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Wall Street Journal
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Chess Records: Birthplace of an Alternative American Sound
Seventy-five years ago, an upstart label called Chess Records began issuing electrified blues, thereby rewiring the sound of American music. Founded in Chicago by two Jewish immigrants from Poland, brothers Leonard and Phil Chess, the label focused on black musicians, many of whom had journeyed north during the Great Migration. Since the 1910s, Chicago had drawn hundreds of thousands of Southerners seeking industrial jobs and greater freedom. Housing was crowded and racism persisted, but opportunity ran deeper than in the Jim Crow South. The newcomers brought with them jazz and blues, both of which took firm root in the city.
Atlantic
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
When Mick Jagger Met the King of Zydeco
The story I'd heard was that Mick Jagger bought his first Clifton Chenier record in the late 1960s, at a store in New York's Greenwich Village. But when we talked this spring, Jagger told me he didn't do his record shopping in the Village. It would have been Colony Records in Midtown, he said, 'the biggest record store in New York, and it had the best selection.' Jagger was in his 20s, not far removed from a suburban-London boyhood spent steeping in the American blues. I pictured him eagerly leafing through Chess Records LPs and J&M 45s until he came across a chocolate-brown 12-inch record—Chenier's 1967 album Bon Ton Roulet! On the cover, a young Chenier holds a 25-pound accordion the length of his torso, a big, mischievous smile on his face. Bon Ton Roulet! is a classic zydeco album showcasing the Creole dance music of Southwest Louisiana, which blends traditional French music, Caribbean rhythms, and American R&B. This was different from the Delta and Chicago blues that Jagger and his Rolling Stones bandmates had grown up with and emulated on their own records. Although sometimes taking the form of slower French waltzes, zydeco is more up-tempo—it's party music—and features the accordion and the rubboard, a washboard hooked over the shoulders and hung across the body like a vest. Until he discovered zydeco, Jagger recalled, 'I'd never heard the accordion in the blues before.' Chenier was born in 1925 in Opelousas, Louisiana, the son of a sharecropper and accordion player named Joseph Chenier, who taught his son the basics of the instrument. Clifton's older brother, Cleveland, played the washboard and later the rubboard. Clifton had commissioned an early prototype of the rubboard in the 1940s from a metalworker in Port Arthur, Texas, where he illustrated his vision by drawing the design in the dirt, creating one of a handful of instruments native to the United States and forever changing the percussive sound of Creole music. Within a few years, the brothers were performing at impromptu house dances in Louisiana living rooms. They'd begin playing on the porch until a crowd assembled, then go inside, pushing furniture against the walls to create a makeshift dance hall. Eventually, they worked their way through the chitlin circuit, a network of venues for Black performers and audiences. They played Louisiana dance halls where the ceilings hung so low that Cleveland could push his left hand flat to the ceiling to stretch his back out without ever breaking the rhythm of what he was playing with his right. Influenced by rock-and-roll pioneers such as Fats Domino, Chenier incorporated new elements into his music. As he told one interviewer, 'I put a little rock into this French music.' With the help of Lightnin' Hopkins, a cousin by marriage, Chenier signed a deal with Arhoolie Records. By the late '60s, he and his band were regularly playing tours that stretched across the country, despite the insistence from segregationist promoters that zydeco was a Black sound for Black audiences. He started playing churches and festivals on the East and West Coasts, where people who'd never heard the word zydeco were awestruck by Chenier: He'd often arrive onstage in a cape and a velvet crown with bulky costume jewels set in its arches. Chenier came to be known as the King of Zydeco. He toured Europe; won a Grammy for his 1982 album, I'm Here! ; performed at Carnegie Hall and in Ronald Reagan's White House; won a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He died in 1987, at age 62. This fall, the Smithsonian's preservation-focused Folkways Recordings will release the definitive collection of Chenier's