retail and consumers.

The sound of Chess Records showcased blues, rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, soul and jazz. The recording artists on the historic label and the related imprints changed the world, not just the radio dial and 45RPM and LP collections all through the 1950s and ‘60s. Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Walter, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Rogers, and Sonny Boy Williamson II. Maurice White and Charles Stepney also emerged from the label that the also signed the Four Tops, Bobby Charles and Dale Hawkins. Chess also unleashed several soul music artists that cosmically delivered: Etta James, The Dells, Billy Stewart, Fontella Bass, Minnie Ripperton, and blues artist Little Milton.

From New York, Marshall Chess, in a 2007 “Long Distance Call” interview, explained to me his roles as a Sirius Satellite Radio blues DJ and then in 2008 chatted about guiding Arc Music, 2008’s Chess Moves, while reflecting on his own 50-year career in the record business and radio world, spiked with tales and insights into the Chess family and fabled Chess artists.    

Q: Let’s talk radio. In the 1950s there was just AM radio. Then in the mid ‘60s the birth of FM radio and wider play lists, originated by Dave Diamond in Los Angeles and Tom Donahue in San Francisco. And you constantly checked out the AM stations in Chicago. Who did you dig in your neighborhood?
A: The way we listened to radio my whole life, when I was listening to radio every day was pushing a button every thirty seconds to see if they were playing one of your records. I was already on the retail side in the 1950s. My dad used to drive me crazy with those car radio buttons. Remember? You could never hear a song all the way through. However, FM radio and the free form formats, and Donohue’s vision was the spice in the cake. You get it? So FM radio was a spice, but subscription radio is a while new thing and it’s still evolving. I never thought people would pay for radio to hear it. Or for cable TV. Or pay for water. We didn’t think that. I feel some camaraderie in satellite radio. I like the Sirius Reggae show. I like Dance hall reggae music.   

Q: What are the big differences between the AM radio you remember from the late 1950s and the ‘60s, FM radio emerging and today’s subscription satellite radio world?
A: The big difference is that there is no repetition. That’s the problem. What really made the independent record business explode was AM radio and payola. Because all these guys from the small labels could test out their product and have an audience and listeners, and that’s what made it happen. And, as formula Top 40 came in, the majors took over the payola aspect. The way payola became was buying time for the album. They found ways to get it. And it was always about rotation Even MTV now. How many times is the video played to break it? When FM radio hit, that was a whole other thing. At the same time of the birth of the album with white kids. They were buying stereos. I drove around the U.S. visiting alternative FM radio stations. You could go right into the control room and they’d put your albums right on! They’d talk to you and smoke joints right on the air! That was a crazy time. The seed of it, in my mind, were these two guys in San Francisco, Tom Donahue and Bobby Mitchell. I loved them. I’d sit around with them and they’d play all the latest shit, and the phones would start ringing.

“The thing now is a different audience. Satellite is a whole other thing. It’s amazing that it covers so many people. I had no idea the size of the audience. It’s a subscription audience, and you don’t know why they are subscribing. I think most subscribe could be for sports, ‘Howard Stern,’ these kind of things, and the music is just a sidebar. It’s just their music. People are making tapes of my show. I’m taking this beyond weird psychological reasons. I got into this in a strange way. I have tons of CD’s and books. After the first 8-10 shows, I was kinda running out of stories so I started studying my own history and playing my own shit. I’m not even more in awe of the Chess label and the records. I keep finding more of these great records that weren’t hits. I’m more in awe of the great product they were grinding out through many different ways: From buying them from small labels and recording in the studio. You can hear Jackie Ross' "Take me For A Little While” and "7th Day Fool” by Etta James. No one plays that. It was like her first sweet record. I’m getting into the ‘60s a little now. But the audience wants blues. But those are the people that don’t understand that we never looked at it that way. Chess had blues, gospel, jazz, and comedy. I just met Bill Cosby recently, and he said, ‘you must be rich. I bought so many of your fuckin’ comedy albums.’ We had Slappy White, Moms Mabley, Pigmeat Markham, George Kirby. And guys who produced or engineered those albums like James Carmichael worked with Cosby and then later the Commodores.    

