Marshall Chess
Encyclopedia
Marshall Chess is the son and nephew of the founders of Chess Records
, the Chicago-based independent record label that first recorded an unprecedented list of African-American, blues
and early rock and roll
artists such as: Muddy Waters
, Howlin' Wolf
, Little Walter
, Bo Diddley
, Sonny Boy Williamson II
, Memphis Slim
, John Lee Hooker
, Rufus Thomas
, Memphis Minnie
, Elmore James
, Willie Dixon
, Chuck Berry
, Etta James
and Buddy Guy
, among others.
and his brother Phil
were two American immigrants from the Jewish community in Motal, Poland who in 1947 had purchased part of an independent record label called Aristocrat Records. Within a few short years the label was renamed after the family's Americanized surname 'Chess' and quickly produced a list of American blues
artists that would come to be regarded as the greatest collection of the genre in recorded history.
Marshall learned every aspect of the record business while working for sixteen years with the founders of Chess Records
; his father Leonard and his uncle Phil doing everything from pressing records and loading trucks to producing over 100 Chess Records projects and eventually heading up the label as President after the GRT acquisition in 1969. In the late 1960s Marshall also ran his own record label Cadet Concept, a division of Chess Records
. He created and produced the Rotary Connection, which became the springboard for Minnie Riperton
’s career. He signed John Klemmer and created a new format which was heralded as the first jazz-fusion album, “Blowin’ Gold.” He signed the underground black rock legends Black Merda
. He also created and produced the controversial blues album Electric Mud
, by Muddy Waters
.
, a vanity record label for the English rock group he had known since the mid 1960s when the band had used Chess studios in Chicago to record songs while touring the United States. He was an active executive manager, touring with the band, and being involved with record production as well as outside business interests. He helped create the Rolling Stones famous tongue and lip logo and was involved as executive producer on seven Rolling Stones albums during the 1970s. In 1977 Chess resigned from Rolling Stones Records after realizing that too much drugs, sex, and rock n roll was undermining his health and leadership in the company. He was replaced with Earl McGrath on the advice of Atlantic Records head Ahmet Ertegün
, the Stones newly signed record distribution partner.
As well as music, Chess produced three films in the 1960s and 1970s: The Legend of Bo Diddley, Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones
, and the unrated, unreleased concert tour documentary Cocksucker Blues
by Robert Frank
.
and Island Records
and for Howdy Doody
. He also produced many rap records at the beginning of the rap generation. He worked with rap star KRS-One
, developing an audio comic book project, Break The Chain, for Marvel Comics.
In 1984, Marshall Chess became a partner in the famous blues and rock publishing company ARC Music
, which he began actively heading in 1992. More recently he finished a film project called Godfathers and Sons directed by Marc Levin, for the PBS series The Blues
, produced by Martin Scorsese
. In the film, Marshall produces a hip hop version of the classic Chess track “Mannish Boy
” featuring rappers Chuck D
and Common
recording with original members of the Electric Mud
band.
In 1999 Chess founded the Czyz Records record label
, with his cousin Kevin. On 21 September 1999 the first record released on Czyz Records was the Murali Coryell
album 2120, named after Chess' old Chicago address at 2120 South Michigan. Czyz (pronounded "Chez" or "Chaz") was the original Polish surname of Leonard and Phil Chess when they arrived in America from Poland.
In the year 2000, Marshall, his son Jamar Chess, and partner Juan Carlos Barguil created their own Latin music administration company and all-digital label named Sunflower Entertainment Co., Inc. http://www.sunflower-ent.com Sunflower has quickly become the leading licensor and administrator of all genres of independent Latin music. More recently, Jamar Chess has overseen the signing of Vakero http://www.vakeromusic.com, the #1 Dominican hip hop artist and leader of the Rap Dominicano movement. There have been over 1.8 million views on Youtube of Vakero music and promotional videos.
Marshall has been on Sirius Satellite Radio
's Blues Channel since 2007 hosting the Chess Records Hour, a three times a week show featuring the music and history of Chess Records. He also is the executive music producer on two movies, Cadillac Records
, released in 2008, and Who Do You Love, which is now in post production and is scheduled for 2009 release.
Chess Records
Chess Records was an American record label based in Chicago, Illinois. It specialized in blues, R&B, soul, gospel music, early rock and roll, and occasional jazz releases....
, the Chicago-based independent record label that first recorded an unprecedented list of African-American, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and early rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
artists such as: Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...
, Howlin' Wolf
Howlin' Wolf
Chester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....
, Little Walter
Little Walter
Little Walter, born Marion Walter Jacobs , was an American blues harmonica player, whose revolutionary approach to his instrument has earned him comparisons to Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix, for innovation and impact on succeeding generations...
, Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley
Ellas Otha Bates , known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist, songwriter , and inventor...
, Sonny Boy Williamson II
Sonny Boy Williamson II
Willie "Sonny Boy" Williamson was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, from Mississippi. He is acknowledged as one of the most charismatic and influential blues musicians, with considerable prowess on the harmonica and highly creative songwriting skills...