work: a sprawling box set, 67 tracks in all. And in June, to mark the centennial of Chenier's birth, the Louisiana-based Valcour Records released a compilation on which musicians who were inspired by Chenier contributed covers of his songs. These include the blues artist Taj Mahal, the singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, the folk troubadour Steve Earle, and the rock band the Rolling Stones. In 1978, Jagger met Chenier, thanks to a musician and visual artist named Richard Landry. Landry grew up on a pecan farm in Cecilia, Louisiana, not far from Opelousas. In 1969, he moved to New York and met Philip Glass, becoming a founding member of the Philip Glass Ensemble, in which he played saxophone. To pay the bills between performances, the two men also started a plumbing business. Eventually, the ensemble was booking enough gigs that they gave up plumbing. Landry also embarked on a successful visual-art career, photographing contemporaries such as Richard Serra and William S. Burroughs and premiering his work at the Leo Castelli Gallery. He still got back to Louisiana, though, and he'd occasionally sit in with Chenier and his band. (After Landry proved his chops the first time they played together, Chenier affectionately described him as 'that white boy from Cecilia who can play the zydeco.') Landry became a kind of cultural conduit—a link between the avant-garde scene of the North and the Cajun and Creole cultures of the South. From the July 1987 issue: Cajun and Creole bands are conserving native music Landry is an old friend; we met more than a decade ago in New Orleans. Sitting in his apartment in Lafayette recently, he told me the story of the night he introduced Jagger to Chenier. As Landry remembers it, he first met Jagger at a Los Angeles house party following a Philip Glass Ensemble performance at the Whisky a Go Go. The next night, as luck would have it, he saw Jagger again, this time out at a restaurant, and they got to talking. At some point in the conversation, 'Jagger goes, 'Your accent. Where are you from?' I said, 'I'm from South Louisiana.' He blurts out, 'Clifton Chenier, the best band I ever heard, and I'd like to hear him again.' ' 'Dude, you're in luck,' he told Jagger. Chenier was playing a show at a high school in Watts the following night. Landry called Chenier: 'Cliff, I'm bringing Mick Jagger tomorrow night.' Chenier responded, 'Who's that?' 'He's with the Rolling Stones,' Landry tried to explain. 'Oh yeah. That magazine. They did an article on me.' It seems the Rolling Stones had yet to make an impression on Chenier, but his music had clearly influenced the band, and not just Jagger. The previous year, Rolling Stone had published a feature on the Stones' guitarist Ronnie Wood. In one scene, Wood and Keith Richards convene a 3 a.m. jam session at the New York studios of Atlantic Records. On equipment borrowed from Bruce Springsteen, they play 'Don't You Lie to Me'—first the Chuck Berry version, then 'Clifton Chenier's Zydeco interpretation,' as the article described it. Chenier was in Los Angeles playing what had become an annual show for the Creole community living in the city. The stage was set at the Verbum Dei Jesuit High School gymnasium, by the edge of the basketball court. Jagger was struck by the audience. 'They weren't dressing as other people of their age group,' he told me. 'The fashion was completely different. And of course, the dancing was different than you'd normally see in a big city.' The band was already performing by the time he and Landry arrived. When they walked in, one woman squinted in Jagger's direction, pausing in a moment of possible recognition, before changing her mind and turning away. Chenier was at center stage, thick gold rings lining his fingers as they moved across the black and white keys of his accordion, his name embossed in bold block type on its side. Cleveland stood beside him on the rubboard. Robert St. Julien was set up in the back behind a three-piece drum kit—just a bass drum, a snare, and a single cymbal, cracked from the hole in the center out to the very edge. Jagger took it all in, watching the crowd dance a two-step and thinking, ' Oh God, I'm going to have to dance. How am I going to do this dance that they're all doing? ' he recalled. 'But I managed somehow to fake it.' At intermission, a cluster of fans, speaking in excited bursts of Creole French, started moving toward the stage, holding out papers to be autographed. Landry and Jagger were standing nearby. Jagger braced himself, assuming that some of the fans might descend on him. But the crowd moved quickly past them, pressing toward Clifton and Cleveland Chenier. Before the night was over, Jagger himself had the chance to meet Clifton, but only said a quick hello. 