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• 
  

• 
  Chicago
  Chicago (ⁱ/ʃɪˈkɑːɡoʊ/ or /ʃɪˈkɔːɡoʊ/) is the largest city in the US state of Illinois and the third most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. The city has around 2.7 million residents. Its metropolitan area, sometimes called "Chicagoland", is the third largest in the United States, with an estimated 9.8 million people. Chicago is the county seat of Cook County, though a small portion also extends into DuPage County.
  Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837, near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. Today, Chicago is listed as an alpha+ global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, and ranks seventh in the world on the 2012 Global Cities Index. The city retains its status as an international hub for finance, industry, telecommunications and infrastructure, with O'Hare International Airport being the second busiest airport in the world in terms of traffic movements. In 2008^[update], the city hosted 45.6 million domestic and overseas visitors. Among metropolitan areas, Chicago has the 4th largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the world, ranking just behind Tokyo, New York City, and Los Angeles. Chicago is one of the most important Worldwide Centers of Commerce and trade.
  
  wn.com/Chicago
• 
  Illinois
  Illinois (ⁱ/ˌɪlɨˈnɔɪ/ IL-i-NOY) is the 25th most extensive and the 5th most populous of the 50 United States, and is often noted as a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a broad economic base. Illinois is a major transportation hub. The Port of Chicago connects the state to other global ports from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean; as well as the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois River. For decades, O'Hare International Airport has ranked as one of the world's busiest airports. Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics.
  Although the state's largest population centers today are in northern Illinois, originally the state's population grew from south to north, with settlers arriving from Kentucky in the 1810s. In 1818, Illinois achieved statehood. Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River, one of the few natural harbors on southern Lake Michigan. Railroads and John Deere's invention of the self-scouring steel plow turned Illinois' rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmlands, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars. The Great Migration established a large community of African Americans in Chicago that created the city's famous jazz and blues cultures.
  
  wn.com/Illinois

• 
  Adrien Brody
  Adrien Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor and film producer. He received widespread recognition and acclaim after starring in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002), for which he became the youngest actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor at age 29. Brody is also the only American actor to receive the French César Award.
  Brody was born in Woodhaven, Queens, New York, the son of Sylvia Plachy, a photojournalist, and Elliot Brody, a retired history professor and painter. Brody's father is of Polish Jewish descent; Brody's mother – who was raised Catholic – was born in Budapest, Hungary, the daughter of a Catholic Hungarian aristocrat father and a Czech Jewish mother. Brody was raised "without a strong connection to" Judaism or Catholicism. As a child, he performed magic shows at children's birthday parties as "The Amazing Adrien". He attended the I.S. 145 Joseph Pulitzer middle school and New York's Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (famous as the inspiration for television's Fame). His parents enrolled him in acting classes to distance him from the dangerous children with whom he associated^{[citation needed]}. He attended summer camp at Long Lake Camp for the Arts in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Brody attended the State University of New York at Stony Brook before transferring to Queens College for a semester.
  
  wn.com/Adrien_Brody
• 
  Alan Freed
  Albert James "Alan" Freed (December 15, 1921 – January 20, 1965), also known as Moondog, was an American disc jockey. He became internationally known for promoting the mix of blues, country and rhythm and blues music on the radio in the United States and Europe under the name of rock and roll. His career was destroyed by the payola scandal that hit the broadcasting industry in the early 1960s.
  Freed was born to a Jewish father, Charles S. Freed, and Welsh-American mother, Maude Palmer, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. In 1933, Freed's family moved to Salem, Ohio where Freed attended Salem High School, graduating in 1940. While Freed was in high school, he formed a band called the Sultans of Swing in which he played the trombone. Freed's initial ambition was to be a bandleader; however, an ear infection put an end to this dream. While attending Ohio State University, Freed became interested in radio. Freed served in the Army during World War II and worked as a DJ on WKBN Armed Forces Radio. Soon after World War II, Freed landed broadcasting jobs at smaller radio stations, including WKST (New Castle, PA); WKBN (Youngstown, OH); and WAKR (Akron, OH), where, in 1945, he became a local favorite for playing hot jazz and pop recordings. Freed enjoyed listening to these new styles because he liked the rhythms and tunes.
  
  wn.com/Alan_Freed
• Alessandro Nivola
  Alessandro Antine Nivola (born June 28, 1972) is an American actor, perhaps best known for his roles in the films Coco Before Chanel, Best Laid Plans, Jurassic Park III, Face/Off, and the first two films of the Goal! trilogy.
  Nivola was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother, Virginia (née Davis), is an artist, and his father, Pietro Salvatore Nivola, is a professor of political science who wrote the book Laws of the Landscape: How Policies Shape Cities in Europe and America. Nivola's paternal grandfather was the Italian sculptor Costantino Nivola, and his paternal grandmother, Ruth Guggenheim, was a Jewish refugee from Germany. Nivola has described his mother as "a WASP, from the South", a descendant of Jefferson Davis. He has a brother, Adrian, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy.
  Nivola married British actress Emily Mortimer in the Chilterns, Buckinghamshire in January 2003; the couple have a son, Samuel John, born in Westminster, London, on September 23, 2003. They also have a daughter, May, born on January 15, 2010. They used to live in Los Angeles California in Echo Park. They are currently living in Boerum Hill in Brooklyn, New York. He had fellow actor Heath Ledger as a neighbor.
  
  wn.com/Alessandro_Nivola
• 
  Benny Goodman
  Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".
  In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America. His January 16, 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music."
  Goodman's bands launched the careers of many major names in jazz, and during an era of segregation, he also led one of the first well-known racially-integrated jazz groups. Goodman continued to perform to nearly the end of his life, including exploring his interest in classical music.
  Goodman was born in Chicago, the ninth of twelve children of poor Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, who lived in the Maxwell Street neighborhood. His father was David Goodman, a tailor from Warsaw; his mother was Dora Grisinsky (from Kaunas, Lithuania). His parents met in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Chicago before Benny was born.
  
  wn.com/Benny_Goodman
• 
  Beyoncé Knowles
  Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter (née Beyoncé Giselle Knowles; September 4, 1981), known mononymously as Beyoncé ( /biˈjɒnseɪ/ bee-YON-say), is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and actress. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, she enrolled in various performing arts schools and was first exposed to singing and dancing competitions as a child. Knowles rose to fame in the late 1990s as the lead singer of the R&B girl group Destiny's Child, one of the world's best-selling girl groups of all time.
  During the hiatus of Destiny's Child, Knowles released her debut solo album, Dangerously in Love, in 2003, which spawned two number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100—"Crazy in Love" and "Baby Boy"—and became one of the most successful albums of that year, earning her a then record-tying five Grammy Awards. Following the disbandment of Destiny's Child in 2005, Knowles released her second solo album, B'Day, in 2006, which spawned the top 10 singles "Déjà Vu", "Irreplaceable" and "Beautiful Liar". Her third solo album I Am... Sasha Fierce (2008), spawned the hit singles "If I Were a Boy", "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", "Halo" and "Sweet Dreams". The album helped Knowles earn six Grammys in 2010, breaking the record for most Grammy Awards won by a female artist in one night. Knowles' fourth solo album, 4 (2011), became her fourth consecutive number one album on the Billboard 200 as a solo artist. This made her the third artist in history to have her first four studio albums debut atop the chart.
  
  wn.com/Beyoncé_Knowles
• 
  Big Bill Broonzy
  Big Bill Broonzy (June 26, 1903 – August 15, 1958) was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century.
  Broonzy copyrighted more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including both adaptations of traditional folk songs and original blues songs. As a blues composer, he was unique in that his compositions reflected the many vantage points of his rural-to-urban experiences.
  Born Lee Conley Bradley, "Big Bill" was one of Frank Broonzy (Bradley) and Mittie Belcher's 17 children. His birth site and date are disputed. While he claimed birth in Bolivar County, Mississippi, an entire body of emerging research suggests that Broonzy was actually born in Jefferson County, Arkansas. Broonzy claimed he was born in 1893 and many sources report that year, but after his death, family records suggested that the year was actually 1903. Soon after his birth the family moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where Bill spent his youth. He began playing music at an early age. At the age of 10 he made himself a fiddle from a cigar box and learned how to play spirituals and folk songs from his uncle, Jerry Belcher. He and a friend named Louis Carter, who played a homemade guitar, began performing at social and church functions. These early performances included playing at "two-stages": picnics where whites danced on one side of the stage and blacks on the other.
  
