Before the Blues Hall of Fame instituted a separate category in 1994 to honor those involved in the business, production, promotion, and documentation of the blues, only one non-performer had been elected: Leonard Chess, in 1991. Among many blues and R&B aficionados, Chess Records, founded by Leonard and his brother Phil in 1950, still ranks as the premier record label of all time, thanks to its historic and influential recordings of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2, Bo Diddley, Little Walter, Chuck Berry, Etta James, the Moonglows, and many more, not to mention its impressive roster of jazz and gospel acts. Leonard Chess was born Lezjor Czyz in Motol’, Poland (an area now within the borders of Belarus) on March 12, 1917, and immigrated with his family to America in 1928. The Chess brothers got into the nightclub business on Chicago’s South Side and from that initiation into the local blues and jazz scene they ventured into recording, first through an association with Aristocrat Records and then with Chess and its subsidiary labels, including Checker, Argo, and Cadet. The labels’ output indelibly shaped the course of electric blues and rock music, to the extent that in 1964 the Rolling Stones came to the company’s studio to record – the address, 2120 South Michigan, was immortalized as the title of a Stones instrumental. The Chess legend was heralded in a not always true-to-life film dramatization in “Cadillac Records” in 2008; another movie from 2008, “Who Do You Love,” also brought the Chess story to the big screen. Leonard and Phil Chess also launched WVON (“Voice Of the Negro”) in Chicago in 1963 as well as WNOV in Milwaukee. Not long after selling Chess Records to GRT in 1969, Leonard Chess died of a heart attack on Oct. 16.
