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Chicago - Part 2

© Barney Quick

The Illinois Central rail line poured thousands of black southerners into Chicago throughout the mid-twentieth century. They came from the lumber camps and cotton farms seeking a life that held possibility. They found steel mills and packing plants. And, along Maxwell Street, the most honest blues America has ever produced.

Phil and Leonard Chess, brothers who had come from Poland in 1928, fell into their love for, and deep involvement with, Chicago’s black music through the liquor business. That led to owning The Macomba, a club at Thirty-ninth Street and Cottage Grove that featured top-name national black pop acts such as Billy Eckstein. It was known as a hub of musical activity throughout the city.

In 1947, the Chess brothers became involved with some other investors in a label called Aristocrat. In its two-year existence, Aristocrat released sides by a variety of artists including tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons who had “My Foolish Heart,” a vocal group called The Dozier Boys, whose “She’s Gone” was a jazz-tinged precursor to doo-wop and McKinley Morganfield, who billed himself as Muddy Waters. He was a native of Rolling Forks, Mississippi and former Stovall Plantation employee who had come to Chicago in 1943. His initial Aristocrat outing was a raw number differentiated from a delta plantation recording only by the electrification of the guitar and the addition of a stand-up bass. This stark yet rhythmic blues was called “I Can’t Be Satisfied.” “Satisfied” was a huge hit on Chicago’s south side and led to more of the same for the delta guitarist.

Aristocrat folded in 1949. The Chess brothers immediately went back into business as Chess Records, retaining Waters and soon adding formidable talents from Chicago and from forays into the south. Just as the Bihari brothers from Los Angeles had done for their Modern label by signing B.B. King and employing Ike Turner as a talent scout, Leonard Chess cultivated blues relationships in Memphis and the delta. He worked out a licensing arrangement with a white studio owner in Memphis, Sam Phillips, under which Phillips’ legendary facility cut two of the most important records in Chess history, Moanin’ At Midnight” by Chester “Howlin’ Wolf” Burnett, and “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston with Ike Turner. Burnett, Brenston and Turner are all examples of r&b musicians who followed the proverbial path up the Mississippi River during the 1950s, in some cases stopping in St. Louis for a few years to conquer that city’s black-music scene.

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