  wn.com/Big_Bill_Broonzy
• Billy Stewart
  Billy Stewart (March 24, 1937 – January 17, 1970) was an American musical artist, with a highly distinctive scat-singing style, who enjoyed popularity in the 1960s.
  Stewart was 12 years old when he began singing with his younger brothers Johnny, James, and Frank as The 4 Stewart Brothers, and later went on to get their own radio show every Sunday for five years at WUST radio station in Washington, D.C.
  Stewart made the transition to secular music by filling in occasionally for The Rainbows, a D.C. area vocal group led by the future soul star, Don Covay. It was also through The Rainbows that Stewart met another aspiring singer, Marvin Gaye. Rock and roller Bo Diddley has been credited with discovering Stewart playing piano in Washington, D.C. in 1956 and inviting him to be one of his backup musicians.^{[citation needed]}
  This led to a recording contract with Diddley's label, Chess Records and Diddley played guitar on Stewart's 1956 recording of "Billy's Blues". A strong seller in Los Angeles, "Billy's Blues" reached the sales top 25 in Variety magazine. Stewart then moved to Okeh Records and recorded "Billy's Heartache", backed by the Marquees, another D.C. area group which featured Marvin Gaye.
  
  wn.com/Billy_Stewart
• 
  Bo Diddley
  Ellas Otha Bates (December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008), known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist, songwriter (usually as Ellas McDaniel), and rock and roll pioneer. He was also known as "The Originator" because of his key role in the transition from the blues to rock & roll, influencing a host of acts, including Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground, The Who, The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton,The Beatles, and George Michael, among others. He introduced more insistent, driving rhythms and a hard-edged electric guitar sound on a wide-ranging catalog of songs, along with African rhythms and a signature beat (a simple, five-accent rhythm) that remains a cornerstone of rock and pop. Accordingly, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and a Grammy Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He was known in particular for his technical innovations, including his trademark rectangular guitar.
  
  wn.com/Bo_Diddley
• Bobby Charles
  Bobby Charles (February 21, 1938 – January 14, 2010) was an American singer-songwriter.
  An ethnic Cajun, Charles was born as Robert Charles Guidry in Abbeville, Louisiana and grew up listening to Cajun music and the country and western music of Hank Williams. At the age of 15, he heard a performance by Fats Domino, an event that "changed my life forever," he recalled.
  Charles helped to pioneer the south Louisiana musical genre known as swamp pop. His compositions include the hits "See You Later, Alligator", which he initially recorded himself as "Later Alligator", but which is best known from the cover version by Bill Haley & His Comets; and "Walking to New Orleans", written for Fats Domino. His songwriting record in the UK Singles Chart was seven hit, including three Top Tens with 75 weeks spent on the chart.^{[citation needed]}
  "(I Don't Know Why) But I Do" was an early 1960s song that Charles composed, which Clarence "Frogman" Henry had a major hit with, and which was on the soundtrack to the 1994 film, Forrest Gump. His composition "Why Are People Like That?" was on the soundtrack to the 1998 film Home Fries.
  
  wn.com/Bobby_Charles
• 
  Buddy Guy
  George "Buddy" Guy (born July 30, 1936) is an American blues guitarist and singer. Critically acclaimed, he is a pioneer of the Chicago blues sound and has served as an influence to some of the most notable musicians of his generation. "A key influence on Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy put the Louisiana hurricane in 1960s electric Chicago blues as a member of Muddy Waters' band and as a house guitarist at Chess Records. A native of the Baton Rouge area, he combined a blazing modernism with a fierce grip on his roots, playing frantic leads heavy with swampy funk on Howlin' Wolf's 'Killing Floor' and Koko Taylor's 'Wang Dang Doodle' as well as on his own Chess sides and the fine series of records he made with harp man Junior Wells. One of the last active connections to the golden age of Chess, Guy still plays with his original fire."
  Ranked thirtieth in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", Guy is known for his showmanship on stage: playing his guitar with drumsticks or strolling into the audience while playing solos. His song "Stone Crazy" was ranked seventy-eighth in list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time also of Rolling Stone.
  
  wn.com/Buddy_Guy
• 
  Chuck Berry
  Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (born October 18, 1926) is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.
  Born into a middle class family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he served a prison sentence for armed robbery between 1944 and 1947. On his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of blues player T-Bone Walker, he was performing in the evenings with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955, and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching No. 1 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name as well as a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry's Club Bandstand. But in January 1962, Berry was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines.
  
  wn.com/Chuck_Berry
• Cub Koda
  Michael "Cub" Koda (October 1, 1948 - July 1, 2000) was an American rock and roll singer, guitarist, songwriter, disc jockey, music critic, and record compiler. Rolling Stone magazine felt that Koda was best known for writing the song "Smokin' in the Boys' Room", which reached #3 on the 1974 Billboard charts as performed by Brownsville Station, and was later covered by Mötley Crüe. He co-wrote and edited the All Music Guide to the Blues, and Blues for Dummies, and put together the CD of blues classics accompanying the latter title, personally selecting versions of each song that appeared on it. He also contributed liner notes for the Trashmen, Jimmy Reed, J. B. Hutto, The Kingsmen, and the Miller Sisters, among others.
  Koda was a native of Detroit, Michigan, and a graduate of Manchester High School, Manchester, Michigan. He became interested in music as a young boy, learning drums by the age of 5, and by the time he was in high school he had formed his own group, the Del-Tinos. Using the style of rockabilly, rock & roll, and blues music, the band released their first single, "Go Go Go" (a version of a Roy Orbison recording), in the fall of 1963. They released two more singles, but eventually broke up in 1966, when Koda wanted to pursue other options.
  
  wn.com/Cub_Koda
• Dale Hawkins
  Delmar Allen "Dale" Hawkins (August 22, 1936 – February 13, 2010) was a pioneer American rock singer, songwriter, and rhythm guitarist who was often called the architect of swamp rock boogie.^{[citation needed]} Fellow rockabilly pioneer Ronnie Hawkins was his cousin.
  In 1957, Hawkins was playing at Shreveport, Louisiana clubs, and although his music was influenced by the new rock and roll style of Elvis Presley and the guitar sounds of Scotty Moore, Hawkins blended that with the uniquely heavy blues sound of black Louisiana artists for his recording of his swamp-rock classic, "Susie Q." Fellow Louisiana guitarist and future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer James Burton provided the signature riff and solo. The song was chosen as one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. Creedence Clearwater Revival's version of the song on their 1968 debut album helped launch their career and today it is probably the best known version.
  In 1958 Hawkins recorded a single of Willie Dixon's "My Babe" at the Chess Records studio in Chicago, featuring Telecaster guitarist Roy Buchanan. He went on to a long and successful career, recording more songs for Chess. In 1998, Ace Records issued a compilation album, Dale Hawkins, Rock 'n' Roll Tornado, which contained a collection of his early works and previously unreleased material. Other recordings include the cult classic "LA, Memphis and Tyler, Texas," and a 1999 release, "Wildcat Tamer," of all-new recordings that garnered Hawkins a 4-star review in Rolling Stone. However, his career was not limited to recording or performing. He hosted a teen dance party, The Dale Hawkins Show, on WCAU-TV in Philadelphia.
  
