Music: Pioneering record label founder Phil Chess dies at 95

This comes on the heels of yesterday's post on the re-emergence of Chuck Berry at 90, with a new record.

-Chicago Sun-Times

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

Mr. Chess and his brother Leonard Chess arrived in America as little boys, two Jewish immigrant kids from Poland. They started Chess in 1950, recording 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.”

Chess could be described as the midwife. In 1951, the label released what some consider the first rock record: “Rocket ’88,” by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats, including a young Ike Turner.

In 1977, a Chess record went to outer space. The Voyager mission carried recordings including Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.”

Mr. Chess died Tuesday evening at his 30-acre ranch in Tucson, said his daughter, Pam. For decades, he kept in touch with many Chess artists, she said. “He talked to B.B. King all the time on the phone. He ran into Ramsey Lewis six or so years ago in San Diego,” she said. “He talked to Chuck Berry.”

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

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

Before founding the label, the Chess brothers owned the Macomba Lounge at 39th and Cottage Grove, said Phil Chess’ son, Terry. When one of the club’s performers was asked by someone else to record their music, “My father and my uncle looked at each other and said, ‘Why don’t we do it?’ ” Terry Chess said.

Neither played an instrument or knew much about music. “The Chess Brothers didn’t literally make the music in the studio, but they got it out the door and reaped the rewards,” Nadine Cohodas wrote in a book about Chess, “Spinning Blues Into Gold.”

Blues and R&B classics poured out of Chess, performed by countless artists who put their own spin on the songs. While at Chess, Willie Dixon wrote “(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man” for Waters, as well as “You Need Love.”

Live Music: Get Festive! Choosing the region's best music festivals

Take your pick from jazz and blues to techno, reggae and soul and you’ll find a music festival in the Caribbean that will keep your toes tapping and your hips swaying.  Check out our musical calendar and snag a front row seat at the Caribbean’s longest running jazz festival in St. Lucia, get groovy to soul sounds on the beach in Aruba, blues on the beach in Nevis and rock all night to a reggae beat in Jamaica.

What started as a single show to celebrate the January 15 birthday of reggae homegrown hero Patrick ‘Tony Rebel’ Barrett has morphed into a mainstay on the Jamaican music calendar. For two days — January 15 and 16 — Rebel Salute honors roots and reggae at the Plantation Cove in St. Ann. With a nod to the Rastafarian lifestyle, the no meat and no alcohol policy makes the festival family-friendly with food vendors dishing up vegetarian options to music fans of all ages. On the bill this year are old-school reggae singer Johnny Clarke and boy band Inner Circle. Sponsored by the Jamaica Reggae Industry Association, fans honor Bob Marley’s February 6 birthday with a month-long series of celebrations and concerts at Reggae Village at Ranny Williams Entertainment Centre on Hope Road in Kingston: the heart and soul of reggae and the city where Marley was born.

Brand new on the music scene, SXMusic is the island's first electronic music festival from March 9 – 13. Named for the three-letter airport code (SXM) of the Princess Juliana International Airport, performances take place at a host of venues on both sides of the island like Kontiki Beach, Loterie Farm, Port De Plaisance Country Club and Le Dreams Beach Bar. The five-day fest impresses with an international lineup like Welsh DJ Jamie Jones and Cuban-born electronic spinner Maceo Plex to Dubfire, Iranian-American Grammy winning techno disc jockey and record producer. To be seen, the hip and happening head to after-parties on the beach, in lavish villas and on super yachts that keep the vibe all night long.

 big festival on the small island with miles of pink sandy beaches, 'Eleuthera…All that Jazz' is music for a good cause with profits from ticket sales donated  to the Haynes Library. From March 30 — April 3, the festival is a beacon for global artists like jazz singer Gabrielle Stravelli adored for her unique take on American greats like Duke Ellington and Dolly Parton, American pianist and composer Art Hirahara whose latest recording Libations & Meditations is taking the jazz world by storm and New York’s King Solomon Hicks packing his jazzy guitar sounds to the good time festival. Venues include the Rainbow Inn in Governor’s Harbour, St Patrick’s Church and on the final evening, musical jam session at the Fish Fry in Anchor Bay is a free show from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

