Rock and Roll; Interview with Phil Chess and Marshall Chess [Part 3 of 4]

He was 21. Everywhere we go every camera five not how you got Ellis McDaniel here for a while. Oh dearly. Tell me about how you first met boded how he happened to come to pass and you are well-born didn't just appear on a corner of Forty seventh and I just just went to Cottage Grove used to play for nickels and dimes you know. But young kids and boy but named Jerome like a one armed kid and he said I say I taught them when they said yeah I got some good stuff so I will come on by and he came by and he played the Diddley which actually if you know boy delete your number so called hambone ambil where you been going again I should go to Italy. So they had that beat up. So he recorded Bo Didley and Sam have a studio.

And then he did. Next I was with my man my man. Yeah yeah he was a good boy but he was a country kid each got a boy but he actually was he was more of a country boy but he was also totally his guitar style. You know like we've never heard before he made his own guitars to you know don't be tired and that was the thing you firsthand notice and you don't want to beat the beat was there yeah you're something you've never heard before some you never heard before. Chess man your ears perked up it was something I never heard before we wanted to dig into it because we know that some things you didn't hear before had a good chance the sound always. And it just seemed like something that the kids would just be put on the radio one day. Then they drive all the all the wreckage chaffer drivers crazy. We don't have records and I don't think at that time we ever thought like we can sit around and say this will appeal to the kids know it was a fresh original new kind of worth taking a shot with to see if

you got reaction and that was a quick reaction quick quick quick. Anything different you know draw your attention and that was different. You know our formula was look for Original different things rather than look for what someone else is a good example of list Palmeri for when you do that. That was different. Thank you right away with the book. What do you think it was about Bocelli that made him great that made him Porton in rock n roll history to be his originality. He did not follow he did and he did not fall he was not a follower. After after that he could not write. A lot of songs he wrote when he always got back were going I love my baby love you love me so you had to have somebody to write for like Willie Dixon wrote. Can't judge a book by the cover. It took about two months from learned but he learned it that was much later. Oh yeah.

But it is quite a bit if you think that when I really did he thought he had a great but that beat was something that people copy oh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah to be done for instance he had in his original band Jerome Greene the play maracas the total Again a totally original song to have that rhythm section like that. And what was the drummers and heavy set right here. You know by the number Bo Diddley. He didn't he was an original guy he had women in his band. That's was the night he had a cookie he had different instruments he had electric violin and his band maracas and his band. He wasn't afraid to experiment he had more Squeezebox to hearten accordion. Recording he was different than the average blues guys he could do blues but he was taken somewhere else.

He was he was actually a young well let's say you like a young kid that came from the delta because he was I don't think he was too well educated but he was you know he was he was he was street wise. You even look like would you streetwise. When he went on and saw I was not at that time. That would be a classic. No it's not about the way he played as opposed to what he's supposed to play but was that kind of a breakthrough in getting Oh me oh yeah show yeah and tell me that story. Well I I don't remember how we got the call we got a call from NBC I believe it was on NBC was that something that was said in there too. Yes some network and they want to boy Diddley because it was a big record. And. Even then it was selling white. Yeah that song white yellow and black. Yeah both. One of our first record was sold but he he went up to New York and you know it's strange for him not to give up Chicago before he went up there and

I'm sure you're aware the story by what that song wonderfully what he played. Which. You don't need to pretend that that's story do you. Oh it was really hard to separate him. Thank you involvement with love. When we start I think you know I mean you know OK sorry about the distraction right. So tell me about Beau on the Ed Sullivan Show. What that meant for you and what that meant for our around the country what it meant

for us to actually watch for for the first time independent to get a network shot of an artist which is a breakthrough because automatically you can look for a good ten fold of sales over the next day to phone people screaming from everywhere in the country and never had that before. Yeah. And so that to invent does and like my nephew said that was really a breakthrough of actually a first for white kids who were to go into buying. I stuff just black music in general generally black music wasn't exposed to white kids. No no Jackie would play it there you know no white Jackie would play it was racism on the radio. Oh I just fit in there right. I took a record up to Boston. You're telling time I will mention a Jackie's name I get my ten records when I was on a road trip you look through all this I played just I plan to

just do it. I don't play black. That's fine with me. OK let's let's let's talk about sex. Tell me about when you when you first met him and how you came to record him first. Well Chuck Berry walked into our studio at 40 755 cottage for huge fortune 50 cottage and he walked in with tape and decided it was different again different different and we ours wasn't. We aren't going to lose that with the other side was different I read it when I know when I read was a big hillbilly hit years ago that when Maybelline was first called out that no I think they came from. Really. So we just didn't understand. I like thing but he says he changed the lyrics a little bit.