  wn.com/Dale_Hawkins
• 
  Darnell Martin
  Darnell Martin (born January 7, 1964) is a television and film director, screenwriter, and film producer.
  Martin was born in Bronx, New York. From the Bronx, she went on to Sarah Lawrence College and New York University Film School. Along the way, she worked in film labs and camera rental houses and as a bartender, made music videos and short films, and wrote the first draft of I Like It Like That.
  In 1992, Martin's short film, Suspect, which examined the treatment of young black people as assumed criminals, won critical acclaim at the New York Public Theater's Young Black Cinema showcase. After directing her first short film, Suspect, Martin served as assistant camera operator for Jonathan Demme's documentary Cousin Bobby, a film about his cousin Robert Castle, an Episcopal pastor who works in Harlem. The film was well-received from the majority of critics.
  In 1994, Martin became the first African-American woman to direct and produce a movie produced by a major studio, Columbia Pictures. I Like It Like That, a romantic comedy-drama film about a young woman trying to love her man, keep her family together, assert her self-worth as a person, and keep her sanity all at the same time. The film was well-received by critics, but it didn't perform well at the box office. In 2001 Martin directed Prison Song. She has directed episodes of TV shows like Law & Order and Grey's Anatomy. In 2008, Martin returned to the big screen in which she wrote and directed a musical-drama film based on Leonard Chess and the singers who recorded for Chess Records titled Cadillac Records.
  
  wn.com/Darnell_Martin
• Denise LaSalle
  Denise LaSalle (born July 16, 1939, Belzoni, Mississippi, United States) is an American blues and R&B/soul singer, songwriter, and record producer.
  Most sources give her name at birth as Denise Craig, although it has also been stated that she was born Denise Allen, and that the name Craig derives from an early marriage. Raised in Belzoni, Mississippi, she sang in local churches before moving to Chicago in the early 1960s. She sat in with R&B musicians and wrote songs, influenced by country music as well as the blues, before winning a recording contract with Chess Records in 1967. Her first single, "A Love Reputation" was a modest regional hit.
  After establishing an independent production company, Crajon, with her then husband Bill Jones, her first major success came in 1971 when her self-penned song, "Trapped By A Thing Called Love" was released on Detroit-based Westbound Records. This reached #1 on the national R&B chart and #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song ranked at #85 on the 1971 year-end chart. The RIAA gold disc award was made on 30 November 1971 for a million sales.
  
  wn.com/Denise_LaSalle
• 
  Eddie Bo
  Edwin Joseph Bocage ("Eddie Bo") (September 20, 1930 – March 18, 2009) was an American singer and New Orleans-style pianist. Schooled in jazz, he was known for his blues, soul and funk recordings, compositions, productions and arrangements. He debuted on Ace Records in 1955 and released more single records than anyone else in New Orleans other than Fats Domino.
  Eddie Bo came from a long line of ship builders with the male members of his family being bricklayers, carpenters and masons by day and musicians by night. Eddie's mother was a self-taught pianist in the style of friend, Professor Longhair. The Bocage family was involved in the traditional jazz community with cousins Charles, Henry and Peter, who played with Sidney Bechet, contributing to jazz orchestras before World War II.
  Eddie graduated from Booker T. Washington High School before going into the army. After his army stint, he returned to New Orleans to study at the Grundwald School of music. There he learned piano, music theory and to sight read, and arrange music. It was at this time that he was influenced by Russian classical pianist Horowitz and was introduced to bebop pianists Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson.
  
  wn.com/Eddie_Bo
• 
  Etta James
  Etta James (born Jamesetta Hawkins; January 25, 1938 – January 20, 2012) was an American singer. Her style spanned a variety of music genres including blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, gospel and jazz. Starting her career in the mid-1950s, she gained fame with hits such as "Dance With Me, Henry", "At Last", "Tell Mama", and "I'd Rather Go Blind" for which she wrote the lyrics. She faced a number of personal problems, including drug addiction, before making a musical resurgence in the late 1980s with the album The Seven Year Itch.
  James is regarded as having bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and is the winner of six Grammys and 17 Blues Music Awards. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Grammy Hall of Fame in both 1999 and 2008.Rolling Stone ranked James number 22 on their list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time and number 62 on the list of the 100 Greatest Artists.
  Jamesetta Hawkins was born on January 25, 1938, in Los Angeles, California, to Dorothy Hawkins, who was only 14 at the time. Her father has never been identified. James speculated that her father was the pool player, Rudolf "Minnesota Fats" Wanderone, and met him briefly in 1987. Due to her mother being often absent from their Watts apartment, conducting relationships with various men, James lived with a series of foster parents, most notably "Sarge" and "Mama" Lu. James referred to her mother as "the Mystery Lady".
  
  wn.com/Etta_James
• Fontella Bass
  Fontella Bass (born July 3, 1940) is an American soul singer, who is best known for the 1965 R&B hit "Rescue Me", which she also co-wrote.
  Fontella Bass was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of gospel singer Martha Bass (a member of the Clara Ward Singers). At an early age, Fontella showed great musical talent – at five years old she was providing the piano accompaniment for her grandmother's singing at funeral services, she was singing in her church's choir at six years old and by the time she was nine she was accompanying her mother on tours throughout the American South and Southwest.
  Fontella continued touring with her mother until the age of sixteen. As a teenager, Bass was attracted by more secular music. Throughout high school she began singing R&B songs at local contests and fairs. At seventeen, she started her professional career working at the Showboat Club near Chain of Rocks, Missouri. In 1961, she auditioned on a dare for the Leon Claxton carnival show and was hired to play piano and sing in the chorus for two weeks, making $175 per week for the two weeks it was in town. She wanted to go on tour with Claxton but her mother refused and according to Bass "... she literally dragged me off the train". It was during this brief stint with Claxton that she was heard by vocalist Little Milton and his bandleader Oliver Sain who hired her to back Little Milton on piano for concerts and recording.
  
  wn.com/Fontella_Bass
• Gene Ammons
  Eugene "Jug" Ammons (April 14, 1925 – July 23, 1974) also known as "The Boss," was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, and the son of boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons.
  Born in Chicago, Illinois, Ammons studied music with instructor Walter Dyett at DuSable High School. Ammons began to gain recognition while still at high school when in 1943, at the age of 18, he went on the road with trumpeter King Kolax band. In 1944 he joined the band of Billy Eckstine (who bestowed on him the nickname "Jug" when straw hats ordered for the band did not fit), playing alongside Charlie Parker and later Dexter Gordon. Notable performances from this period include "Blowin' the Blues Away," featuring a saxophone duel between Ammons and Gordon. After 1947, when Eckstine became a solo performer, Ammons then led a group, including Miles Davis and Sonny Stitt, that performed at Chicago's Jumptown Club. In 1949 Ammons replaced Stan Getz as a member of Woody Herman's Second Herd, and then in 1950 formed a duet with Sonny Stitt.
  
  wn.com/Gene_Ammons
• Gene Chandler
  Gene Chandler (born Eugene Dixon, July 6, 1937) also known as "The Duke of Earl" or simply "The Duke", is an American R&B and soul singer-songwriter, producer and record executive. He is one of the leading exponents of the 1960s Chicago soul scene. He is best known for his million-selling hits, "Duke Of Earl," and "Groovy Situation," and his associations with the Dukays, the Impressions and Curtis Mayfield. A Grammy Hall Of Fame inductee, and winner of the National Association of Television and Radio Announcers Producer of the Year Award, and the Rhythm and Blues Foundation's Pioneer Award, and one of the few artists to chart hit records during the doo-wop, rhythm and blues, soul, and disco eras. Between 1961 and 1986 Chandler has had forty Pop and R&B chart hits.
  Chandler attended Englewood High School on Chicago's south side. He began performing in the early 1950s with the Gaytones. In 1957, he joined a doo-wop group, The Dukays, with James Lowe, Shirley Jones, Earl Edwards and Ben Broyles, soon becoming their lead singer. After his draft into the US Army he returned to Chicago in 1960 and rejoined the Dukays.
  
