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

by Rich Cohen

Book Overview

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,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 039305280X
• ISBN13: 9780393052800
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.6" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

An Extraordinary Book That Is It's Own Soundtrack

The author tells the stories of the Chess Family, the Northern Migration, Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry and how they turned into Elvis and everbody else, how regionall culture turned into pop culture and then into world culture, and what it's like bid goodbye to a generation of fathers. It's an American story, and a great one. This is non-fiction at the highest level -- non-fiction where the writing pushes it into the realm of the classic. It's the best book about music I've ever come across: You'll smell the sweat and the Thunderbird, hear the feet stomping on pine floorboards, taste the cigarette smoke, and watch a whole new world get born before your eyes

Tough Blues

Another addition to the "hey I never knew" series of books put out by this author. Gritty, tough, hard to put down. This is a great read and short enough that it doesn't give you a hand cramp. What could be better? Okay, so maybe Chess was a bit of a thieving creep, but he was interesting and did something with his life. No? You might also check out: Tough Jews. Different characters, same gestalt, more blood.

A Great Book

This is a book about American Pop Culture. About music, yes, but also about a certain type of person, and and a certain time, and a certain culture that is on its way out. Or already gone. I think it is really like a Chicago version of that Irving Howe book, "World of Our Fathers." It is about Jews, blues and the old city of Chicago. I reccomend it highly.

like a clean guitar line

this book reminds me of a great old rock and roll song. more than any other book or movie i know, it makes clear all the connections, where the blues turns into rock and roll, and where the businessman becomes the rock and roll executive. it is also the bigger story of race and culture, and how that old nation became the new America.

I had no idea

I read this book in one sitting, it just flows. But it's also full of surprises and things you will want to tell people about. I had no idea who Leonard Chess was before this, and now I cant believe that was the case.