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Phil Chess, the legendary co-founder of Chess Records, a label many credit with helping to invent rock ‘n roll, has died in Tucson, Ariz., at 95. With his brother, Leonard Chess, the Polish immigrants started the Chicago label that recorded Muddy Waters, Etta James, Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy and a cast of other top musicians, spreading the gospel of the blues. Teens in England and around the world heard the music, and the cross-pollination helped birth rock.
Mr. Chess had been in fairly good health, given his age, said a nephew, Craig Glicken. He died overnight in Tucson. The late Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert 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.”
Phil Chess, legendary founder of Chess Records, dead at 95
Mr. Chess had been in fairly good health, given his age, said a nephew, Craig Glicken. He died overnight in Tucson. The late Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert 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.”
Phil Chess, legendary founder of Chess Records, dead at 95