  wn.com/Gene_Chandler
• Jackie Brenston
  Jackie Brenston (August 15, 1930  – December 15, 1979) was an African American R&B singer and saxophonist, who recorded, with Ike Turner's band, the first version of the proto-rock and roll song "Rocket 88".
  Brenston was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, United States. Returning to Clarksdale from army service in 1947, Brenston learned to play the tenor saxophone, linking up with Ike Turner in 1950 as sax player and occasional singer in his band. The local success of Turner’s Kings of Rhythm prompted B. B. King to recommend them to studio owner Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee, where the band made several recordings in early March 1951, including "Rocket 88", on which Brenston sang lead and which he was credited with writing.
  Phillips passed the recordings on to Chess Records in Chicago, who released "Rocket 88" as by "Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats", rather than under Turner's name. The record soon reached #1 on the U.S. Billboard R&B chart and stayed at that position for over a month. Phillips' later claimed that this was the first rock and roll record, this has often been repeated by others, although there are numerous other candidates. Phillips used the success of the record to start Sun Records the following year.
  
  wn.com/Jackie_Brenston
• Jackie Ross
  Jackie Ross (born 30 January 1946, St. Louis, Missouri) is an American soul singer.
  Ross sang gospel music as a child, and performed on a radio show run by her parents, both preachers. After her father died in 1954 she moved to Chicago and was signed to SAR Records by Sam Cooke. Her first single, "Hard Times", appeared in 1962, and following this she spent time singing in Syl Johnson's band.
  In 1964, she signed with Chess Records and released "Selfish One", which reached #11 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and #4 on the Cashbox R&B chart. A follow-up, "I've Got The Skill" reached the Hot 100 but stalled at #89 and the following year, "Jerk and Twine", a re-working of "Everything But Love", the song on the other side of her big hit, peaked at #85.
  An album, Full Bloom, was released in 1965, which was followed by three more singles, but after disputes with her record label, she left Chess in 1967. She later recorded for several labels into the 1970s including Brunswick, GSF, Mercury, Capitol, and for Jerry Butler's Fountain Productions, but was unable to duplicate the success of "Selfish One".
  
  wn.com/Jackie_Ross
• Jan Bradley
  Jan Bradley (born Addie Bradley, July 6, 1943 in Byhalia, Mississippi) is an American soul singer.
  Bradley grew up in Robbins, Illinois. She was noticed by manager Don Talty (who also managed Phil Upchurch) at a high school talent show. After graduating, she auditioned for Curtis Mayfield, and soon recorded the Mayfield-penned "We Girls", which became a hit regionally in the Midwest (on Talty's Formal Records label). Several singles followed, and another Mayfield song, "Mama Didn't Lie" (b/w "Lovers Like Me"), was released nationally in the U.S. by Chess Records in 1963 and hit #8 R&B and #14 on the Billboard Hot 100.
  Following the single's success, Mayfield and Chess got into a legal battle over the publishing rights to Mayfield's songs, and as a result Bradley was no longer able to work with him. She started writing her own songs and released several further singles on Chess. "I'm Over You" hit #24 R&B in 1965; other Chess releases included "Just a Summer Memory" b/w "He'll Wait on Me", "It's Just Your Way", and "These Tears" b/w "Baby What Can I Do". Bradley continued working with Talty after her arrangement with Chess ended, releasing singles for Adanti, Doylen, Spectra Sound, and Night Owl.
  
  wn.com/Jan_Bradley
• Jerry Zaks
  Jerry Zaks (born September 7, 1946) is a German-born American stage and television director, and actor. He won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play and Drama Desk Award for directing The House of Blue Leaves, Lend Me A Tenor, and Six Degrees of Separation and the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and Drama Desk Award for Guys and Dolls.
  Zaks was born in Stuttgart, Germany, the son of Holocaust survivors. His family emigrated to the United States in 1948, finally settling in Paterson, New Jersey. He graduated from Dartmouth College and received a Master of Fine Arts from Smith College.
  He made his Broadway acting debut in the original production of Grease as "Kenickie" and appeared in Tintypes in 1980. He made his directing debut in 1981 with the off-Broadway production of Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy. He has directed many Broadway productions, both musicals and dramas.
  He has also directed many Off-Broadway productions, several at Playwrights Horizons and the Public Theatre. He directed the City Center Encores! productions of Girl Crazy (November 2009),Stairway to Paradise (May 2007), and Bye Bye Birdie (May 2004).
  
  wn.com/Jerry_Zaks
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  Jimmy McCracklin
  Jimmy McCracklin (born August 13, 1921, St. Louis, Missouri, United States) is an American pianist, vocalist, and songwriter. His style contains West Coast blues, Jump blues, and R&B. Over a career that has spanned seven decades, he says he has written almost a thousand songs and has recorded hundreds of them. McCracklin has recorded over 30 albums, and owns four gold records.
  McCracklin joined the United States Navy in 1938, later settled in Richmond, California, and began playing at the local Club Savoy owned by his sister-in-law Willie Mae "Granny" Johnson. The room-length bar served beer and wine, and Granny Johnson served home-cooked meals of greens, ribs, chicken, and other southern cuisine. A house band composed of Bay Area based musicians alternated with and frequently backed performers such as B. B. King, Charles Brown, and L. C. Robinson. Later in 1963 he would write and record a song "Club Savoy" on his I Just Gotta Know album.
  His recorded a debut single for Globe Records, "Miss Mattie Left Me", in 1945, and recorded "Street Loafin' Woman in 1946. McCracklin recorded for a number of labels in Los Angeles and Oakland, prior to joining Modern Records in 1949-1950. He formed a group called Jimmy McCracklin and his Blues Blasters in 1946, with guitarist Lafayette Thomas who remained with group until the early 1960s.
  
  wn.com/Jimmy_McCracklin
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  Jimmy Rogers
  Jimmy Rogers (June 3, 1924 – December 19, 1997) was an American Chicago blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player, best known for his work as a member of Muddy Waters' band of the 1950s.
  Jimmy Rogers was born James A. Lane in Ruleville, Mississippi on June 3, 1924 and was raised in Atlanta and Memphis. He adapted the professional surname 'Rogers' from his stepfather's last name. Rogers learned the harmonica alongside his childhood friend Snooky Pryor, and as a teenager took up the guitar and played professionally in East St. Louis, Illinois, where he played with Robert Lockwood, Jr. among others, before moving to Chicago in the mid 1940s.^{[citation needed]} By 1946 he had recorded as a harmonica player and singer for the Harlem record label run by J. Mayo Williams. Rogers' name did not appear on the record, which was mislabeled as the work of "Memphis Slim and his Houserockers."
  In 1947, Rogers, Muddy Waters and Little Walter began playing together as Muddy Waters' first band in Chicago (sometimes referred to as "The Headcutters" or "The Headhunters" due to their practice of stealing jobs from other local bands), while the band members each recorded and released music credited to each of them as solo artists. The first Muddy Waters band defined the sound of the nascent "Chicago Blues" style (more specifically "South Side" Chicago Blues). Rogers made several more sides of his own with small labels in Chicago, but none were released at the time. He began to enjoy success as a solo artist with Chess Records in 1950, scoring a hit with "That's All Right", but he stayed with Muddy Waters until 1954. In the mid 1950s he had several successful releases on the Chess label, most featuring either Little Walter Jacobs or Big Walter Horton on harmonica, most notably "Walking By Myself", but as the 1950s drew to a close and interest in the blues waned, he gradually withdrew from the music industry.
  
  wn.com/Jimmy_Rogers
• Joel Whitburn
  Joel Carver Whitburn (born November 29, 1939; Wauwatosa, Wisconsin) is an American author and music historian.
  Whitburn founded Record Research Inc. in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, in 1970, and put together a team of researchers to examine in detail all of Billboard's music and video charts. Record Research publishes reference books based on data from the various popular music charts and to date has published over 200 books, 50 of which are currently in the Record Research catalog. His flagship publication is Top Pop Singles which covers the history of Billboard's popular music charts. Featuring each recording's peak position, date charted, weeks charted, label and information, and trivia on recordings and artists, Whitburn's books are used extensively by the entertainment industry (especially radio DJs) and music fans worldwide. His research extends from 1890 to the present and covers many genres. Whitburn is also the author of the Top 40 Hits series of books published by Billboard Books.
  