Q: Explain the way Chess promoted their records.
A: Here’s how we ran Chess. I was brought into the triad. My father and uncle. What it is was don’t waste your time. Like with the DJ’s. OK. Phil, Fat Daddy in Baltimore. He loves Phil. Phil, you deal with Fat Daddy. In other words, if the personality fit better with his Disc jockeys, his crew of DJs. Porky Chedwick in Pittsburgh. Fat Daddy in Baltimore. Those were Phil’s boys. My father had Alan Freed, Hoss Allen, Gene Nobles, and then when I came up, they had me go to the young ones. We didn’t double up. We did it separately. My father would say, ‘Phil is better with the ‘bird music,’ that’s what he called doo wop. Phil had a real sensibility. Phil was better with Bo Diddley. My dad was with Chuck Berry and Muddy. And then they laid it on me. It wasn’t like, “Marshall. Go produce Muddy Waters.” “Keep the motherfuckin’ session going, Marshall, ‘cause I’m gonna get a haircut.”  That’s how I learned. The best food was Batts Jewish deli across the street in the New Michigan Hotel across from 2120. Jewish restaurant. More than a delicatessen. 

Q: What was the wildest shit you ever saw in a radio station in the 1960s?
A: Hmmm. I’m not gonna tell you this DJ’s name, but at a station in Boston owned by a white guy. (laughs). I walked into his office, the radio was on through the speakers, he was sitting behind his desk, and all of a sudden he was squirming around, and all of a sudden this heavy black girl comes up from underneath his desk sucking his dick while he was talking to me! (laughs). That was probably the craziest thing I ever saw.

Q: My mother is really gonna like reading that answer! She’s from Chicago. I also know that Chess Records was also friendly with the other local independent labels in Chicago and in Los Angeles. There was a sense of camaraderie, not cut throat competition that exists in the ever-changing recording and dismantled music business today. Akin to when record producer and Immediate Records label owner Andrew Loog Oldham would take out an advertisement in a U.K. music weekly newspaper touting the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, or hailing the Mamas & Papas. And it wasn’t on his record label. I know in the 1960s you attended the University of Southern California and promoted R&B shows at the California Club in Central Los Angeles on Santa Barbara Ave. now Martin Luther King Blvd. And, not all the artists were on Chess.
A: The other labels were competitors but there was a great sense of camaraderie. We were all in it together. Man, in L.A. there was this record shop, Flash Records, you’d go in the window. I used to go there all the time with Paul Gayten. And I knew the DJ’s in L.A. on KGFJ and KDAY. Larry McCormick. Hunter Hancock. And Margie, Ted Quillan. Johnny Otis was great. I loved the DJ Magnificent Montague. “Burn Baby Burn.” 

Q: I just found out when you went to college briefly in L.A. you promoted shows then and obviously got some Chess stuff on the radio around this exciting town. Explains why I heard some Muddy and Wolf in grade school locally in the very early 1960s.
A: I did shows with Ted Quillan, KFWB, and Hunter Hancock, and the girl who was with him, Margie Williams. Those were my partners in the shows. I just wanted to be in L.A. after going to the University of Denver. My two colleges. We had an office with Paul Gayten. He was part of our family. I worked with him when I was in L.A. while at U.S.C. I had an ‘old time record biz thing’ happening with Ted and Margie, who got the talent for free, for playing the records, and we turned it into cash by having the gig. They would announce it for free, they got the talent for free, we got the door, and the club got the bar. Then my dad got mugged in Chicago and I partially used it as an excuse to drop out of U.S.C. I wanted to be in the record business. That was over 40 years ago. Way back. My first paycheck, which I just saw on my social security statement, was 1959. So I’ve been in the record business 48 years!  

