Up the Mississippi from Memphis, the rapidly expanding metropolis offered an escape from the cotton plantations of the South. Leonard was soon married to Revetta Sloan, and the couple took up lodgings in a white area that bordered one of Chicago’s growing black neighborhoods, where they soon had a son, Marshall.Ĭhicago was an obvious draw for poor, southern African-Americans. Phil, meanwhile, was enjoying the football scholarship that took him to Bowling Green University in Kentucky. But when the latter was killed by a car in 1940, Joe took on a new partner – his eldest son, Leonard. Joe Chess was a hard-working man who ran a number of businesses with his brother-in-law, by now renamed Morris. “This is your father,” she told little Philip. And so it was that Celia, May, Leonard and Philip were introduced to Joe Chess. As was standard practice, by the time the family arrived in Chicago, they had taken on new American identities. Fearing refusal at Ellis Island’s immigration gateway, where only the fit and healthy were generally welcomed, Cyrla made the boy walk unaided through customs. Even then, the journey was fraught with tension, not least as Lejzor had developed problems with his leg, necessitating his wearing a brace to walk. It would be a further six years before Cyrla and the children were able to follow Yasef across the Atlantic. Along with his nephew, Cyrla’s brother Moische Pulik, Yossel invited Yasef. Cyrla’s uncle Yossel Pulik had moved to the States at the turn of the century, settling, alongside some 100,000 other Jewish immigrants, in Chicago.īy the early 20s, Yossel’s shoemaking business was going well enough to send for more family members to make the journey to the New World. Yasef was a shoemaker while Cyrla looked after their three surviving children (three others had died), Malka, Lejzor and Fiszel. To describe their living conditions as basic would be to put it mildly, and, like many of their compatriots, the Czyz family dreamed of a new life in the United States. Yasef and Cyrla Czyz lived in the small Jewish town of Motele, Poland. Listen to the best of Chess Records on Spotify. And while Marshall may point to the story as an example of the unfashionable nature of the blues at that time, it is undeniable that Chess Records – and its founders, Polish immigrant brothers Leonard and Phil Chess – played a bigger part than any other record label history in making the blues a worldwide phenomenon. That pretty much everyone else who was there, from the other Stones to Muddy himself, has categorically denied the story never seems to get in the way of it being trotted out. It says something about how unfashionable the blues had become at that time.” “But Keith maintains to this day that it actually happened… I guess people want to believe that it’s true. The story is supposed to illustrate the disdain with which black musicians were treated in their own country, but did it actually happen? Is there any truth to this legend? “No truth in it at all,” insists Marshall Chess, son of Chess Records founder Leonard. One of the most-repeated stories about the history of Chess Records sees The Rolling Stones, on their first visit to the US, arriving at the label’s studios to record, only to find their hero, Muddy Waters, at the top of a stepladder, roller in hand, painting the ceiling.
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