  wn.com/Joel_Whitburn
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  John Lee Hooker
  John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1917 – June 21, 2001) was a highly influential American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.
  Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally a unique brand of country blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark. Though similar to the early Delta blues, his music was metrically free. John Lee Hooker could be said to embody his own unique genre of the blues, often incorporating the boogie-woogie piano style and a driving rhythm into his blues guitar playing and singing. His best known songs include "Boogie Chillen'" (1948), "I'm in the Mood" (1951) and "Boom Boom" (1962), the first two reaching R&B #1 in the Billboard charts.
  There is some debate as to the year of Hooker's birth in Coahoma County, Mississippi, the youngest of the eleven children of William Hooker (1871–1923), a sharecropper and Baptist preacher, and Minnie Ramsey (born 1875, date of death unknown); according to his official website, he was born on August 22, 1917.
  
  wn.com/John_Lee_Hooker
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  Koko Taylor
  Koko Taylor sometimes spelled KoKo Taylor (September 28, 1928 – June 3, 2009) was an American Chicago blues musician, popularly known as the "Queen of the Blues." She was known primarily for her rough, powerful vocals and traditional blues stylings.
  Born Cora Walton in Shelby County, Tennessee, Taylor was the daughter of a sharecropper. She left Memphis for Chicago, Illinois in 1952 with her husband, truck driver Robert "Pops" Taylor. In the late 1950s she began singing in Chicago blues clubs. She was spotted by Willie Dixon in 1962, and this led to wider performances and her first recording contract. In 1965, Taylor was signed by Chess Records where she recorded "Wang Dang Doodle," a song written by Dixon and recorded by Howlin' Wolf five years earlier. The song became a hit, reaching number four on the R&B charts in 1966, and selling a million copies. Taylor recorded several versions of "Wang Dang Doodle" over the years, including a live version at the 1967 American Folk Blues Festival with harmonica player Little Walter and guitarist Hound Dog Taylor. Taylor subsequently recorded more material, both original and covers, but never repeated that initial chart success.
  
  wn.com/Koko_Taylor
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  Lafayette Leake
  Lafayette Leake (June 1, 1919 - August 14, 1990) was a blues and jazz pianist, organist, vocalist and composer who played for Chess Records as a session musician, and as a member of the Big Three Trio, during the formative years of Chicago blues. He played piano on many of Chuck Berry's recordings.
  Leake was born in Winona, Missouri, in 1919. Information about his early years is sparse, but in the early 1950s he joined the Big Three Trio (replacing Leonard Caston) and began his association with Chess Records, where he worked closely with bassist, producer, and songwriter Willie Dixon.
  Leake played piano on One Dozen Berrys, Chuck Berry's second album, released in 1958 by Chess. He was then on Chuck Berry Is on Top; Leake (not Berry's longtime bandmate Johnnie Johnson) played the prominent piano on the classic original rendition of "Johnny B. Goode". Leake played on numerous other Chess sessions from the '50s through the '70s, backing many of the Chess greats, including Sonny Boy Williamson,Otis Rush, Junior Wells, and Little Walter.
  
  wn.com/Lafayette_Leake
• Larry Williams
  Larry Williams (May 10, 1935 – January 7, 1980) was an American rhythm and blues and rock and roll singer, songwriter, producer, and pianist from New Orleans, Louisiana. Williams is best known for writing and recording some rock and roll classics from 1957 to 1959 for Specialty Records, including "Bony Moronie", "Short Fat Fannie", "High School Dance" (1957), "Slow Down", "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" (1958), "Bad Boy" and "She Said Yeah" (1959), which were later covered by British Invasion groups and other artists.John Lennon, in particular, was a fan of Williams, recording several of his songs over the course of his career. "Bony Moronie" is listed as one of the Top 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll.
  Williams lived a life mixed with tremendous success and violence-fueled drug addiction. He was a long-time friend of Little Richard.
  As a child in New Orleans, Williams learned how to play piano. When he was a teenager, he and his family moved to Oakland, California, where he joined a local R&B group called the Lemon Drops. In 1954, Williams went back to New Orleans for a visit. He began work as Lloyd Price's valet and played in the bands of Price, Roy Brown and Percy Mayfield. In 1955, Williams met and developed a friendship with Little Richard Penniman, who was recording at the time in New Orleans. Price and Penniman were both recording for Specialty Records. Williams was introduced to Specialty's house producer, Robert Blackwell, and was signed to record.
  
  wn.com/Larry_Williams
• Laura Lee
  Laura Lee (born Laura Lee Newton, 9 March 1945, Chicago, Illinois) is an American soul and gospel singer and songwriter, most successful in the 1960s and 1970s and influential for her records which discussed and celebrated women’s experience.
  Lee was born in Chicago, but as a child relocated to Detroit with her mother. After a few years, she was adopted by Rev. E. Allan Rundless, who had previously been a member of the Soul Stirrers, and his wife Ernestine, who led a gospel group, The Meditation Singers. Featuring Della Reese, they were the first Detroit gospel group to perform with instrumental backing. The group recorded on the Specialty label in the mid 1950s, appeared on the LP Della Reese Presents The Meditation Singers in 1958, and in the early 1960s recorded for Checker Records.
  As Laura Lee Rundless, she replaced Reese in The Meditation Singers in 1956, and over the next few years toured widely around the country. In 1965, as Laura Lee, she launched her secular solo career as an R&B singer in clubs in Detroit, although she also continued to record occasionally with The Meditation Singers. She first recorded solo for Ric-Tic Records in 1966, with "To Win Your Heart".
  
  wn.com/Laura_Lee
• Leonard Chess
  Leonard Chess (March 12, 1917 - October 16, 1969) was a record company executive and the founder of Chess Records. He was influential in the development of electric blues.
  Chess was born Lejzor Czyz in a Jewish community in Motal, Poland (but now within Belarus). He and his brother Fiszel, sister Malka and mother followed their father to Chicago in 1928. The family name was changed to Chess, with Lejzor becoming Leonard and Fiszel becoming Philip.
  Leonard and his brother Phil became involved in the black nightclub scene on the South Side of Chicago in 1946, when they took over the Macomba Lounge. In 1947, Leonard became associated with Aristocrat Records, increasing his share in the company over time; eventually he and Phil would acquire complete control. The Chess brothers moved the company away from black pop and jazz and other genres into down home blues music with artists such as Muddy Waters. In 1950, the Chess brothers renamed the company Chess Records. "My Foolish Heart" (Gene Ammons), "Rollin' Stone" (Muddy Waters), and "That's All Right" (Jimmy Rogers) were among the first releases on the new label. Leonard Chess played bass drum on one of Muddy Waters' sessions in 1951.
  
  wn.com/Leonard_Chess
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  Little Milton
  James Milton Campbell, Jr. (September 7, 1934 – August 4, 2005), better known as Little Milton, was an American electric blues, rhythm and blues, and soul singer and guitarist, best known for his hit records "Grits Ain't Groceries" and "We're Gonna Make It."
  Milton was born James Milton Campbell, Jr., in the Mississippi Delta town of Inverness and raised in Greenville by a farmer and local blues musician. By age twelve he had learned the guitar and was a street musician, chiefly influenced by T-Bone Walker and his blues and rock and roll contemporaries. In 1952, while still a teenager playing in local bars, he caught the attention of Ike Turner, who was at that time a talent scout for Sam Phillips' Sun Records. He signed a contract with the label and recorded a number of singles. None of them broke through onto radio or sold well at record stores, however, and Milton left the Sun label by 1955.
  After trying several labels without notable success, including Trumpet Records, Milton set up the St. Louis based Bobbin Records label, which ultimately scored a distribution deal with Leonard Chess' Chess Records. As a record producer, Milton helped bring artists such as Albert King and Fontella Bass to fame, while experiencing his own success for the first time. After a number of small format and regional hits, his 1962 single, "So Mean to Me," broke onto the Billboard R&B chart, eventually peaking at #14.
  
