Leonard Chess
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Leonard Chess
Lejzor Szmuel Czyż (March 12, 1917 – October 16, 1969), best known as Leonard Sam Chess, was a Polish-American record company executive and the co-founder of Chess Records. He was influential in the development of electric blues, Chicago blues, and rock and roll. Early life Chess was born to Polish-Jewish parents in Motal, now in Belarus.Cohodas, Nadine (2000). ''Spinning Blues into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records''. New York: St. MartinsBluestogold.com He and his brother, Fiszel, sister, Malka, and mother arrived in New York in 1928 from Poland. They quickly went to Chicago to join their father, Joseph, who was already engaged in the liquor business, which was illegal at the height of Prohibition and controlled in Chicago by Al Capone. The family name was changed to Chess, with Lejzor becoming Leonard and Fiszel becoming Philip. Chess Records Leonard and his brother Phil became involved in the black nightclub scene on the South Side of Chicago ...
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Motal
Motol ( be, Моталь, Russian language, Russian and West Polesian: Мотоль, pl, Motol, yi, מאָטעלע ''Motele''), also Motal, is a township in Ivanava Raion of Brest Region located about 30 kilometres west of Pinsk on the Yaselda River in Belarus. History Motal was in the Kobryn Uezd of Grodno Governorate until the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917. Between World War I and World War II it was in the Drahichyn county of the Polish Polesie Voivodeship. It is near the center of Polesia which constituted an irregular rectangle of roughly from east to west and from north to south. Motal was a Shtetl. In 1937, Motal had 4,297 inhabitants, of whom 1,354 were Jews. (Reinharz, 1985). During the war an Einsatzgruppen perpetrated a mass execution of the local Jewish community. ''The Destruction of Motele'' (Hurban Motele) was published in Hebrew by the Council of Motele Immigrants in Jerusalem in 1956. It was edited by A.L. Poliak, Ed. Dr. Dov Yarden. The book has 8 ...
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Cleveland Jewish News
The ''Cleveland Jewish News'' (the CJN) is a weekly Jewish newspaper headquartered in Beachwood, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. The newspaper contains local, national, and international news of Jewish interest. History It was formed in 1964. It is a successor to two Cleveland Anglo-Jewish newspapers – ''The Jewish Independent'' (established in 1906) and the ''Jewish Review & Observer'' (which had as its roots the ''Hebrew Observer'', founded in 1889). The ''Cleveland Jewish News'' had as its first issue a 32-page tabloid on October 30, 1964. Arthur Weyne was its first editor. He was followed by Jerry D. Barach, and then in 1980 by Cynthia Dettelbach, and Michael E. Bennett from 2005 to 2012. Publisher and CEO Kevin S. Adelstein, joined the Cleveland Jewish News in 2013. From 1989 to 2002, the newspaper was located in Shaker Heights and University Heights. In 2002, it moved to 23880 Commerce Park, Beachwood. Today The Cleveland Jewish News is owned by its parent company, t ...
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That's All Right (Jimmy Rogers Song)
"That's All Right"or "That's Alright" is a blues song adapted by Chicago blues singer and guitarist Jimmy Rogers. He recorded it in 1950 with Little Walter on harmonica. Although based on earlier blues songs, music writer John Collis calls Rogers' rendition "one of the most tuneful and instantly memorable of all variations on the basic blues format". The song became a blues standard and has been recorded by numerous blues and other artists. Origins Jimmy Rogers has acknowledged that "That's All Right" draws on ideas from other bluesmen, including Robert Junior Lockwood and Willie Love. However, he feels he pulled it all together: "I put some verses with it and built it that way. I built the song". Lockwood had performed it years earlier in Helena, Arkansas, which Muddy Waters confirmed: "'That's All Right', that Robert Jr.'s song", he added. In 1947, Othum Brown recorded "Ora Nelle Blues" (Chance 1116), described as "substantially the same song". Little Walter on harmoni ...
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Rollin' Stone (Muddy Waters Song)
"Rollin' Stone" is a blues song recorded by Muddy Waters in 1950. It is his interpretation of "Catfish Blues", a Delta blues that dates back to 1920s Mississippi. "Still a Fool", recorded by Muddy Waters a year later using the same arrangement and melody, reached number nine on the Billboard R&B chart. "Rollin' Stone" has been recorded by a variety of artists. Earlier songs In 1928, Jim Jackson recorded "Kansas City Blues Parts 3 and 4", a follow-up to his highly successful "Jim Jackson's Kansas City Blues Parts 1 and 2". Jackson's lyrics included: Several other early songs also explored variations on the catfish and/or fishing theme. In 1941, Tommy McClennan and his sometime partner Robert Petway each recorded versions of the song. Petway's was the first to be titled "Catfish Blues" and is sometimes cited as the basis for Muddy Waters' "Rollin' Stone". However, according to one biographer "They'd been singing "Catfish Blues" for years in the Delta, but it never sounded ...
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Gene Ammons
Eugene "Jug" Ammons (April 14, 1925 – August 6, 1974), also known as "The Boss", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. The son of boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons, Gene Ammons is remembered for his accessible music, steeped in soul and R&B. Biography Born in Chicago, Illinois, Ammons studied music with instructor Walter Dyett at DuSable High School. Ammons began to gain recognition while still at high school when in 1943, at the age of 18, he went on the road with trumpeter King Kolax's band. In 1944, he joined the band of Billy Eckstine (who bestowed on him the nickname "Jug" when straw hats ordered for the band did not fit), playing alongside Charlie Parker and later Dexter Gordon. Performances from this period include "Blowin' the Blues Away," featuring a saxophone duel between Ammons and Gordon. After 1947, when Eckstine became a solo performer, Ammons then led a group, including Miles Davis and Sonny Stitt, that performed at Chicago's Jumptown Club. In 1949, Ammon ...