'I just didn't want to hassle him or anything,' he told me. 'And I was just enjoying myself being one of the audience.' The next time Mick Jagger and Richard Landry crossed paths was May 3, 2024: the day after the Rolling Stones performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. During their set, the Stones had asked the accordion player Dwayne Dopsie, a son of another zydeco artist, Rockin' Dopsie, to accompany the band on 'Let It Bleed.' A meal was set up at Antoine's, in the French Quarter, by a mutual friend, the musician and producer C. C. Adcock. Adcock had been working on plans for the Clifton Chenier centennial record for months and was well aware of Jagger's affection for zydeco. He waited until the meal was over, when everyone was saying their goodbyes, to mention the project to Jagger. 'And without hesitation,' Landry recalled, 'Mick said, 'I want to sing something.' ' As the final addition to the album lineup, the Stones were the last to choose which of Chenier's songs to record. Looking at the track listing, Jagger noticed that 'Zydeco Sont Pas Salé' hadn't been taken. 'Isn't that, like, the one?' Adcock recalls him saying. 'The one the whole genre is named after? If the Stones are gonna do one, shouldn't we do the one ?' The word zydeco is widely believed to have originated in the French phrase les haricots sont pas salés, which translates to 'The snap beans aren't salty.' Zydeco, according to this theory, is a Creole French pronunciation of les haricots. (The lyrical fragment likely comes from juré, the call-and-response music of Louisiana that predates zydeco; it shows up as early as 1934, on a recording of the singer Wilbur Shaw made in New Iberia, Louisiana.) Many interpretations of the phrase have been offered over the years. The most straightforward is that it's a metaphorical way of saying 'Times are tough.' When money ran short, people couldn't afford the salt meat that was traditionally cooked with snap beans to season them. The Stones' version of 'Zydeco Sont Pas Salé' opens with St. Julien, Chenier's longtime drummer, playing a backbeat with brushes. He's 77 now, no longer the young man Jagger saw in Watts in 1978. 'I quit playing music about 10 years ago, to tell the truth,' he said when we spoke this spring, but you wouldn't know it by how he sounds on the track. Keith Richards's guitar part, guttural and revving, meets St. Julien in the intro and builds steadily. The melody is introduced by the accordionist Steve Riley, of the Mamou Playboys, who told me he'd tried to 'play it like Clifton—you know, free-form, just from feel.' It's strange that it doesn't feel stranger when Jagger breaks into his vocal, sung in Creole French. His imitation of Chenier is at once spot-on yet unmistakably Jagger. From the May 1971 issue: Mick Jagger shoots birds I asked him how he'd honed his French pronunciation. 'I've actually tried to write songs in Cajun French before,' he said. 'But I've never really gotten anywhere.' To get 'Zydeco Sont Pas Salé' right, he became a student of the song. 'You just listen to what's been done before you,' he told me. 'See how they pronounce it, you know? I mean, yeah, of course it's different. And West Indian English is different from what they speak in London. I tried to do a job and I tried to do it in the way it was traditionally done—it would sound a bit silly in perfect French.' Zydeco united musical traditions from around the globe to become a defining sound for one of the most distinct cultures in America. Chenier, the accordionist in the velvet crown, then introduced zydeco to the world, influencing artists across genres. When I asked Jagger why, at age 81, he had decided to make this recording, he said, 'I think the music deserves to be known and the music deserves to be heard.' If the song helps new listeners discover Chenier—to have something like the experience Jagger had when he first dropped the needle on Bon Ton Roulet! —that would be a welcome result. But Jagger stressed that this wasn't the primary reason he'd covered 'Zydeco Sont Pas Salé.' Singing to St. Julien's beat, Jagger the rock star once again becomes Jagger the Clifton Chenier fan. 'My main thing is just that I personally like it. You know what I mean? That's my attraction,' he said. 'I think that I just did this for the love of it, really.'