So today I'll be back in a couple weeks and we have a comeback and he came back he was at Mercury and I turned him down and he went across street and he came to us and we want to talk to my brother Tom go ahead. We're going to come up with different lyrics. And he did and I was I would win to see my daughter and camp at that time and Eagle River Wisconsin and I just reckon Maybelline got it and I called my brother after I heard he said You better get your butt back he said we can so much Jordan we don't have any records he says the diff the phone is going off the hook and then we took the Alan Freed and the car I remember that. Yeah he drove it to New York to L.A. and then again to Alan Black music to white kids and you'll find Mickey shore at that time you know we just got in a brick you could you could see what but a trend of what they were playing at. Why could we start

going for this stuff. Not so much the muddy water stuff you know but the up tempo stuff you know like Chuck Berry more deadly. What did you hear. And Chuck Berry when he first came that made it sound different it was just different. I mean our playing was different the backbeat was different it was the birth of the beat you know we didn't know what it was and it was just again that same chess formula here something different something fresh effective to beat was never enough. My brother one up in the studio got a phone book and took a. Drum stick begun to keep in time but he just banged it just to get to be had here. I mean we get all kind of crazy stuff. I piano was old upright you know I want to tell Rosa. All the roller piano piano roll. General we took out the rulers that was maybe man. Yeah something country. Yeah

yeah that had a country feel to it. It doesn't have the country feel a country got country is today but at that time what country feel was you had a lot of country in it. Now we do know why songs like that you know this is a country it was it was different. It's hard for me to blame why we wanted that gut feeling that all of our records were based on gut feeling not intellectual at all. Did you encourage him in that direction of Maybelline Rather than we were just kind of can he come to you mostly singing. They came with two sides. We were the maid really and we ours and and itself could have been a hit not that that was a good name but it could have been a blues hit and I think you really wanted to be a blues singer. Oh yeah. He really was. Why him. That's what he had you know the tape in that time.

But it was also an exception. Yeah very very good. But he didn't start writing those other killers till after me like a second I remember. Like this is a full second record he wrote you know live Memphis talk radio never left late. Night you know when you get sick it's not sure how much longer you got it. It was time to talk about writers. His lyrics really becoming your mark. Talk about how you always have a spiral notebook he would show me a song after song after song and written and pen or pencil very crudely and very teenage oriented.

He must have liked a lot of you know you know girls like are running down the highway. Yeah. Cadillac Yeah I love cattle and like Cadillacs doing about nice Yeah you know that's been above very near that one yeah he liked cars and he liked girls we all do. Yeah that's normal but he's a he's a very clever fellow. I mean you've preferred that. That time when the greatest for that kind of music you know for young pretty young kids he had it great intuition as to what young white teenagers their lives I mean he he wrote about their experiences and what was going through their mind. Very very I don't know if you remember when when he was away for a while and he came back in to us back in the U.S. a writer came back and that's what he did he was going to come back.

What did you think of him when you when he first came your first impressions of him as a person. He was like I say yeah you know he's a very nice person he's quiet no profanity. I didn't drink or smoke. Never did I don't smoke I don't know I know you know smoked as a kid there I always thought he was you know I didn't even know what the word eccentric meant but I thought he was very strange. We used to go across the street to bat's restaurant. I would go with him. Come on. And he would order strawberry shortcake to start. Yeah and then a pickle he would order the craziest combination of food you know he was always and he was also very seen with my father and him very very much with me really close with my father very close to my brother Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry were so close to my father. They were like you know just like family. During that period when his guitar playing that there was a kind of rock.

Yeah. Like like I think you mentioned earlier it had a lot of country feel to it. But we didn't we didn't we think it's rock and we said this guy plays a different style. Let's feature it. It must be sound that's my one of things they like and we would put him with the way we made records and chess was to get the best out of an artist. That was what we would do. That's what my father taught me to do in the studio was to get the best out of them and we saw that if I played guitar we'd make sure he played guitar and if a girl could sing if you push him to sing the best you know over and over Take want take two take three. You know it really would report us at that time because we get the studio. There were more mothers and. Sons Annette said in that three hours and you could say new year I mean but that was the closeness we push artists that we put what we had it was pushing it was pushing much more than that nowadays where they do overdubs we would push to get a performance we get as much as we could out of three hours. We had a three hour union contract a lot of times.