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My Foolish Heart (song)
"My Foolish Heart" is a popular music, popular song and jazz standard that was published in 1949 in music, 1949. In the UK, the song reached No. 1 in the chart based on sales of sheet music, staying at the top spot for 11 weeks in 1950. Overview The music was composed by Victor Young, and the lyric was written by Ned Washington. The song was introduced by the singer Martha Mears in the 1949 My Foolish Heart (1949 film), film of the same name. The song failed to escape critics' general laceration of the film. ''Time (magazine), Time'' wrote in its review that "nothing offsets the blight of such tear-splashed excesses as the bloop-bleep-bloop of a sentimental ballad on the sound track." Nevertheless, the song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song#1940s, Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1949 but lost out to "Baby, It's Cold Outside" by Frank Loesser. Cover versions * The song was also a popular success, with two recordings of the song listed among the top ...
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Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 April 30, 1983), known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer and musician who was an important figure in the post-war blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago blues". His style of playing has been described as "raining down Delta beatitude". Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by age 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, emulating the local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson."His thick heavy voice, the dark colouration of his tone, and his firm, almost solid, personality were all clearly derived from House," wrote the music historian Peter Guralnick in ''Feel Like Going Home'', "but the embellishments, which he added, the imaginative slide technique and more agile rhythms, were closer to Johnson." He was recorded in Mississippi by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. In 1943, he moved to Chicago to become a full-time professi ...
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Aristocrat Records
Aristocrat Records, sometimes billed as the Aristocrat of Records, was founded in April 1947 by Charles and Evelyn Aron, together with their partners Fred and Mildred Brount and Art Spiegel. By September Leonard Chess had invested in the young record company. Over time, Leonard bought the others out, and by 1948, only he and Evelyn Aron ran the firm. By early 1950 Leonard and his brother Phil had become the sole owners, and in June of that year they changed the company's name from Aristocrat to Chess Records. The Aristocrat brand was officially discontinued in January 1951. In three years, Aristocrat released 183 songs, and recorded 18 more that were released under the new Chess label. On August 27, 1947, Muddy Waters made his first recordings for Aristocrat, which produced the single "Gypsy Woman" b/w "Little Anna Mae". Backing him were bassist Ernest "Big" Crawford and pianist Sunnyland Slim. After a second session in December 1947, Aristocrat released "I Can't Be Satisfied" b/w ...
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Peter Guralnick
Peter Guralnick (born December 15, 1943, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American music critic, author, and screenwriter. He specializes in the history of early rock and roll and has written on Elvis Presley, Sam Phillips, and Sam Cooke. Career Guralnick graduated from Boston University in 1971 with a master's degree in creative writing. He then began writing books about the history of rock'n'roll, blues, country music, and soul music. Music critic Nat Hentoff called Guralnick a “…national treasure;” Bob Dylan said Guralnick's book, ''Last Train to Memphis'' “…cancels out all others.” Guralnick's first two books, ''Almost Grown'' (1964) and ''Mister Downchild'' (1967), were collections of short stories published by the Larry Stark Press, a small press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, devoted to stories and poems. Mona Dickson, writing in MIT's '' The Tech'' (May 13, 1964) gave ''Almost Grown'' a favorable review. His two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, ''Last Train ...
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Macomba Lounge
The Macomba Lounge, at 3905 South Cottage Grove, Chicago, was an after-hours music club owned by Leonard Chess from 1946 to October 1950, when it burned down. Chess had invested the money made from his two liquor stores into refurbishing an old eatery, its liquor license being granted to his brother, Phil, in February 1946, shortly after being discharged from the army. In a seedy neighborhood, and initially a bar patronised by prostitutes and drug dealers, the establishment soon developed a reputation among local musicians as an after-hours club,Cohodas, Nadine (2000) ''Spinning Blues into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records''
At Google Books. Retrieved 5 J ...
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South Side, Chicago
The South Side is an area of Chicago, Illinois, U.S. It lies south of the city's Loop area in the downtown. Geographically, it is the largest of the three sides of the city that radiate from downtown, with the other two being the north and west sides. Much of the South Side came from the city's annexation of townships such as Hyde Park. The city's Sides have historically been divided by the Chicago River and its branches. The South Side of Chicago was originally defined as all of the city south of the main branch of the Chicago River, but it now excludes the Loop. The South Side has a varied ethnic composition and a great variety of income levels and other demographic measures. It has a reputation for crime, although most crime is contained within certain neighborhoods, not throughout the South Side itself, and residents range from affluent to middle class to poor. South Side neighborhoods such as Armour Square, Back of the Yards, Bridgeport, and Pullman host more blue colla ...
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Phil Chess
Philip Chess (born Fiszel Czyż; March 27, 1921 – October 18, 2016) was a Polish-born American record producer and company executive, the co-founder with his brother of Chess Records. Early life Chess was born to a Polish-Jewish family in the village of Motal, then in eastern Poland and now part of Belarus. He and his brother Lejzor, sister Malka and mother followed their father to Chicago in 1928. The family name was changed to Chess, with Lejzor becoming Leonard and Fiszel becoming Philip. Career Chess served in the army during World War II. In 1946, after leaving the Army, Phil joined Leonard in running a popular club, the Macomba Lounge. Two years later, Leonard became a partner in Aristocrat Records, a local company that recorded a wide range of music, and Phil joined in 1950. The company then changed its name to Chess Records, and began concentrating on R&B music, signing and recording artists such as Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, "Sonny Boy Williamson" (Rice Miller), Ro ...
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