Boston Globe
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
The priesthood, or rock 'n' roll? How the Stones inspired me to break my grandmother's heart.
Advertisement Mick wrote the words, and Keith helped make them better. With the other Rolling Stones, they flew to Chicago and recorded the track at Chess Records on the South Side, 25 miles east of my family's house. They'd just performed three pretty good songs on Ed Sullivan, but none were as good as this new one. No song was, really. One mag said Keith used special tuning and something called a fuzzbox to make his guitar sound so aggro and dirty. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Five years before that, our Grandma Grace had moved from the Bronx to our new house in Lisle, Ill. Her husband had died back in 1928, and she loved telling me about my namesake grandfather — mine-laying sailor during the war, stalwart teetotaler, devout and pious Catholic — and how much he respected Jesuits, how thrilled he'd be to look down from heaven and watch me serve on God's altar. I was 9. 'My little lamb,' she called me, as in Lamb of God. Advertisement Next thing I knew, she'd landed a job as the secretary at our parish's rectory and talked Father Fred into letting me start serving mass two years early. I became the youngest altar boy in the history of St. Joan of Arc! But that was just part of her plan. After serving at masses, weddings, and baptisms from fourth through eighth grade, for high school I would attend St. Stanislaus Jesuit Seminary in Florissant, Mo., where I'd 'accept the gift of celibacy.' After four years there and four more at a Jebby university, I'd be ordained as a Jesuit priest. As she drove me to and from the 6:15 a.m. masses I served almost daily, Grandma Grace told me that if a boy became a Jesuit priest, his grandparents, parents, brothers, and sisters would all go straight to heaven the moment they died, skipping what could be dozens or even millions of years in purgatory. 'Most indulgences remove only some of the penance,' she said, 'but a plenary indulgence, like when you get ordained, removes all of it.' I promised her many times I would do it. I didn't think that lifelong celibacy was a deal-breaker, if I thought about it at all. Plus I was proud to be able to spare my whole family the stinging, cleansing fires — cooler than hell's, but still pretty hot — so our souls could all zoom up to heaven the second we passed away. Advertisement Our plan stayed on track until I was 12 or 13, when what celibacy forbids started sinking in. What the hell had I been thinking? For months and months, I seesawed back and forth about breaking my promise, though I forgot about the whole thing for long stretches during football or baseball season. As the summer between eighth grade and the seminary rolled around, 'Satisfaction' was on the radio all the time, most predictably when WLS counted down to the No. 1 song every night at 10 o'clock. My parents would be watching TV downstairs, and I'd turn it up as loud as I dared. I dug when Mick sang, 'He can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me,' because my friends and I were smoking them too, especially when we played poker. Keith, Mick, Charlie, and Brian all smoked, sometimes while playing onstage. The biggest difference was, they never had to get haircuts; we couldn't avoid them because our parents were so strict. Mick is 'tryin' to make some girl,' though he's obviously made a few others. But the coolest thing was that even Mick couldn't 'get no satisfaction' that summer, since we couldn't get any ourselves. In late July, the paperwork for St. Stanislaus had to be signed, and I somehow found the courage to tell Grandma and my parents that instead of the seminary, I wanted to go to St. Procopius, the all-boys prep school right there in Lisle. Thank God, whom I no longer completely believed in, that my dad supported the switch, because he secretly hoped I'd become a good Catholic businessman and usher, like him. If he hadn't, I'd be Stanislaus-bound. Advertisement Grandma was stunned, which killed me and her son. She couldn't have known that in 1999 I'd name my fourth child after her. All she knew was that in five years I'd gone from being probably her favorite kid (there were six of us now, and counting) to an undevout promise-breaker. She said she no longer recognized me, and not because I was taller than she was and had whiskers. 'In here,' she said, touching her heart. When she asked why I changed my mind, I wasn't sure what to say, but I didn't want to lie. 'Maybe I'll change it back while I'm at Proco,' I said. Proco was Benedictine but Catholic, I reminded her, and half the teachers were priests. Their motto was U.I.O.G.D., 'Ut in Omnibus Glorificetur Deus' — That in all things God may be glorified. Grandma just sniffed, shook her head, looking down and away, like she did when she really wanted you to know how disappointed she was. If I'd been totally honest, I would've told her girls, sports, poker, and 'Satisfaction.' That whatever's the opposite of becoming a priest is what the words and Keith's riff are about.
