September-October 2010


REVIEWS U.S. 1960s


OLD MASTERS


Chess Records is one of the most influential labels of all time. But has this box set bitten off more than it can chew by attempting to appeal to everyone? JON ‘MOJO’ MILLS thinks so.


VARIOUS ARTISTS A Complete Introduction To Chess Chess/Universal 4-CD box set


Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the blues and soul will not be startled by this 4-CD set. Serious collectors obviously own everything on vinyl and casual punters may well be happy enough to hear Chuck Berry on Spotify, so who is this 100-track collection aimed at?


In an era where music is so readily available, vintage


blues and soul records have become commodified to such an extent, that for better or for worse, they have become the soundtrack to TV adverts and the background music in coffee bars. Besides, it really is easy to purchase shoddy The Greatest Blues Songs Ever CD comps at service stations if a cheap fix for the car is all that is needed. Chess was one of the most inspirational record labels of all


time.We wouldn’t have had the Stones and the Brit R&B boom without it! It’s a two-fold issue though: vintage blues has become synonymous with bad bar bands and rich old guys with Strats. John Lee Hooker is the music of choice for middle class nitwit accountants whilst Jools Holland in the UK has pandered to these people and made millions. As Will Hodgkinson wrote in Guitar Man, friendly small town


blues fans have for years given off the wrong message: “I hated the blues because it seemed so staid and unimaginative. It was the soundtrack for pizza restaurants in English suburbs modelling themselves on Chicago speakeasys. It was what American


politicians played in the background as they inaugurated into the senate.” But, as Eddie Boyd sang on the 1953 Chess side ‘The Third


Degree’, “this bad luck is killing me”. Blues was born in the ghetto or in a shack on the banks of the Mississippi. The people who played it were poor.Yet still, the music has been so cosied up and demystified that it has become hard to appreciate it for what it is – real music made by real people out of necessity. None of the musicians on this box would have had good lives if they hadn’t sung.


So will this lavish set bring a suffering major label further “bad


luck”? Quite possibly. Is the modern world made up of casual music fans who even need a box like this? The set focuses on tracks culled from the ’49 to ’75 time


frame –a 26 year period which saw the blues become R&B, then rock ’n’ roll, doo-wop and finally soul. Also included are some interestingly odd diversions into The Age Of Aquarius and rock by certain Chess stalwarts who reinvented themselves as the ’70s dawned. Howlin’Wolf and Muddy Waters getting hip to the long hair sound resulted in some astounding music, and the wah wah- inflected ‘Evil’ and testosterone-fuelled punk-blues ‘Tom Cat’ wave the freak flag proudly! Conversely, Chuck Berry singing ‘My Ding-a-Ling’ is a particularly


sad instance. The once feral, sexualised rocker singing about his “cock” is woeful… not sexy, not funny… just embarrassingly end of the pier.At one time Berry drove fear into white middle class parents not only due to the colour of his skin, but also because of what he would like to do to their sweet little 16-year-old daughters. Oh, how the mighty fell! Thankfully, the label also dabbled with psychedelia and new


talent around this time on their Cadet imprint. The inclusion of Rotary Connection’s ‘I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun’ demonstrates this success ably. Surely a budget 2-CD set that included the all-time blues and


Chuck, Wolf and Bo. Rock ’n’ roll began here.


R&B greats from the earlier part of this set (Jackie Brenton’s ‘Rocket 88’, Chuck Berry’s ‘Maybellene’, Bo Diddley’s‘I’m A Man’, Little Walter’s ‘My Babe’, Muddy Water’s ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’) and the mid-60s soul of Fontella Bass’s ‘Rescue Me’ and Ramsey Lewis’s smooth mod-jazz classic ‘Wade In The Water’ would have served the intended target audience better though? Not unlike the Nuggets boxes, each disc mirrors a different


label design across the Checker, Chess and Cadet years, but that’s about it. The A5 book design with perfunctory details of each artist and a short summary behind the Marshall Chess empire pales in comparison to some of the detailed anthologies that the Bear Family or Ace have issued. Musically, of course, this is faultless. If under the same


impression as the pre-reborn blues fan Will Hodgkinson, who was tormented by flabby white men singing ‘I’m A Man’ at village fetes, this set will restore your faith in the music that paved the way for 99.5% of the artists written about in this very magazine. Plus the later soul, funk and psychier moments depict how the label progressed. Disc one covers the late ’40s through ’50s whilst four covers


later material. Sandwiched in between are some of the most recognisable and brilliant records ever made. There’s nary a dull moment, and the records contained within should certainly be in any self-respecting music fans’ libraries. This one could not live without Fontella Bass’s ‘Rescue Me’ or Marlene Shaw’s‘California Soul’, but there are 98 others, so just take your pick. Sadly, as I said at the beginning of this review, is there really


the kind of major market that Universal are expecting for this one fell swoop across the Chess legacy? Aurally amazing but I just sense that in this era, to get people to buy such lengthy sets they need everything, including the kitchen sink. And for those au fait with Chess there are just too many familiar entries. A very hefty meal for sure, but one that misses the starters and


after dinner coffee.


andy@shindig-magazine.com


55


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76