New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000.
This saga of Chess Records and the brothers who ran it, Leonard and Phil, ranks as one of the most probing histories ever written about the independent record business. Although the basics of the story are familiar to many, Cohodas digs deeper to fill in many gaps, especially via her interviews with the Chess family, staff and business associates and her exhaustive research of the Chicago Defender and the trade publications Billboard and Cash Box. Most accounts of Chess in music books and magazines have either focused on the music made by the label’s stars, including Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry, or on the artists’ views of what it was like recording for and doing business with Chess. The music, including classic Chicago blues, soul, and jazz, is well handled by Cohodas, but she adds a detailed history of the Chess (originally Czyz) family, traced from Poland to the South Side of Chicago, and provides excellent documentation of the actual business operations of Chess, its predecessor label Aristocrat, and its subsidiaries, Checker, Argo/Cadet, and Cadet Condept. The scope of her discussions extends to record pressing, distribution, music publishing, promotion (including payola), and advertising, as well as the brothers’ relationships with the artists. Another thorough chapter chronicles their ventures into the radio business.
–Jim O’Neal
www.stackhouse-bluesoterica.blogspot.com