Machers and Rockers: Chess Records and the Business of Rock and Roll

by Rich Cohen

A tour-de-force history of Jews, blues, and the birth of a new industry.

On the south side of Chicago in the late 1940s, two immigrants—one a Jew born in Russia, 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, Machers and Rockers is a smash hit. 12 illustrations.

Author Biography: Rich Cohen, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, is the author of Tough Jews, The Avengers, and Lake Effect. He lives in New York City.

Genres: Music, History, Nonfiction, Society

222 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

RICH COHEN is the author of Sweet and Low (FSG, 2006), Tough Jews, The Avengers, The Record Men, and the memoir Lake Effect. His work has appeared in many major publications, and he is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. He lives with his family in Connecticut.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Coh...

Reviews

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rich Cohen is, at times, almost the Jewish answer to Nick Tosches. I loved his book TOUGH JEWS and decided to give this later volume a gander. MACHERS AND ROCKERS chronicles the manner in which Jewish entrepreneur Leonard Chess attracted so many amazing Black musicians (Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, the list goes on) by dint of him learning English through the Black vernacular. And while Cohen's prose here doesn't always have the ferocity of TOUGH JEWS and the narrative here isn't as cohesive as it could be, there are still some descriptive gems. Here's Cohen on Chuck Berry: "His face was as geometric as the triangle they make the tone-deaf kid in band." He describes "that classic chow mein of Jewish philanthropy, half to Israel, half to everyone else, mostly blacks, NAACP, CORE." Cohen is simply too original of a writer to be confined to the traditional pop music biography. The more he is allowed to BE himself, the better he is on the page. But I'm not done with you, buddy! I'm convinced that there is a Cohen book out there that's as much of a classic as TOUGH JEWS. There has to be! You're too much fun to read, Rich Cohen!

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fascinating look at the history of the blues and rock and roll. It also sheds light on some aspects of American history that are not frequently covered in other books. It is funny and sad. Anyone who loves American history or music should read it.

[Pete Ganbarg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some insight and colorful language ultimately undermined by sloppy copy editing, bad research and too many mistakes. I almost felt like I was reading an unfinished draft before the editing.

[Peter Geyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of rock music (as opposed to popular music) has always been an interest and a personal fantasy about researching and writing in this field was a factor in deciding to return to university and try and complete a qualification. Of course I was in the wrong country and wasn't a frequenter of live music shows, just listened to records.

Rich Cohen writes about a number of things here: The Chicago record label Chess Records, its founders and artists, essentially, but also of the Jewish involvement in the business of recording and selling music that Chess, and other labels represented, in this case black music. This story is quite well known to anyone who has investigated this area, in particular its rough and ready environment, the paternalistic promotion and exploitation of black artists to the collapse of these arrangements, triggered by political events i.e. the assassination of Martin Luther King.

Cohen writes in a style that you might expect to hear from Leonard Chess, a Yiddish-speaking Jew who emigrated to the United States from Poland as a child, learning English as a teenager. Much of it is gruff, profane, in your face, and Cohen provides background on Jewish emigrants to the US about this time to provide cultural context, which includes the Chicago environment, as well as a decent explanation as to how African-Americans left the South for the North, bringing their music with them.

You hear snippets from bluesmen Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and many others throughout the book, as well as other music entrepreneurs from Jewish backgrounds. There's an interesting comparison with Elvis Presley and stories of what it was like in the segregated south for black people.

Cohen's writing style is to suddenly jump from one topic to another, as though to fill you in on an important side story before returning to the chronological scheme. Comments and speculations pepper the book, some quite insightful, whether it be about music technology, the status of Jewish-African-American relations or, at the end, cogent observations about how the spirit can go out of things when an enterprise is corporatised and run by people who have no feel for the music, in this case, or any other product, if it comes to that, imposing unnecessary structures and protocols, leading to failure.

A recent book I read, The Stupidity Paradox, came to mind, as well as the area in which I've spent the last half of my life. It's interesting in a way to see people who are supposed to search for meaning, abandon that course, if ever it was taken on. The corporate takeover of Chess of course was completely devoid of meaning at all stages, so it's not exactly the same.

I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would, buying it because the price was right and also because whilst leafing through it in the bookshop, I came across the story of how Joe Smith of Warner Brothers bought the contract for Van Morrison from a bunch of mobsters, his exit from that event involving fear-driven jumping, sprinting and rolling.

This morning I thought I'd look at it and was drawn in, so I read it from cover to cover in a couple of hours or so, with only an occasional drifting off. So a worthy read.

[George · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely inept piece of writing that is more concerned with the cool fact that Leonard Chess said the word "motherfucker" than anything of substance about a label with an enormous legacy and legendary catalog. I can't figure out how a book with so little research and so much psuedo-anecdotal fluff could even get published. Do not read.

[Matthew Everett · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's enough interesting info here (much of it, I suspect, available in earlier and better books) for a solid magazine article. That's padded by digressions on well-worn subjects--the history of the Delta blues, Jewish immigrant communities. And it's terribly written, standard faux Tosches tough guy blues fetish crap. A waste.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book after seeing "Cadillac Records," which was good but I suspect took great artistic license with the subject.

[Paul Bifford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Furthered my love of Chess Records artists, maybe not the ownership shenanigans.

[Bruce Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great non-fiction on independent record label and history of the blues and R&R

[Jeff Treistman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best book on the emergence of Rock and Roll. It details the #frictionculture created at the intersection of Jewish and African Americans. Honest and engagingly written.