With St Kitts in view across the channel, The Nevis Blues Festival is center stage on the coconut-lined beach at Oualie Bay from April 14 — 16.  The best soul, funk and yes, the blues heat up the festival that was so popular last year, it’s making a comeback in 2016. Gates open at 7 p.m. with no more than 1200 music fans let in each night. On the bill, British bluesman Ian Siegel, American guitarist Kirk Fletcher acclaimed for his cool riffs, Belfast-born singer Simon McBride and the bluesy Rhythm Chiefs from the Netherlands. With roots in Nevis, Denise Gordon has performed her brand of gospel for the Queen and making music with long hollow pipes; Sugar Hill String Band is fun for the whole family. Single tickets are priced at USD$45 while a VIP ticket at USD$150 ups the ante with reserved seating for dining and plenty of fine wine sipping.

hat started more than a quarter century ago as an intimate jam session on the beach is now the longest running independent music festival in the Eastern Caribbean and the hottest ticket on the island. From April 21 — 24, Moonsplash is beach reggae greatness at the Dune Preserve Beach Bar that is cobbled together from battered coconut trees and old shipwrecks. On the sand at Rendezvous Bay, the beach blowout at the beach bar is hosted by reggae hero Bankie Banx and is a showcase for international reggae artists, a proving ground for new talent and a musical reunion of many of reggae’s finest. Tickets sell out early as the 2016 lineup is announced closer to show time.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the longest running jazz festival in the Caribbean. Spanning nine days from April 29 — May 8, St. Lucia Jazz attracts thousands to shows performed by more than 50 acoustic, fusion and new age jazz artists from the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe and the U.S. With the dramatic Piton peaks in view from virtually everywhere on the island, stages are set up at 15 venues from picturesque Pigeon Island, Derek Walcott Square (named for the island's Nobel Prize winning poet), Fond D’Or Heritage Park and even the down-home fishing village called Gros Islet. Be sure to check out side shows like Sulphur Springs Jazz at the world’s only drive-in-volcano and Jazz Rhythms at Rodney Bay Mall.

A host of festivals keeps Curacao rocking all year long, with the International Blue Seas Festivalleading the pack from May 6 — 7.  With stages in the laid-back neighborhood near Willemstadcalled the Pietermaai District with its centuries-old mansions and funky bars and restaurants, performers taking the stage include Rock and Roll Hall of Fame great Leon Russell and California-based Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real and their infectious cowboy hippie surf sounds. Book your tickets early for the Curacao North Sea Jazz Festival September 1 — 3 at the World Trade Center near Piscadera Bay in Willemstad. This year marks the seventh year for this popular festival, with crowd-pleasing performers like the Dominican ‘King of Merengue’ Juan Luis Guerraand the Zouk band Kassav from Guadeloupe belting out their get-up-on-your-feet brand of carnival music.

Live Music: Country Club revolution? The Jam is back!

Despite hosting rapper Fifty Cent ("the last entertainment show ever held on that fairway" states former manager), the Constant Spring Golf Club (est. 1902) is not the place one might readily associate with free--wheeling, experimental musical improvisation featuring a cast "of thousands" (exaggeration of course).

Some of the best instrumental and vocal talents  - homegrown and those from overseas - gathered incrementally by the Club's Fairway Tavern to expound musically. The entire cast is too large to mention, but guitarists Wayne McGregor and Jason Worton, musical siblings Joel (keys) and Jeremy Ashbourne (drums) and members of other noted jam bands, including Skygrass, From the Deep and the long absent Belgian guitarist Gerd Baens (now playing mouth harp).

