A tour-de-force history of Chess Records and the business of Rock & Roll. On the south side of Chicago in the late 1940s two immigrants - one a Jew born in Eastern Europe, the other a black blues singer from Mississippi - met and changed the course of musical history. Muddy Waters electrified the blues, and Leonard Chess recorded it. Soon Bo Diddly and Chuck Berry added a dose of pulsating rhythm, and Chess Records captured that too. Rock & roll had arrived, and an industry was born. In a book as vibrantly and exuberantly written as the music and people it portrays, Rich Cohen tells the engrossing story of how Leonard Chess, with the other record men, made this new sound into a multi-billion-dollar business - aggressively acquiring artists, hard-selling distributors, riding the crest of a wave that would crash over a whole generation. Full of absorbing lore and animated by a deep love for popular music, The Record Men is a smash hit.
- ISBN10 1861977662
- ISBN13 9781861977663
- Publish Date 26 May 2005
- Publish Status Remaindered
- Out of Print 29 July 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Profile Books Ltd
- Edition Main
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 224
- Language English