Oh yeah. But you see let's cut here we. Can't tell me about cultural change. Well I had a lucky experience I was born in 1942 so in 1955 during the like the beginning of rock n roll I was 13 years old so I had the great experience of being brought up in this great music family also being a teenager myself. Also knowing these black artist from the time I was born so and looking back and having thought about it a lot laying in bed late at night I often got the feeling that he had. Blacks coming up from the south really from you know connected to slavery coming from the deep south to Chicago getting jobs in Chicago and Detroit and factories making money for the first time buying cars. Then you had this whole young white population of teenagers who were coming out of really a lot of

repression from the early 50s and all of the sun the bee and lyrics joined up and they sort of joined together the black energy and the white and the young white teen energy to cause the birth of rock n roll. They were they rode they rode each other right out and then it sort of split up later into into Motown into R&B but there was that brief period where the black music just totally pumped up. The beginning of rock n roll with the white musicians and it just it was it was just a great time for change with blacks and whites and rock n roll was one of the vehicles for it. Well give a short answer to this question and not start a rock n roll. I would say he was old news. I would say rock n roll was started by a cultural need for

change. It just happened by itself thing. Things of that magnitude happened by themselves it wasn't any one specific person it was just blacks whites America and that's the great thing about America you know and specially at that time it was like a volcano ready to explode and rock n roll just just was born it was a vehicle for change and it still is a vehicle for change. You know you know discussing what I just started rocking on my you know what I know I thought I might be prejudiced but I think you're very good. I believe you did. You know the critic and Elvis I don't believe so well. It was scary you know. Can you tell us about chess heroes. Well I was young in my 20s and I really wanted to go to Europe. So I convinced my father my uncle to let me

go revamp our distribution. At that time we had a deal with Decca Records in London Decca you know where Lewis and I went over and through a music attorney in New York I went to see him Louis Benjamin Benjamin was the head of Pi records and that was the first contract I made on my own I made a contract with pie records for the chess distribution in England. And it all started from from then we even had on pile we had Howlin Wolf even on the chart Smokestack Lightning on the white charts and piety became a very hot record company one of the New English record companies and we sort of rode along with it and the English discovered chess really. The real fanatics always know it but the mainstream English music lovers discovered it when you when it was a kind of gesture. I was aware because I was getting many letter letters at that time from him and I was getting visitors. The Vernon brothers who had blue horizon

records they came to Chicago. There was a Chess Records appreciation society we can eat we can believe that they would come to Chicago and want to see our master book. It would be like we're bringing out the Dead Sea Scrolls you know the English are so eccentric they would look at these books and they would tremble and they open them. We were we were aware of it. And also I was quite shocked because when I first went to England I was being asked from interviews from BBC from. All kinds of music papers and it was shocking to us that people understood we had done a Jagger Richards again. Yes. Not really at the time although I was told that later on in his first few trips No I didn't meet Jagger and Richards till the stones had had some initial success and then came to Chicago to record at our studios I think it was their second album liner records.

Yeah now we learn records you came in well like everybody in the world were going to win or just studios. I didn't help and everybody want to come to chairs they wanted to check you know you know what they started out doing all chests. I always used to say that they wanted to mimic. They wanted to they would have loved to have done Chess Records to be exactly like the originals but it came out like the Rolling Stones which was great. And from there they went on their own in fact to put 21 21 in the title and yelled All right and I named the song after I address. I remember that was the first time we had experience with groupies remember they painted all over. OH MY GOD THEY'RE BUILDING. They had a man Data Manager summary command right that's why I came with him he was on a Saturday and I had my daughter down and I just. And they took pictures with him. And you know they're still the Stones and Beatles had began. I mean that was already a happening thing. But I'll tell you in Chicago in the heart of the Midwest we had seen people that looked or acted like

the Rolling Stones they were real characters again after coming from Chess Records we had Howlin Wolf Sonny Well Williamson you know all those kind of people they were. We weren't that shocked at being but they were much different than most white people that you saw at the time their hair the way they looked. They were drinking hard liquor out of the bottle that wasn't really happening very big in Chicago at that time. They were very friendly way. The money was there and money Willie did so well and we really wanted to get them to do our songs now we got Willie to come by hoping that they would get over the years that many of our songs but. We treated them. They had to so the fellow were going to die. Brian Jones he was the one I brought back to the office I brought I remember being Brian Jones back to my father and I go into there they still share an office in the back of the building and then I packed each of them up a big box of Chess Records with my brother look me and I looked

into who are going through who are those freaks you know. OK this is right. Carol 60 want to take that. Away.