  wn.com/Little_Milton
• Little Walter
  Little Walter, born Marion Walter Jacobs (May 1, 1930 – February 15, 1968), was an American blues harmonica player, whose revolutionary approach to his instrument has earned him comparisons to Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix, for innovation and impact on succeeding generations. His virtuosity and musical innovations fundamentally altered many listeners' expectations of what was possible on blues harmonica. Little Walter was inducted to the The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 in the "sideman" category making him the first and only artist ever to be inducted specifically for his work as a harmonica player.
  Jacobs was born in Marksville, Louisiana and raised in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, where he first learned to play the harmonica. After quitting school by the age of 12, Jacobs left rural Louisiana and travelled around working odd jobs and busking on the streets of New Orleans, Memphis, Helena, Arkansas and St. Louis. He honed his musical skills on harmonica and guitar with Sonny Boy Williamson II, Sunnyland Slim, Honeyboy Edwards and others.
  
  wn.com/Little_Walter
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  Lowell Fulson
  Lowell Fulson (March 31, 1921 – March 7, 1999) was a big-voiced blues guitarist and songwriter, in the West Coast blues tradition. Fulson was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He also recorded for business reasons as Lowell Fullsom and Lowell Fulsom. After T-Bone Walker, Fulson was the most important figure in West Coast blues in the 1940s and 1950s.
  According to some sources, Fulson was born on a Choctaw reservation in Oklahoma. Fulson stated that he was of Cherokee ancestry through his father, but he also claimed Choctaw ancestry. At the age of eighteen, he moved to Ada, Oklahoma, and joined Alger "Texas" Alexander for a few months in 1940, but later moved to California, forming a band which soon included a young Ray Charles and tenor saxophone player, Stanley Turrentine. He recorded for Swing Time Records in the 1940s, Chess Records (on the Checker label) in the 1950s, Kent Records in the 1960s, and Rounder Records (Bullseye) in the 1970s.
  Fulson was drafted in 1943, but left the United States Navy in 1945. His most memorable and influential recordings included: "Three O'Clock Blues" (now a blues standard); the Memphis Slim-penned "Everyday I Have the Blues"; "Lonesome Christmas"; "Reconsider Baby" recorded in 1960 by Elvis Presley and in 1994 by Eric Clapton for his From the Cradle album as well as by Joe Bonamassa); and "Tramp" (co-written with Jimmy McCracklin and later covered by Otis Redding with Carla Thomas, ZZ Top (on 2003's Mescalero), Alex Chilton, and Tav Falco.
  
  wn.com/Lowell_Fulson
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  Marshall Chess
  Marshall Chess (born 13 March 1942, Chicago, Illinois) is the son and nephew of the founders of Chess Records, the Chicago-based independent record label that first recorded an unprecedented list of African-American, blues and early rock and roll artists such as: Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Memphis Slim, John Lee Hooker, Rufus Thomas, Memphis Minnie, Elmore James, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry, Etta James and Buddy Guy, among others.
  Leonard Chess and his brother Phil were two American immigrants from the Jewish community in Motal, Poland who in 1947 had purchased part of an independent record label called Aristocrat Records. Within a few short years the label was renamed after the family's Americanized surname 'Chess' and quickly produced a list of American blues artists that would come to be regarded as the greatest collection of the genre in recorded history.
  
  wn.com/Marshall_Chess
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  Maurice White
  Maurice White (born December 19, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, arranger and bandleader. He is the founder of the band Earth, Wind & Fire and the older brother of current and former Earth, Wind & Fire members Verdine White and Fred White respectively. Maurice served as the band's main songwriter and record producer, and he was co-lead singer (along with Phillip Bailey). White has won seven Grammys, and he has been Grammy nominated 21 times in total.
  White was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame as a member of Earth, Wind & Fire, and he was individually inducted in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Also known by his nickname Reese, he has worked with several famous recording artists such as Deniece Williams, The Emotions, Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond.
  White was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in the late 1980s, which led him to stop touring with Earth, Wind & Fire in 1994. However, White retains executive control of the band, and he remains active in the music business.
  
  wn.com/Maurice_White
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  Memphis Slim
  Memphis Slim (September 3, 1915 – February 24, 1988) was an American blues pianist, singer, and composer. He led a series of bands that, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues, included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano. A song he first cut in 1947, "Every Day I Have the Blues", has become a blues standard, recorded by many other artists. He made over 500 recordings.
  Memphis Slim's birth name was John Len Chatman, and he was born in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. His father Peter Chatman sang, played piano and guitar, and operated juke joints, and it is now commonly believed that he took the name to honor his father when he first recorded for Okeh Records in 1940. Although he started performing under the name Memphis Slim later that same year, he continued to publish songs under the name Peter Chatman.
  He spent most of the 1930s performing in honky-tonks, dance halls, and gambling joints in West Memphis, Arkansas, and southeast Missouri. He settled in Chicago in 1939, and began teaming with Big Bill Broonzy in clubs soon afterward. In 1940 and 1941 he recorded two songs for Bluebird Records that became part of his repertoire for decades, "Beer Drinking Woman," and "Grinder Man Blues." These were released under the name "Memphis Slim," given to him by Bluebird's producer, Lester Melrose. Slim became a regular session musician for Bluebird, and his piano talents supported established stars such as John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, Washboard Sam, and Jazz Gillum. Many of Slim's recordings and performances until the mid-1940s were with guitarist and singer Broonzy, who had recruited Slim to be his piano player after Joshua Altheimer's death in 1940.
  
  wn.com/Memphis_Slim
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  Minnie Riperton
  Minnie Jean Riperton (November 8, 1947 – July 12, 1979) was an American singer-songwriter best known for her vocal range of five-and-a-half octaves, and her 1975 single "Lovin' You". She was married to songwriter and music producer Richard Rudolph from 1972 until her death in the summer of 1979. They had two children—music engineer Marc Rudolph and actress/comedienne Maya Rudolph.
  Riperton grew up on Chicago's South Side. As a child, she studied music, drama, and dance at Chicago's Lincoln Center. In her teen years, she sang lead vocals for the Chicago-based girl group, The Gems. Her early affiliation with the legendary Chicago-based Chess Records afforded her the opportunity to sing backup for various established artists such as Etta James, Fontella Bass, Ramsey Lewis, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and Muddy Waters. While at Chess, Riperton also sang lead for the experimental rock/soul group Rotary Connection, from 1967 to 1971. In 1969 Riperton, along with Rotary Connection, played in the first Catholic Rock Mass at the Liturgical Conference National Convention, Milwaukee Arena, Milwaukee, WI, produced by James F. Colaianni. Riperton reached the apex of her career with her number-one hit single, "Lovin' You," on April 4, 1975. The single was the last release from her 1974 gold album entitled Perfect Angel.
  
  wn.com/Minnie_Riperton
• Mitty Collier
  Mitty Lene Collier (born 21 June 1941) is an American church pastor, gospel singer and former rhythm and blues singer. She had a number of successful records in the 1960s, of which probably the best known is "I Had A Talk With My Man".
  Mitty Collier was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the seventh child of Rufus and Gertrude Collier, and attended Western-Olin High School, Alabama A & M College and Miles College where she majored in English. She began singing in church as a teenager, and toured with gospel groups, the Hayes Ensemble and the Lloyd Reese Singers, before starting to sing rhythm and blues in local clubs to help subsidise her college education. In 1959, while visiting Chicago, she entered DJ Al Benson's talent show at the Regal Theater, winning for six straight weeks and gaining her a slot on a bill with B. B. King and Etta James as a prize. This brought her to the attention of Ralph Bass of Chess Records, who offered her a recording contract.
  
