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Home , Chess Records, Leonard Chess, Phil Chess

Pre-Lesson Activity - “Chess Set Still Sings The : and ”

JUST OVER 50 YEARS AGO, brothers Phil and , two industrious Polish immigrants in , tentatively established what would become the most famous blues label in the USA. The impact of the music they released radically shaped the musical landscape of the next two decades. The Chess Story: 1947-1975, a new 15-CD box-set, is a hefty testament to their huge legacy. Marshall Chess, Leonard's son, is a passionate advocate of the label. Describing the box- set today, he admits, "It makes me so proud to be a Chess!"

This pride is the result of two intrepid trips made in the first half of the 20th century. Indeed, the very foundations of Chicago's Chess Records were built by two, seemingly quite distinct, groups of people, both of whom were raised in impoverished rural areas far from this dynamic industrial city. In the 1930s and '40s, hundreds of thousands of African-Americans in the Southern states caught the Illinois Central Railway up to Chicago, desperate to escape the "southern hospitality" of the Deep South. Today, Marshall Chess recalls, "A certain kind of temperament came up to Chicago from Mississippi. Mississippi was deep slavery roots. They were living on old plantations. Those places didn't have electricity."

Marshall Chess's family in Poland might not have suffered from racism, but they shared similar penniless circumstances to these black Americans. In their Polish village, Leonard Chess and his family had no electricity, heating or running water. In the killing cold of the Polish winter, the family would drag a horse into their home, revelling in the extra bar of heat the horse provided. Just like the black Americans from Mississippi, Leonard Chess imagined Chicago as a promised land. In 1928, his family got the hell out of Poland, emigrating to the USA.

As young adults, Leonard and showed astute, entrepreneurial flair. By the mid-'40s owned bars and nightclubs, like the Macomba Lounge, in the South Side of Chicago, a mostly black neighbourhood. Originally an acoustic style of music, in the '40s blues music was transformed in these rowdy, bustling bars. Marshall Chess, who was born in Chicago in 1942, confirms this. "I think the whole birth of the electric movement was that the clubs got very crowded and only the electric stuff could be heard. They saw the feedback – like the dancing – and the vibe changed."

In 1947, Leonard and Phil Chess' love of black music prompted them to buy into Aristocrat Records. With this outlet, they started to record blues musicians, like Clarence Samuels and Sunnyland Slim, who had performed in their South Side bars. Crucially, they also recorded a paper factory employee who had emigrated from Mississippi in 1943. His name was McKinley Morganfield – aka . And it was his songs, like 'Feel Like Going Home', which broke Aristocrat.

In 1950, Leonard and Phil Chess changed the name of their label to Chess, adopting the famous black and white chequered insignia. In the following two decades they recorded an amazing spectrum of music which sculpted the sonic landscape of the second half of the century. , , Janis Joplin, the Doors, the Stones, Brothers and Led Zeppelin are just some of the artists who've cut more famous cover versions of songs originally recorded by the likes of , Howlin' Wolf, , , Bobby Charles, at Chess.