, Memphis Slim
Memphis Slim
Memphis Slim was an American blues pianist, singer, and composer. He led a series of bands that, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues, included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano. A song he first cut in 1947, "Every Day I Have the Blues", has become a blues standard, recorded by many other...
, John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark...
, Rufus Thomas
Rufus Thomas
Rufus Thomas, Jr. was an American rhythm and blues, funk and soul singer and comedian fromMemphis, Tennessee, who recorded on Sun Records in the...
, Memphis Minnie
Memphis Minnie
Memphis Minnie was an American blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. She was the only female blues artist considered a match to male contemporaries as both a singer and an instrumentalist.-Career:...
, Elmore James
Elmore James
Elmore James was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and band leader. He was known as "the King of the Slide Guitar" and had a unique guitar style, noted for his use of loud amplification and his stirring voice.-Biography:James was born Elmore Brooks in the old Richland community in...
, Willie Dixon
Willie Dixon
William James "Willie" Dixon was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer. A Grammy Award winner who was proficient on both the Upright bass and the guitar, as well as his own singing voice, Dixon is arguably best known as one of the most prolific songwriters...
, Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...
, Etta James
Etta James
Etta James is an American blues, soul, rhythm and blues , rock and roll, gospel and jazz singer. In the 1950s and 1960s, she had her biggest success as a blues and R&B singer...
and Buddy Guy
Buddy Guy
George "Buddy" Guy is an American blues and jazz guitarist and singer. He is a critically acclaimed artist who has established himself as a pioneer of the Chicago blues sound, and has served as an influence to some of the most notable musicians of his generation...
, among others.
The Blues
Leonard ChessLeonard Chess
Leonard Chess was a record company executive and the founder of Chess Records. He was influential in the development of electric blues.- Early life :...
and his brother Phil
Phil Chess
Philip Chess is an American record producer and company executive, the co-founder of Chess Records.He was born Fiszel Czyż in a Jewish community in Częstochowa, Poland. He and his brother Lejzor, sister Malka and mother followed their father to Chicago in 1928...
were two American immigrants from the Jewish community in Motal, Poland who in 1947 had purchased part of an independent record label called Aristocrat Records. Within a few short years the label was renamed after the family's Americanized surname 'Chess' and quickly produced a list of American blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
artists that would come to be regarded as the greatest collection of the genre in recorded history.
Marshall learned every aspect of the record business while working for sixteen years with the founders of Chess Records
Chess Records
Chess Records was an American record label based in Chicago, Illinois. It specialized in blues, R&B, soul, gospel music, early rock and roll, and occasional jazz releases....
; his father Leonard and his uncle Phil doing everything from pressing records and loading trucks to producing over 100 Chess Records projects and eventually heading up the label as President after the GRT acquisition in 1969. In the late 1960s Marshall also ran his own record label Cadet Concept, a division of Chess Records
Chess Records
Chess Records was an American record label based in Chicago, Illinois. It specialized in blues, R&B, soul, gospel music, early rock and roll, and occasional jazz releases....
. He created and produced the Rotary Connection, which became the springboard for Minnie Riperton
Minnie Riperton
Minnie Julia Riperton was an American singer-songwriter best known for her 1975 single "Lovin' You". She was married to songwriter and music producer Richard Rudolph from 1972 until her death in the summer of 1979. They had two children - music engineer Marc Rudolph and actress/comedienne Maya...
’s career. He signed John Klemmer and created a new format which was heralded as the first jazz-fusion album, “Blowin’ Gold.” He signed the underground black rock legends Black Merda
Black Merda
Black Merda is an American rock band from Detroit, Michigan, active from the mid 1960s to the early 1970s and reuniting in 2005. They are considered to be the first all black rock band...
. He also created and produced the controversial blues album Electric Mud
Electric Mud
Electric Mud is a studio album by Muddy Waters. Released in 1968, it is a concept album which imagines Muddy Waters as a psychedelic musician...
, by Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...
.
Rolling Stones records
Departing from Chess Records in 1970 after the death of his father, Marshall was hired as the founding president of Rolling Stones RecordsRolling Stones Records
Rolling Stones Records is the record label formed by The Rolling Stones members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Mick Taylor, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman in 1970, after their recording contract with Decca Records expired. They were first distributed in the United States by Atlantic Records subsidiary...
, a vanity record label for the English rock group he had known since the mid 1960s when the band had used Chess studios in Chicago to record songs while touring the United States. He was an active executive manager, touring with the band, and being involved with record production as well as outside business interests. He helped create the Rolling Stones famous tongue and lip logo and was involved as executive producer on seven Rolling Stones albums during the 1970s. In 1977 Chess resigned from Rolling Stones Records after realizing that too much drugs, sex, and rock n roll was undermining his health and leadership in the company. He was replaced with Earl McGrath on the advice of Atlantic Records head Ahmet Ertegün
Ahmet Ertegun
Ahmet Ertegün was a Turkish American musician and businessman, best known as the founder and president of Atlantic Records. He also wrote classic blues and pop songs and served as Chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and museum...
, the Stones newly signed record distribution partner.