  wn.com/Mitty_Collier
• Moms Mabley
  Jackie "Moms" Mabley, born Loretta Mary Aiken (March 19, 1894 – May 23, 1975) was an American standup comedian and a pioneer of the so-called "Chitlin' Circuit" of African-American vaudeville.
  Mabley was born in Brevard, North Carolina. Although she always claimed a birthdate of 1894 and that she was one of a family of twenty children, the 1900 Federal Census finds a "Loretter Aiken" in Brevard who was born in March 1897 and was the youngest of four (of five) surviving children of James P. & Mary Aiken. Her father, James P. Aiken, owned and operated several businesses, while her mother, Mary Aiken, kept house and took in boarders. Her father died in an accident when Loretta was eleven. In 1910, her mother took over their primary business, a general store.
  James Aiken's father, Henry Aiken, was a mulatto, meaning James P. Aiken was part white. His mother, Bettie, was able to read and write in the 1870 census, five years after the abolition of slavery, which suggests she may have been a free woman of color. Loretta Mabley's genealogist, D. Richmond, wrote: "She has a very interesting lineage worth researching."
  
  wn.com/Moms_Mabley
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  Mos Def
  Dante Terrell Smith (born December 11, 1973) is an American actor and MC, known by the stage names Mos Def ( /ˌmoʊsˈdɛf/) and Yasiin Bey. He started his hip hop career in a group called Urban Thermo Dynamics, after which he appeared on albums by Da Bush Babees and De La Soul. With Talib Kweli, he formed the duo Black Star, which released the album Black Star in 1998. He was a major force in late 1990s underground hip hop while with Rawkus Records. As a solo artist he has released the albums Black on Both Sides in 1999, The New Danger in 2004, True Magic in 2006, and The Ecstatic in 2009.
  Although he was initially recognized for his musical output, since the early 2000s, Mos Def's screen work has established him as one of only a handful of rappers who has garnered critical acclaim for his acting work. He is well known for his portrayal of Brother Sam in the American drama series Dexter. Mos Def has also been active in several social and political causes.
  He was born Dante Terrell Smith in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of Sheron Smith and Abdul Rahman. He was raised by his mother in Brooklyn; his father lived in New Jersey. While his father was initially a member of the Nation of Islam and later an active member in the community of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, who merged into mainstream Islam from the Nation, Mos Def was not exposed to Islam until the age of 13. At 19, he took his shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith. He is friends with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest.
  
  wn.com/Mos_Def
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  Muddy Waters
  McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983), known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues". He was a major inspiration for the British blues explosion in the 1960s, and was ranked No. 17 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
  Although in his later years Muddy usually said that he was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, in 1915, he was actually born at Jug's Corner in neighboring Issaquena County, Mississippi, in 1913. Recent research has uncovered documentation showing that in the 1930s and 1940s he reported his birth year as 1913 on both his marriage license and musicians' union card. A 1955 interview in the Chicago Defender is the earliest claim of 1915 as his year of birth, which he continued to use in interviews from that point onward. The 1920 census lists him as five years old as of March 6, 1920, suggesting that his birth year may have been 1914. The Social Security Death Index, relying on the Social Security card application submitted after his move to Chicago in the mid 1940s, lists him as being born April 4, 1915. Muddy's gravestone lists his birth year as 1915.
  
  wn.com/Muddy_Waters
• Phil Chess
  Philip Chess (born 1921) is an American record producer and company executive, the co-founder of Chess Records.
  He was born Fiszel Czyż in a Jewish community in Częstochowa, Poland. He and his brother Lejzor, sister Malka and mother followed their father to Chicago in 1928. The family name was changed to Chess, with Lejzor becoming Leonard and Fiszel becoming Philip.
  In 1946, after leaving the Army, Phil joined Leonard in running a popular club, the Macomba Lounge. Two years later, Leonard became a partner in Aristocrat Records, a local company that recorded a wide range of music, and Phil joined in 1950. The company then changed its name to Chess Records, and began concentrating on R&B music, signing and recording artists such as Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, "Sonny Boy Williamson" (Rice Miller), Robert Lockwood Jr., Etta James and Chuck Berry. Phil Chess was actively involved in producing many of their seminal blues and rock and roll recordings. The company expanded successfully through the 1950s and early 1960s, until it was sold to GRT in 1968.
  
  wn.com/Phil_Chess
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  Pigmeat Markham
  Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham (April 18, 1904 – December 13, 1981) was an African-American entertainer. Though best known as a comedian, Markham was also a singer, dancer, and actor. His nickname came from a stage routine, in which he declared himself to be "Sweet Poppa Pigmeat." He was sometimes credited in films as David "Pigmeat" Markham.
  He was born in the community of Hayti, Durham, North Carolina. His family was the most prominent on their street, which came to be called (and later officially named) Markham Street in the Hayti District. Markham began his career in traveling music and burlesque shows. For a time he was a member of Bessie Smith's Traveling Revue in the 1920s. Later, he claimed he originated the Truckin' dance which became nationally popular at the start of the 1930s. In the 1940s he started making film appearances. In 1964 he recorded "Open the Door, Richard".
  Markham was a familiar act at New York's famed Apollo Theater where he wore blackface makeup and huge painted white lips, despite complaints the vaudeville tradition was degrading. He probably played at the Apollo more frequently than any other performer. Starting in the 1950s Pigmeat Markham began appearing on television, making multiple appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.
  
  wn.com/Pigmeat_Markham
• Ralph Bass
  Ralph Bass, Jr. (born Ralph Basso, Jr. 1 May 1911; died 5 March 1997), born in The Bronx, New York of an Italian-American-Catholic father, and a German-American-Jewish mother, was an influential rhythm and blues (R&B) record producer and talent scout for several independent labels and was responsible for many hit records. He was a pioneer in bringing black music into the American mainstream. During his long career he worked for such labels as Black & White Records, Savoy Records, King Records, Federal Records and Chess Records, recording some of the greatest performers in black music, including Etta James, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Earl Bostic and groups such as The Platters and The Dominoes. By doing so, he was instrumental in helping to shape their careers. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 as a non-performer.
  As a young man Bass visited the South and personally experienced the emotional power of black music in dance clubs. When he began his career as a record producer, segregation was in full effect and black performers were marginalized and relegated to one-night stands performing only to all black audiences in a network of theatres and nightclubs known the Chitlin' Circuit. Bass decided to focus his career on bringing black music and black performers into the entertainment mainstream.
  
  wn.com/Ralph_Bass
• Sam Lay
  Sam Lay (born March 20, 1935, Birmingham, Alabama, United States) is an American drummer and vocalist, who has been performing since the late 1950s.
  Lay began his career in 1957, as the drummer for the Original Thunderbirds, and soon after became the drummer for the harmonica player Little Walter.
  In the early 1960s, Lay began recording and performing with prominent blues musicians such as Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Eddie Taylor, John Lee Hooker, Jr. Wells, Bo Diddley, Magic Sam, Jimmy Rogers, Earl Hooker, and Muddy Waters. The recordings Lay made during this time, along with Waters' Fathers and Sons album recorded in 1969, are considered to be among the definitive works from the careers of Waters and Wolf.^{[citation needed]}
  In the mid 1960s, Lay joined the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and recorded and toured extensively with them. Bob Dylan, with Lay as his drummer, was the first performer to introduce electric-rock at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Lay also recorded with Dylan, most notably on the Highway 61 Revisited album.
  
  wn.com/Sam_Lay
• Sam Phillips
  Samuel Cornelius Phillips (January 5, 1923 – July 30, 2003), better known as Sam Phillips, was an American businessman, record executive, record producer and DJ who played an important role in the emergence of rock and roll as the major form of popular music in the 1950s. He was a producer, label owner, and talent scout throughout the '40s and '50s. He most notably founded Sun Studios and Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. Through Sun, Phillips discovered such recording talent as Howlin' Wolf, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. The height of his success culminated in his launching of Elvis Presley's career in 1954. He is also associated with several other noteworthy rhythm and blues and rock and roll stars of the period. Phillips sold Sun in 1969. He was an early investor in the Holiday Inn chain of hotels.
  Phillips was the youngest of eight children, born on a farm near Florence, Alabama to poor tenant farmers. As a child he picked cotton in the fields with his parents alongside black laborers. The experience of the workers singing in the fields left a big impression on the young Phillips. Travelling through Memphis with his family in 1939 on the way to see a preacher in Dallas, he slipped off to look at Beale Street, at the time the heart of the city's music scene. "I just fell totally in love," he later recalled.
  
