I noted with interest the passing of Phil Chess earlier this week. Though I would not put too much into it, it was fitting that Chess, a fixture in the Chicago music scene for well over half a century, died the week the Cubs made it to the World Series for the first time since 1945. Phil and his older brother Leonard were the founders of Chess Records, one of the independent labels that sprung up after the Second World War to record the urban blues. The brothers started in what we’ll euphemistically call the entertainment industry when in 1938 they began operating juke joints catering to the South Side’s growing African-American community. I’m simplifying here but when their Macomba Lounge burned down in 1950 they used the insurance to fund what would become Chess. The brothers would spend the next decades recording Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, Etta James and scores of others.

Chess Records Studios as seen in 2012

The story truly began during World War One. In The Warmth of Other Sons Isabel Wilkerson notes that the Chicago Defender mentioned in passing in its February 5, 1916 edition that northern railroads were facilitating the movement of African-American laborers from the South to the North to work in the munitions plants. After the war the Chess brothers were part of that other Great Migration; their father, Yasef Czyz, came to the United States from Motal, Poland (today part of Belarus) just after the Great War. He soon sent for his wife and children. By the time Leonard and Philip reached their mid-twenties the blues too had come age. Leonard in particular spent much of the early 1950s traveling not only the South but through Northern industrial hubs such as Detroit, St. Louis and Gary, Indiana–essentially anywhere within driving distance from Chicago where Africans-Americans lived, worked, and socialized–to plug the Chess catalog and scout for new talent. Phil was the quieter, younger brother who kept things running.

I have always been conflicted about the Chess Brothers and their cohorts. On the one hand there is no question that they recorded, disseminated, and thus saved an essential component of American–and today, world–culture. On the other hand their enterprise was built on a foundation of exploitation of that talent. That exploitation became only more apparent when the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and others came along and began making real money; in the 1960s those once-pesky things like contracts, copyrights and royalties went from ancillary issues to matters of serious economic consequence. One can’t argue that it is not part of the story.

The Chess family has maintained–not without merit–that while their business practices were sometimes unorthodox, they looked after their artists in their own ways. This meant things like paying for funerals and medical expenses, occasionally bailing someone out of jail, and dirty work like paying for abortions in those years prior to Roe v Wade. Let’s not kid ourselves; we’re talking about bluesmen here. It is a messy and human story from a time when America was a harder place and people did what they had to do to get along. Today the blues is securely canonized, but such was not always the case. The life and times of Phil Chess were–and still are–part of why it is so mythologized.

(image/Steve Browne & John Verkleir via Wikimedia Commons)

I was saddened to read the other day of the passing of Clark Terry. The great trumpeter was ninety-four and had been active well into his 10th decade. Just last fall he was the subject of a documentary, Keep On Keepin’ On. That film captures Mr. Terry mentoring a young protege, a role to which Terry was well suited. He was a mentor to many of the leading jazz figures of the day. Pupils included Quincy Jones and Miles Davis. Terry he had an illustrious career in his own right also. Over the decades he worked with Duke Ellington and Frank Sinatra to name two.

Terry was born in 1920. To put this in perspective: this was one year after the Harlem Hellfighters returned from France. James Reese Europe, the leader of the 369th Regimental Band that had done so much to bring jazz across the Atlantic during the Great War, died just a few months after the Hellfighters returned to the United States. During the Second World War Terry himself would play in a military jazz band, just as Europe and his men had done during the First. Terry went through basic training in Waukegan, Illinois, the site north of Chicago on Lake Michigan reserved for the training of African-American troops. He then played in bands on bases throughout the country.

After the war Terry settled in New York and was part of the jazz scene. He joined what one might call the African-American expatriate community in Corona, Queens. Corona in the 1940s-50s was an enclave of detached houses to which many black musicians moved to enjoy a quieter lifestyle away from the nightclubs of the city. Neighbors included Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, and saxophonist Cannonball Adderley.

Here is some hot music for a cold evening.

I discovered last night that pianist Marian McPartland died in  August. Modern audiences will most remember McPartland for her NPR show Piano Jazz, which began broadcasting in 1978 and ran until she was well into her nineties. There was a reason why musicians loved sharing a stage and microphone with Marian; she knew everyone in the jazz world for three quarters of a century and was encyclopedia of knowledge. If you watch her scenes from the 1994 documentary A Great Day in Harlem, about the 1958 Art Kane photograph of the same name, you will see that.

One misconception of her, probably stemming from her intelligence and British accent, is that she was proper and genteel. In reality, Marian was tough as they came and could hold her own in a jazz world much different than the one we know today. It was less institutionalized, a world of dive night clubs, alcoholics, and late hours. People were tougher back in those days, less likely to speak in euphemism. They had, after all, lived through the Depression and the Second World War. Marian was unafraid to call something what it was. If feelings were hurt in the process, so be it.

The best known story of Marian McPartland is an exchange she had with Duke Ellington. Asked his thoughts after a performance, the Duke replied that “You play so many notes.” Initially she took this as a compliment to her technical prowess. Upon later reflection she realized it was an admonishment to curb her excesses. In music, as in life itself, it is what we leave out that often says the most. Thankfully for the rest of us Marian took Ellington’s advice to heart. Here is the proof.