As well as music, Chess produced three films in the 1960s and 1970s: The Legend of Bo Diddley, Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones
Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones
Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones is a concert movie featuring the British rock band The Rolling Stones that was first released in 1974...
, and the unrated, unreleased concert tour documentary Cocksucker Blues
Cocksucker Blues
Cocksucker Blues is an unreleased documentary film directed by the noted still photographer Robert Frank chronicling The Rolling Stones' North American tour in 1972 in support of their album Exile on Main St..-Production:...
by Robert Frank
Robert Frank
Robert Frank , born in Zürich, Switzerland, is an important figure in American photography and film. His most notable work, the 1958 photobook titled The Americans, was influential, and earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and skeptical outsider's view of American...
.
1980s and today
During the 1980s and 1990’s Marshall produced projects for both Sire RecordsSire Records
Sire Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed through Warner Bros. Records.-Beginnings:The label was founded in 1966 as Sire Productions by Seymour Stein and Richard Gottehrer, each investing ten thousand dollars into the new company. Its early releases as a...
and Island Records
Island Records
Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group...
and for Howdy Doody
Howdy Doody
Howdy Doody is an American children's television program that was created and produced by E. Roger Muir and telecast on NBC in the United States from 1947 until 1960. It was a pioneer in children's television programming and set the pattern for many similar shows...
. He also produced many rap records at the beginning of the rap generation. He worked with rap star KRS-One
KRS-One
Lawrence Krisna Parker , better known by his stage names KRS-One , and Teacha, is an American rapper...
, developing an audio comic book project, Break The Chain, for Marvel Comics.
In 1984, Marshall Chess became a partner in the famous blues and rock publishing company ARC Music
ARC Music
ARC Music Productions International Limited is a specialist world music and folk music label based in West Sussex, United Kingdom. It was established in 1976...
, which he began actively heading in 1992. More recently he finished a film project called Godfathers and Sons directed by Marc Levin, for the PBS series The Blues
The Blues (film)
The Blues is a 2003 documentary film series produced by Martin Scorsese, dedicated to the history of blues music. In each of the seven episodes, a different director explores a stage in the development of the blues...
, produced by Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
. In the film, Marshall produces a hip hop version of the classic Chess track “Mannish Boy
Mannish Boy
"Mannish Boy" is a blues standard first recorded by Muddy Waters in 1955. It is an arrangement of Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man"...
” featuring rappers Chuck D
Chuck D
Carlton Douglas Ridenhour , better known by his stage name, Chuck D, is an American rapper, author, and producer. He helped create politically and socially conscious rap music in the mid-1980s as the leader of the rap group Public Enemy.- Early life :Ridenhour was born in Queens, New York...
and Common
Common (rapper)
Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr. , better known by his stage name Common , is an American hip-hop artist and actor....
recording with original members of the Electric Mud
Electric Mud
Electric Mud is a studio album by Muddy Waters. Released in 1968, it is a concept album which imagines Muddy Waters as a psychedelic musician...
band.
In 1999 Chess founded the Czyz Records record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
, with his cousin Kevin. On 21 September 1999 the first record released on Czyz Records was the Murali Coryell
Murali Coryell
Murali Coryell is an American blues guitarist and singer. Best known for performing live in small venues in New York State, Coryell has also opened for George Thorogood, Gregg Allman, B.B. King and Wilson Pickett...
album 2120, named after Chess' old Chicago address at 2120 South Michigan. Czyz (pronounded "Chez" or "Chaz") was the original Polish surname of Leonard and Phil Chess when they arrived in America from Poland.
In the year 2000, Marshall, his son Jamar Chess, and partner Juan Carlos Barguil created their own Latin music administration company and all-digital label named Sunflower Entertainment Co., Inc. http://www.sunflower-ent.com Sunflower has quickly become the leading licensor and administrator of all genres of independent Latin music. More recently, Jamar Chess has overseen the signing of Vakero http://www.vakeromusic.com, the #1 Dominican hip hop artist and leader of the Rap Dominicano movement. There have been over 1.8 million views on Youtube of Vakero music and promotional videos.
Marshall has been on Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio is a satellite radio service operating in North America, owned by Sirius XM Radio.Headquartered in New York City, with smaller studios in Los Angeles and Memphis, Sirius was officially launched on July 1, 2002 and currently provides 69 streams of music and 65 streams of...
's Blues Channel since 2007 hosting the Chess Records Hour, a three times a week show featuring the music and history of Chess Records. He also is the executive music producer on two movies, Cadillac Records
Cadillac Records
Cadillac Records is a 2008 musical biopic written and directed by Darnell Martin. The film explores the musical era from the early 1940s to the late 1960s, chronicling the life of the influential Chicago-based record-company executive Leonard Chess, and the musicians who recorded for Chess...
, released in 2008, and Who Do You Love, which is now in post production and is scheduled for 2009 release.
Further reading
External links
- Arc Music http://www.arcmusic.com
- Sunflower Entertainment http://www.sunflower-ent.com
- Vakero http://www.vakeromusic.com
- PBS American Roots Music. Marshall Chess