Phil Chess, co-founder of Chicago’s Chess Records, dead at 95

Phil Chess, co-founder of Chicago’s legendary Chess Records, a label many credit with helping to invent rock ‘n’ roll, has died in Tucson, Ariz., at 95.

In 1947, with his brother Leonard Chess, the Jewish immigrant from Poland started the label that recorded Muddy Waters, Etta James, Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy and other top musicians who spread the gospel of the blues. Teens in England and around the world heard the so-called “race music” Chess helped popularize, and the cross-pollination helped birth rock.

As Waters once put it, “The blues had a baby, and they named it rock ‘n’ roll.”

Mr. Chess died overnight, according to Craig Glicken, a nephew, who said he’d been in fairly good health, given his age.

The music scene would have been very different without him and his brother, Chicago bluesman and club owner Buddy Guy said Wednesday.

“Phil and Leonard Chess were cuttin’ the type of music nobody else was paying attention to — Muddy, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Sonny Boy, Jimmy Rogers, I could go on and on — and now you can take a walk down State Street today and see a portrait of Muddy that’s 10 stories tall,” Guy said. “The Chess brothers had a lot to do with that. They started Chess Records and made Chicago what it is today — the blues capital of the world. I’ll always be grateful for that.”

Roger Ebert, the late Chicago Sun-Times film critic and blogger, once summarized the power and influence of Chess this way: “The former studios of Chess Records on South Michigan in Chicago are as important to the development of rock ‘n’ roll as the Sun Records in Memphis. You could make a good case, in fact, that without Chess there might have been no Sun, and without Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, there might have been no Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis or Carl Perkins. Rock ‘n’ roll flowed directly, sometimes almost note by note, from rhythm and blues.”

Ebert was writing about the 2010 film “Who Do You Love,” which told the improbable story of the Chess brothers, or “how two Jewish immigrant kids from Poland sold the family junkyard to start a music club on the black South Side and helped launch the musical styles that have influenced everything since.”

The genesis of Chess Records was dramatized in the 2008 movie “Cadillac Records,” featuring Beyonce, Adrien Brody, Mos Def and Jeffrey Wright.

The Rolling Stones made an early pilgrimmage to Chess and used the studio’s address for the name of a 1965 instrumental, “2120 S. Michigan Avenue.”

The building was designated a Chicago city landmark in 1990.

Chess helped produce what some consider the first rock record: 1951’s “Rocket ’88,” by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats, which included a young Ike Turner.

Perennial classics of blues and R&B came out of Chess, performed by countless artists who put their own spin on the songs. While at Chess, Dixon wrote “(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man” for Waters, as well as “You Need Love,” which Led Zeppelin later reinterpreted as “Whole Lotta Love.”

Also at Chess, Dixon wrote “Wang Dang Doogle” for Koko Taylor. Howlin’ Wolf’s “Little Red Rooster” was recorded at Chess. In 1969, Fleetwood Mac cut a double LP there, “Fleetwood Mac in Chicago,” featuring Dixon, Guy, Otis Spann, Honeyboy Edwards and “Shakey” Horton.

Phil Chess would downplay his contributions to music, once saying, “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

A private service is planned in Tucson, his nephew said.