Chicago Tribune
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Today in History: Chuck Berry records ‘Maybellene' for Chess Records
Today is Wednesday, May 21, the 141st day of 2025. There are 224 days left in the year. Today in history: On May 21, 1955, Chuck Berry recorded his first single, 'Maybellene,' for Chess Records in Chicago. Also on this date: In 1881, the American Red Cross was founded by nurse and educator Clara Barton in Washington D.C. In 1924, 14-year-old Bobby Franks was murdered in a 'thrill killing' carried out by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb (Bobby's distant cousin). In 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis monoplane near Paris, completing the first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 33 1/2 hours. In 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean as she landed in Northern Ireland, about 15 hours after leaving Newfoundland. In 1941, a German U-boat sank the American merchant steamship SS Robin Moor in the South Atlantic after the ship's passengers and crew were allowed to board lifeboats. In 1972, Michelangelo's Pieta, in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, was damaged by a hammer-wielding man. (The sculpture went back on display 10 months later after its damaged elements were reconstructed.) In 1979, former San Francisco City Supervisor Dan White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the slayings of Mayor George Moscone and openly gay Supervisor Harvey Milk. Outrage over White's lenient sentence sparked the White Night riots that evening. In 1991, former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated amid Indian national elections by a suicide bomber. Today's Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox is 84. Singer Ronald Isley (The Isley Brothers) is 84. Singer Leo Sayer is 77. Actor Mr. T is 73. Actor Judge Reinhold is 68. Filmmaker Nick Cassavetes is 66. Actor Lisa Edelstein is 59. Comedian-TV presenter Noel Fielding is 52. Actor Fairuza Balk is 51. Actor Da'Vine Joy Randolph is 39. Country musician Cody Johnson is 38. Actor Hannah Einbinder is 30. NFL quarterback Josh Allen is 29.
Boston Globe
21-05-2025
- Boston Globe
Today in History: May 21, Clara Barton founds American Red Cross
In 1881, the American Red Cross was founded by nurse and Massachusetts native Clara Barton in Washington D.C. Advertisement In 1921, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were put on trial at a Dedham courthouse in the murder of two men during a payroll robbery in South Braintree. The two immigrant anarchists would be convicted in a much-criticized trial and executed. In 1924, 14-year-old Bobby Franks was murdered in a 'thrill killing' carried out by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb (Bobby's distant cousin). In 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis monoplane near Paris, completing the first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 33 1/2 hours. Advertisement In 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean as she landed in Northern Ireland, about 15 hours after leaving Newfoundland. In 1941, a German U-boat sank the American merchant steamship SS Robin Moor in the South Atlantic after the ship's passengers and crew were allowed to board lifeboats. In 1955, Chuck Berry recorded his first single, 'Maybellene,' for Chess Records in Chicago. In 1972, Michelangelo's Pieta, in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, was damaged by a hammer-wielding man. (The sculpture went back on display 10 months later after its damaged elements were reconstructed.) In 1979, former San Francisco City Supervisor Dan White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the slayings of Mayor George Moscone and openly gay Supervisor Harvey Milk. Outrage over White's lenient sentence sparked the White Night riots that evening. In 1991, former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated amid Indian national elections by a suicide bomber.
