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Rock 'n' Roll Crucible: The Real 'Cadillac Records'
How Chicago's Chess Records built foundations for rock and
soul
By Alan Light
Special to MSN Music
"I was talking to this white guy, maybe 35 years old," said Darnell Martin, the writer and director of the new film "Cadillac Records," which tells the story of Chicago's
revolutionary blues label, Chess Records. "He was saying, 'You need to find out
what it was that connected me to that music, why it spoke to me so strongly as a
teenager.' And I realized that the song 'I'm a Man' is what it's all about.
"This was the sound of black folks in that period struggling to gain respect
as men, to assert their masculinity. And a 14-year-old, middle-class white kid
isn't going to have the same expression, but he's feeling that same thing at
that age -- 'Yes, I demand my respect.' Once I put that together in my mind, I
could see what the movie was going to be."
See photos: The Chess Legacy: The Real 'Cadillac
Records'
With a strong ensemble cast -- Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Cedric the Entertainer -- and memorable performances by
musicians/actors Beyoncé Knowles (see photos) and Mos Def, "Cadillac Records" sets out to capture a time, a
place and a sound. Founded by Leonard and Phil Chess in 1950, Chess Records was
the home of giants such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry, Little Walter and Etta James.
Incomparable songs such as "Johnny B. Goode," "Hoochie Coochie Man" and
"Smokestack Lightning" were recorded at the label's studio at 2120 S. Michigan
Avenue, directly inspiring artists from Elvis Presley to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. By electrifying and urbanizing the blues,
Chess was the crucible where a black, Southern style transformed into the
earth-shattering phenomenon known as rock 'n' roll.
"These guys were using music to create a context for themselves," said Mos
Def (who plays Berry in the film) at a gathering of the cast at New York's
Regency Hotel a few hours before the film's premiere. "They played a role in
shaping the identity of America today -- in establishing America as a leader in
imagination and style."
In a press conference filled with laughter, the actors repeatedly emphasized
the heroic nature and underappreciated achievements of the Chess artists. "These
guys were superheroes, because they had nothing," said Wright, whose performance
as the stoic, focused Muddy Waters sits at the movie's core. "They were denied
basic freedoms -- their manhood, their dignity -- and yet they managed to craft
music that had universal resonance."
"Cadillac Records" is far from a documentary. Phil Chess is absent from the
story, protean rock legend Bo Diddley, a prominent label act from that era, is never
mentioned, and the script sometimes plays fast and loose with the chronology.
But Martin said that her intentions need to be kept clear. "I wasn't interested
in the Chess story," she said. "I was interested in how Mississippi blues became
popular music, how that affected civil rights -- that's the story I wanted to
tell."
Martin added that she used two films as a template for this movie: "Lady Sings the Blues," for the way in which Diana Ross interpreted Billie Holiday rather than imitated her, and "Goodfellas," for its tense, violent milieu.
The actors all said that although they were familiar with the Chess artists
to varying degrees, they didn't really know the complete story but feel a
responsibility to pass along this chapter of history to a new generation. In an
interview a few weeks earlier, Beyoncé admitted that she knew very little about
Etta James before taking the role.
"I have to be honest," she said, "I knew 'At Last,' and I knew she was this
African-American woman who wore platinum blond hair back then, which wasn't
something that I'd ever seen. She always caught my eye, but I didn't know too
much. But now the younger people are all going to know that she was one of the
pioneers."
Though the language of "Cadillac Records" occasionally turns too didactic,
and the tone gets a bit overripe (especially in the romance that develops
between Brody's Leonard Chess and Etta James), the sheer force of the
performances more than carries the film. And, as Cedric the Entertainer -- who
narrates the movie as songwriter/bass player Willie Dixon -- pointed out, these characters don't need to
be exaggerated to be compelling; the rivalry between Muddy Waters and Howlin'
Wolf adds a real-life drama better than anything a screenwriter would dream up.
"Though they played blues, they were quintessential rock stars," he said. "As
musicians, they believed they were outside of society's rules, living life to
the fullest at a time of segregation and great danger."
"Cadillac Records" was shot at a full sprint, in just 28 days, on a limited
budget -- "Didn't nobody get no Cadillacs!," said Cedric with a guffaw, later
adding that the conditions turned the cast into a "band of brothers."
One way in which the actors truly felt pressure came from the fact that they
all recorded their own music, rather than lip-synch to the recordings. "Kudos to
everyone who had to perform these songs," said Mos Def. "And when I say that, I
mean kudos to me! Those Chuck Berry songs have a million words!"
Beyoncé noted that the Chess artists didn't have modern technology to rely
on, and so their sessions had to be executed perfectly. "It was all live
backgrounds," she said, "It wasn't all of the crazy arrangements like I do. They
had to sing things one time through, you couldn't go back and fix things. But
(James's) inflections were so beautiful, so in the moment, and her pain and
passion and her tone and her grittiness -- her life -- you could just hear it."
If "Cadillac Records" inspires more people to discover the work of Etta James
and Little Walter, or explore the stories behind legends such as Chuck Berry and
Muddy Waters, or consider the complex dynamic of a white entrepreneur such as
Leonard Chess recording black music and trying to balance responsibility and
profits, it will have done its job. And whether the movie finds an audience --
and the track record for music biopics shows that it won't be easy -- the songs
will live forever.
"The social revolution of the '60s, the fall of Berlin Wall, it all had its
roots in the freedoms these folks were singing about -- in the post-slave
dynamics in this country," said Wright. (Story Continues On Next Page...) |
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