Chess Club Rhythm and Soul

Various-artist compilation collections have their place; they are often the most (or only) practical way to pick up some seldom-heard nuggets. With most of them, however, you have to take the clunkers along with the winners, and sometimes you end up scratching your head as to why they would put certain tracks together on the same CD. It is truly the rare and beautiful issue that gives you the wheat and not the chaff. This is one of them.

The trick is to keep the selections within a tight range and find good numbers that you haven't heard a thousand times without going off into total wonderland. In this case, you have 25 R&B tunes released or popularized in the mid-to-late 1960s on Chicago's legendary Chess label, along with its sister labels Checker, Cadet and Argo. The collection was compiled by two British R & B aficionados (I think the British have more appreciation for classic R & B that most Americans), and they did their homework. No doo-wop, no disco. Lots of blues, jazz, soul and straight, old-school Chicago-style R & B. What else do you need?

Examples: Etta James' "Mellow Fellow" leads off the CD. Wow, can she belt it out (and you see her later in a duet with Sugar Pie De Santo in "Do I Make Myself Clear")! So can Mitty Collier in "Git Out" and Koko Taylor in "Fire".

Billy Stewart's "Summertime" is a jazzy R & B standard, and here you get the album-length version. Hammond B3 master Brother Jack McDuff and legendary sax man Lou Donaldson make instrumental appearances with "Ain't It" and the jazz-funk "Musty Rusty" respectively; and the ever-cool pianist Ramsey Lewis shows up with the funky "Function at the Junction"; you'll know it's him right away, which is a good thing. You'll tap your feet to Marlena Shaw's "Wade in the Water", Jamo Thomas' "Must I Holler" and to Bobby Moore & the Rhythm Aces' instrumental "Hey Mr D.J."

A great tune, if only for the lyrics, is Little Milton's "Grits Ain't Groceries" ("You know I love you baby/and if I don't love you baby I'll tell ya, grits ain't groceries, eggs ain't poultry and Mona Lisa was a man"). Kip Anderson's "A Knife and A Fork" is a good-natured little ditty. Little Walter gives us "My Babe", an uptempo blues tune, immediately followed by Sonny Boy Williamson's more traditional "Help Me" with the harp and organ. The last track on the CD is another great blues tune, Tommy Tucker's "Hi Heel Sneakers".

Maurice & Mac's "You Left the Water Running" and Don & Bob's "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" feature good soul harmonies, and the Kolette's "Who's That Guy" is the CD's "girl-group" contribution.

I also love the photo on the CD cover of a mixed crowd at London's Flamingo Jazz Club; I especially like the woman looking at her man with a seemingly disgusted "what's up with that" look on her face.

There are minor quibbles: Muddy Waters' "Messin' with the Man" takes some getting used to if you're familiar with Junior Wells' "Messin' With the Kid"; "Here Comes The Judge" by Pigmeat Markham is a silly, somewhat out-of-place selection that almost could be considered early rap (although I do like the woman who responds to Pigmeat's "Order in the Court!" decree by ordering two cans of beer); and blue-eyed singer Steve Alaimo's "Every Day I Have to Cry" isn't that exciting or soulful. But overall, this one is a winner.

Buy it!

This collection, compiled by the Kent subsidiary of ACE Records U.K., concentrates on tracks that were heavily played during the mid-60's Mod club scene. All of these songs appeared on the Mighty CHESS label, and vary from Etta James storming opener, "Mellow Fellow's" to Kip Anderson's laid-back original version of "A Knife and a Fork". For extra confusion, Tommy Tucker's "Hi Heel Sneakers" is here, and Pigmeat Markham's "Here Comes the Judge" comedy soul disc, which was later sampled by Naughty by Nature for "Hip Hop Hooray", makes its only appearance on CD that I know of. Makes a fine CD for a party of Soul/R&B music historians! Check out "At the Club" for this same brew done up Atlantic/Stax style.

This compilation holds a unique place in history. This was first released on Pye Records (Chess and Checker's distributor/partner in Europe) in 1963. It was the first Chess Records LP release in England. At the same time, "Help Me" b/w"Bye Bye Bird" by Sonny Boy Williamson and "Good Morning School Girl" were released on Pye 45s. "Help Me" was already a hit in America and is basically a version of Booker T & The MGs hit "Green Onions" released a year earlier. The 45 was the first Chess Record released on both sides of the Atlantic. Ironically, Sonny Boy chose almost exclusively to use "Bye Bye Bird" as basically his signature or theme song in the American Folk Blues Festival. No live version of "Help Me" exists on either the official or bootleg shows from the 1963 or 1964 tour.

The LP, an unusual mix of blues and soul recordings, was very deliberately a calculated attempt to showcase ARC Music-published songs in the hopes of encouraging some of the British Blues movement's bands to cover the songs to Chess' publisher's benefit. The most successful cover was "Good Morning School Girl"

As the story goes, the Yardbirds were about to break up after their first record because Chris Dreja, their lead singer and harmonica player, was in the hospital and not expected to recover quickly. The Yardbirds' members needed work and therefore they were going to break up and form another band. Dreja miraculously recovered quickly and according to Clapton they were faced with another problem, they had no new material and sorely needed another song to use for then next single. Clapton had heard this LP the day before they were to record, grabbed "Good Morning School Girl" by Don (Level) and Bob (Love) and it gave Clapton his first (albeit shared) vocal on record, became their second hit single.

The story thickens at this point. "Good Morning School Girl" is not, except for the first few words, the same song as "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" by Sonny Boy Williamson I (not to be confused with Sonny Boy Williamson II who recorded with the Yardbirds and used them as his backing band after the 1963 American Folk Blues Festival tour). It is a rock song more in the flavor of the hillbilly style, suburban white youth-themed and bluesy songs of Chuck Berry and it was written to be that. The SBW I song was recorded at the same time by Rod Stewart and I am sure confused the story further when it hit the British charts. To further confuse the story Level and Love (Don and Bob) who wrote the song discovered that an H. G. Demarais is getting the royalties on Level and Love's song do to an admitted clerical error on the part of ARC Music.

This is the album that started the whole process. By the way, the Library of Congress has issued a separate and distinct copyright to Level and Love's "Good Morning School Girl." The plot thickens but this is where the story started.

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