“I loved Modern Records. The Bihari brothers! I loved Jules Bihari. He’d have me over for breakfast. They were my fuckin’ family. We weren’t in competition. I used to say, none of these young guys know, we were like the Magnificant 7. You know what I mean? It was great. So, I went back to Chicago after my dad got mugged. I loved Ewart Abner at Vee-Jay. Loved him. Oh, man, when my dad got the award at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame I asked that Ewart be the presenter. I always loved Abner, but didn’t know Jimmy and Vivien (Brackett) too well. Vee-Jay. I didn’t know Dee Clark well. I loved John Lee Hooker. Jerry Butler. High class. Great. Gene Chandler. Class. Great. Curtis Mayfield. Genius. He and Charles Stepney are the two major geniuses of Chicago. Not just arrangers. Brilliant geniuses. I loved them!  I loved the Chicago record world music scene. One of the greatest times of my life.

“I love Chess Records and the Sirius radio show. I told these people, I said, look, the thing about my uncle and I, we almost cried together when we went years ago to the Landmark ceremonies. And we put our hands on the front door of the recording studio because it was the greatest, happiest place in the world. You would love going there. You laughed all fuckin’ day. The artists hung out there, no, not all the artists, but what we would call the family artists. Sonny Boy, Muddy Waters, Dells, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley. Billy Stewart shot the doorknob off if they didn’t let him in quick enough. What was Billy Stewart mad about? ‘I brought some fuckin’ pepper-stuffed crabs from Baltimore. You gotta taste them before they get ruined!’  We were into eatin’ and laughing. Maurice White is the drummer on Billy’s ‘Summertime.’ I saw genius in him. He was the first black guy that ever had a Volkswagon. He was like the first of the switch from the Cadillac to the cool.

Q: Tell me about your new job as a DJ on Sirius Radio hosting “The Chess Records Hour.”
A: Chess Records recorded and released some of greatest blues music of all time. It's a real honor and privilege for me to be able to program and present the great classic music that was produced by my family to blues lovers on SIRIUS Satellite Radio. It was initiated by a friend of mine at a record label, David Benjamin, a Sr. Vice-President at Universal, who told Sirius to call me. Before David started at Universal he had started Click Radio, and they gave me stock to program all of their blues, which I worked for months on. So he knew my ability. And, when I got that job to program blues it was probably the first time in my life that I studied the history of blues. (laughs). The Click Radio thing was like 10 years ago, but I had been doing radio before. I was on the BBC when I was 25 years old. I’ve been doing radio and film for 40 years. 

“I ended up getting a phone call from Matt Abramovitz the Format Manager for SIRIUS Blues channel 74 and Pure Jazz channel 72, and he asked me if I was interested in doing this hour show that would be repeated, and that I would have complete control over what music I played, and what I said. The only stipulation was that I couldn’t, due to the digital milenium law, couldn’t play more than three tunes by the same artist in one hour. So, that limited me, otherwise I would be having Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf shows. These kind of things. But, other than that, I have complete freedom. There are many reasons I promote Chess Records.

“I’m proud and I’m thrilled, and can help historically continue the legacy of the Chess Records label. I’m not a classic blues fan, a blues collector, I am not into the anal aspect of what guitar strings Muddy used, or what harmonica did Little Walter play. I only wanted to be around my family, and my father, who was a workaholic. It was a family business. They were immigrants and embraced that. For age 7 to age 12 or 13, my dad took me on the road, not because I wanted to be in the record business but because I wanted to be with my father. So, I got it really by osmosis, ya know. And that was my real reason for hanging out there. But being around the blues, and all these records being made, and knowing the artists, I don’t know, man, it just, ya know, got into me. It just became part of me. It’s part of my life. I’ve never even considered it work. I appear and promote Chess and the blues in films and TV documentaries. I do as much as I can because I get a buzz out of it. I’m just amazed, man, that this music that we made in Chicago has become so historical. I’m just trying to build on that. When people ask me the right questions about Chess Records, or the studio, I’ll answer. It’s the question that pulls it out of my subconscious. I don’t lie around thinking about what happened back then.