The result was a lively but not overpowering potpourri of dub, rap, blues, rock and other hyrbid or previously unnamed genre that sprang to the individual and collective minds

Poetry: THE ONE AND ONLY DON COSMIC

Mind blowin'
Man in the street bringing
a new sound
moving sweaty bodies in the
City heat
even at midnight there's still no
Goodbyes
Rastafari dipping in the
Glass Bucket
Bad-luckied
born under a
Bad sign
never duck it just
roll chance like a
spliff and tuck it
behind your
Ear
under your hat
Tilted back casual but never
slack
Dirt n your
cup
blowin' and stirrin' it
Up
in Standard Time
Make you cry
Make you
fly
with wings of a dove
The rest of them playin' hard but
you
cruisin' above
in your own stratosphere
Just you and the
Sound
horn licks bright enough to light up
the Kingston sky
and last for
Years
Half century on it's still
dancing in our ears
droppin' legs
A real island shuffle
melody muted but never
Muffled
Rythm so
demanding the dancer had to
die
They try
to say you were mad but
we know how they lie
They said it of
Bedward and Bogle and
even Garvey too
so what else were they
going to do to
You
but punch a one-way ticket to
Bellevue
But what use is a
straight-jacket
against  a flaming heart and a
beautiful mind
Nevermore
shall we see your kind
Modern-day living got so many in a
bind
We've forgotten
that staying loose is a
virtue
instead no one trust no one cause
Everyone
will hurt you
Yet the music that they
refuse
it is the healer
Rockfort blues
Kingston rock
From the hills of
Wareika to
the downtown dock
where silent cannons echo
Guns of Navarone
let it be
known
the spirit
has flown
guard the throne
of the once and forever
king of the trombone
The one and only
Don Cosmic

Music: Blues for Nevis

The first Nevis Blues Festival is scheduled for April 16 to 19 at the Sundowner Stage in the island’s Oualie Bay district. The three-night festival will feature award-winning musician and British blues hall of famer Ian Siegal; Zac Harmon, recently named XM Satellite Radio’s “Best New Blues Artist,” and U.K.-based jazz, gospel and blues singer Denise Gordon, whose parents are from Nevis.

“We’re excited to premiere the Nevis Blues Festival as our newest cultural offering,” said Mark Brantley, Nevis’ minister of tourism. “Our aim is to present a highly anticipated annual event that celebrates both local and international talent while reflecting the beauty and cultural experience of Nevis.”

The Nevis Blues Festival will “complement the natural, intimate and relaxed setting of the island, allowing music lovers to enjoy the soulful sounds of blues that will fill the night air," according to organizers.

The event will also differ from other Caribbean music festivals, which attract theater- and stadium-sized audiences. The Nevis Blues festival will be a “small, intimate festival, where fences and security guards are not only unnecessary but would look absurd,” say organizers. The small scale is appropriate on an island with only 12,000 residents and about 400 hotel rooms.

Live Music: Ladies First, as Jazz in the Gardens returns

Add caption

Maria Myrie

Keisha Patterson

There are some things that just be picked and resumed with little hitch or sense of loss. The Jazz in the Gardens series of live concerts, which had enjoyed a seemingly unassailable run at the Gardens of the Jamaica Pegasus, made a sprightly return on Sunday, after a lengthy cessation, brought on both by the change in ownership of the hotel - with its attendant physical renovations - and a change in the sponsorship climate that left the iconic event somewhat in the lurch.

It returned, with customary host Michael Anthony Cuff Snr getting things underway in the usual manner, complimenting the audience and encouraging patrons in the rapidly-filling ground to acknowledge each other.

Then it was on to the music, provided no less a stalwart group: Chris McDonald on keys (and chipping in with vocals as is his wont), Adrian Henry, aka "Jerks" on electric bass, Desi Jones on drums and Othniel Lewis leading on keyboards, having dubbed his quartet The Fryers (think "minnows" or "sprats" if you're non-Jamaican).

