![]() Their time managing various Chicago clubs gave them a feeling and understanding for what the black urban audience wanted to hear. In 1947, Leonard and Phil Chess started signing local artists like Muddy Waters to Aristocrat Records – soon to become Chess Records. ![]() The musicians of the Windy City electrified the rural, country blues of the South to create a hipper, urban noise. In Chicago, the rural blues music that black Southerners brought with them became increasingly amplified and refined. But there was a difference to the blues of the North. The South Side became a bustling, dynamic, sometimes violent, neighbourhood with the blues echoing out of the drinking bars and dance clubs – a reassuring sound for the disorientated black immigrants. During this decade, a mass exodus of black Americans, exhausted by the racist-fuelled poverty of the Deep South, travelled to the booming industrial cities of the north, tempted by the promise of a better, richer, happier life.īut they were careful not to leave their music back in Alabama. The Mocamba was their biggest club with Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine, Gene Ammons and other jazz stars of the day performing there. By the early 1940's, the two brothers, Leonard & Phil Chess, owned several bars and nightclubs in the black district of Chicago – the South Side. "They were sleeping inside a house without heat, with a horse to keep them warm in the winter. ![]() But if it were not for the poverty both his father and grandfather experienced in Poland, they may have never emigrated to America. I was the same age." He also believes, "They were the same calibre as these great Chess bands." Several years later, Marshall would be managing the Stones and jumping gleefully into their hedonistic way of life. "But I was aware of the scene happening in England and I very much wanted to get into that scene myself. "At that time we didn't rent out the Chess Studios to outside people," he recalls. Marshall Chess, son of Leonard, one of the 2 brothers who started the record label in 1947, had helped organise their visit. With a hint of the madness they would let loose later on in the decade, it ended with a riot and a Chicago cop growling at them: "Get out of here or I'll lock up the whole goddamned bunch!" At the end of their 2 days, the Stones held a press conference outside the studio on South Michigan Avenue. Ron Malo, the staff engineer at Chess, who recorded Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley back in the 1950's, helped to sharpen the British band's sound during their session. Many of these Chicago blues legends were thrilled this group of Englishmen with long hair and pale faces were breathing new life into their decade-old songs. Later on, they chatted with Willie Dixon and Buddy Guy. Muddy Waters, whose song 'Rollin' Stone', had supplied the English band with its moniker, even helped them bring in their equipment. In the background Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson argued loudly about a woman from Kentucky. It was June, 1964, and this youthful British beat band were happily messing around at the Chess studio in Chicago as their older black musical idols watched on, intrigued. "WOW, YOU guys are really getting it on!" exclaimed Chuck Berry, observing the Rolling Stones cut 'Down The Road Apiece', a track he'd recorded himself just a few years earlier. ![]()
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