Of course, they were anything but lightweight musically and whipped through two instrumental selections before the evening's first vocalist (in a Ladies-themed night) took the stage. Slender and slinky in figure-hugging black (a motif it seemed for the night), Morrison hit an early high with a gender-friendly rendition of Ben E King's "I Who Have Nothing". It was a height that she would not again reach despite a workman-like rendition of Anita Baker's 'Body & Soul". Pharell's global smash "Happy" was clearly a well-intentioned choice but ended up not having the desired impact, at least not to these ears.

It was a similar situation for the following act, Yanique DaCosta, who failed to deliver any discernible measure of feeling in her renditions, which included the well-worn "At Last" and Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine"

Leave it then to Maria Myrie to renew audience engagement with her trademark sass and  and sweetly emotive vocals. She sashayed her way through Sergio Mendes' pop-samba classic "mas Que Nada" and scatted her way (partly) through Dinah Washington's 'What A Difference (A Day Made)" before hopping genres into reggae with a medley of classic Marcia Griffiths, including the inescapable "Feel Like Jumping" and "Steppin Outa Babylon"

Patterson was most faithful to the title genre, bouncing in on "Orange-Colored Sky" (made popular by Nat King Cole and easing out - several selections later - on the Rodgers and Hart standard, "My Funny Valentine" as well as the iconic blues fever. In this she continued another theme for the night, ladies re-working songs either written or originally recorded by men. Peggy Lee's version of "Fever" is the most widely known, but the original recording is by a blues artist known as Little Willie John.

Sadly, this writer had to leave it there, with Pam Hall and show-closer Karen Smith still to come, but it was a solid resumption to a music series that is still good value in many ways, not least of which having some fidelity to the word "Jazz" in its title.

The Sound - and the Cost - of the Blues: Cadillac Records

The predictably rapid advent of Beyonce as a featured actress (following Dreamgirls) and the casting of Adrien Brody (he of the surprise Halle Berry Oscars smooch) and the likes of Cedric the Entertainer and Mos Def led to  a lot of hype around this movie on its release nearly four years ago.

Of course, the hype was not enough and it opened to a middling reception both critically and commercially. But now, with the dust having settled, and with our own ludicrously misnamed "Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival" again on the horizon, the quasi-documentary feature on the history of the  hugely influential Chess Records label is worth a look, or a second look, as the case may be.

Polish immigrant Leonard Chess parlayed his ear for talent, freewheeling nature and general disregard for convention into the powerhouse of blues, rock n' roll, jazz and even gospel, and the home (commercially and otherwise), of such legends as Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Etta James and even Chuck Berry, the latter still duck-walking his way across the stages of the world today some 60 years later.

There are a lot of the expected elements: every third word or so, especially from the men, is "muthaf---"; theres' open and subtle race discrimination and a lot of sex, inter-racial and otherwise. But director and writer  Darnell Martin ( a woman, despite the masculine-sounding first name) knows how to mix it together and move it along. And of course, there is the music which, whether simulated or actually played, is a near irresistible force; it just gets into you. One scene, where harmonica genius Little Walter takes vocal duties, on the chart-topper "My Babe" is a sequence of such sheer sonic and visual magic that it hardly needs the cliched inter-cutting showing the record rising up the charts. Similarly, when Berry singlehandedly "integrates" screaming black and whites fans at a concert, the visual narrative really soars.

But while such flights are few and far between, the rest of it is just good enough to earn our sustained attention, and the cast (especially Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters, Columbus Short as Walter and Mos Def as Berry) mostly turn in professional-grade performances. Here, we return to Beyonce who, in the role of earthy blues chanteuse Etta James, is really a non-starter. Sure, her musical numbers show an admirable level of restraint, but in her speaking parts and interactions, she comes across as hollow and devoid of genuine feeling.

But despite this, Cadillac Records (the switch may have something to do with the fact that the Chess Records catalog is owned by Universal, while the film was released by Sony Pictures), is primarily the story of how Black music became the pop music of America and the world, and in this respect, its worth taking in, even if  you don't know the difference between "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Smokestack Lighnin'"