  wn.com/Sam_Phillips
• 
  Shel Silverstein
  Sheldon Allan "Shel" Silverstein (September 25, 1930 – May 8/9, 1999), was an American poet, singer-songwriter, musician, composer, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books. He styled himself as Uncle Shelby in his children's books. Translated into more than 30 languages, his books have sold over 20 million copies.
  Born in Chicago, Silverstein began drawing at age 12 by tracing the works of Al Capp. He told Jean Mercier of Publishers Weekly: "When I was a kid—12 to 14, around there—I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls, but I couldn't play ball. I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me. Not much I could do about that. So I started to draw and to write. I was also lucky that I didn't have anybody to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my own style; I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price and a Steinberg. I never saw their work till I was around 30. By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn't rather make love, but the work has become a habit."
  
  wn.com/Shel_Silverstein
• Slappy White
  Slappy White (born Melvin White, September 20, 1921, Baltimore, MD, died November 7, 1995, Brigantine, NJ) was an American comedian and actor. He worked with Redd Foxx on the Chitlin' circuit of stand-up comedy during the 1950s and 1960s. He appeared on the television shows Sanford and Son, That's My Mama, Blossom, and Cybill and in the films Mr. Saturday Night and Amazon Women on the Moon.
  Slappy White's official biography reported that he "ran away to join the circus" as a child. White was best known in later years for the Friars' Club roasts, where he routinely appeared along with other comedians like Milton Berle, Jackie Vernon, Pat Buttram and Dick Shawn.
  In contrast to the off-color humor of the Friars' roasts, White also wrote and performed a more conservative comedy routine using one black and one white glove while reciting his poem about equality between men. White performed the routine many times during the civil rights movement in America, and he said that President John F. Kennedy once gave it a standing ovation.
  
  wn.com/Slappy_White
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  Sonny Stitt
  Edward "Sonny" Stitt (born Edward Boatner, Jr., February 2, 1924 – July 22, 1982), was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. He was one of the most well-documented saxophonists of his generation, recording over 100 albums. He was nicknamed the "Lone Wolf" by jazz critic Dan Morgenstern, in reference to his relentless touring and devotion to jazz.
  Edward Boatner was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Saginaw, Michigan. He had a musical background; his father, Edward Boatner, was a baritone singer, composer and college music professor, his brother was a classically trained pianist, and his mother was a piano teacher. Boatner was soon adopted by another family, the Stitts, who gave him his new surname. He later began calling himself "Sonny".
  In 1943, Stitt first met Charlie Parker, and as he often later recalled, the two men found that their styles had an extraordinary similarity that was partly coincidental and not merely due to Stitt's emulation. Stitt's improvisations were more melodic/less dissonant than those of Parker. Stitt's earliest recordings were made in 1945 with Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie. He had also played in some swing bands, though he mainly played in bop bands. Stitt was featured in Tiny Bradshaw's big band in the early forties. Stitt replaced Charlie Parker in Dizzy Gillespie's band in 1945.
  
  wn.com/Sonny_Stitt
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  Sugar Pie DeSanto
  Sugar Pie DeSanto (born Umpeylia Marsema Balinton, October 16, 1935, Brooklyn, New York, United States) is an American-Filipino rhythm and blues singer of the 1950s and 1960s.
  She was born to an African American mother and Filipino father. Her mother was a concert pianist. She spent most of her early life in San Francisco, California, where she moved with her family at a young age. She stands 4' 11". As a girl she was friends with Etta James.
  In 1955, DeSanto did some touring with The Johnny Otis Revue. Otis gave her her stage name. From 1959 to 1960, she toured with The James Brown Revue.
  In 1960, DeSanto rose to national prominence when her single "I Want to Know" reached number four on Billboard's Hot R&B chart. She recorded the song with her husband Pee Wee Kingsley. Soon thereafter her marriage to Kingsley fell apart, and DeSanto moved to Chicago and signed with Chess Records in 1962 as a recording artist and writer. Among her recordings at Chess were "Slip-in Mules", "Use What You Got", "Soulful Dress" (her biggest hit at Chess), and "I Don't Wanna Fuss". DeSanto participated in the American Folk Blues Festival tour of Europe in 1964, and her lively performances, including wild dancing and standing back flips, were widely appreciated.
  
  wn.com/Sugar_Pie_DeSanto
• Washboard Sam
  Robert Brown (July 15, 1910 – November 6, 1966), known professionally as Washboard Sam, was an American blues singer and musician.
  Born in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, United States, and reputedly the half-brother of Big Bill Broonzy, Brown moved to Memphis, Tennessee in the 1920s, performing as a street musician with Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon. He then moved to Chicago in 1932, performing regularly with Broonzy, and appearing with him and other musicians including Memphis Slim and Tampa Red on innumerable recording sessions for Lester Melrose of Bluebird Records.
  In 1935 he began recording in his own right for both Bluebird and Vocalion Records, becoming one of the most popular Chicago blues performers of the late 1930s and 1940s, selling numerous records and playing to packed audiences. Between 1935 and 1949 he recorded over 160 sides, including such popular numbers as "Mama Don't Allow", "Back Door" and "Diggin' My Potatoes." His strong voice and talent for creating new songs overcame his stylistic limitations.
  
  wn.com/Washboard_Sam
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  Willie Dixon
  William James "Willie" Dixon (July 1, 1915 – January 29, 1992) was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer. A Grammy Award winner who was proficient on both the upright bass and the guitar and as a vocalist, Dixon is perhaps best known as one of the most prolific songwriters of his time. He is recognized as one of the founders of the Chicago blues sound. Dixon's songs have been recorded by countless musicians in many genres as well as by various ensembles in which he participated. A short list of the man's most famous compositions includes "Little Red Rooster", "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Evil", "Spoonful", "Back Door Man", "I Just Want to Make Love to You", "I Ain't Superstitious", "My Babe", "Wang Dang Doodle", and "Bring It On Home". These tunes were written during the peak of Chess Records, 1950–1965, and performed by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter, influencing a worldwide generation of musicians.
  Next to Muddy Waters, he was the most influential person in shaping the post World War II sound of the Chicago blues. He also was an important link between the blues and rock and roll, working with Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley in the late 1950s. His songs were covered by some of the biggest artists of more recent times, including Styx, Bob Dylan, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Foghat, The Yardbirds, The Rolling Stones, Queen, Megadeth, The Doors, The Allman Brothers Band, Grateful Dead, and a posthumous duet with Colin James.
  
  wn.com/Willie_Dixon
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  Willie Mabon
  Willie Mabon (October 24, 1925 – April 19, 1985) was an American R&B singer, songwriter and pianist.
  Born Willie James Mabon, and brought up in Hollywood, Memphis, Tennessee, he had become known as a singer and pianist by the time he moved to Chicago in 1942. He formed a group, the Blues Rockers, and in 1949 began recording for the Aristocrat label, and then Chess. His style contrasted with many Chess artistes – it was cool and jazzy, emphasising piano and saxophone rather than guitar and harmonica.^{[citation needed]}
  His biggest success came in 1952 when his debut solo release, "I Don't Know", topped the Billboard R&B chart for eight weeks. He picked it up from the older boogie-woogie pianist, Cripple Clarence Lofton. It was one of the most popular releases of its era, becoming Chess's biggest hit in the period before Chuck Berry's and Bo Diddley's success. It also became one of the first R&B hit records to be covered by a leading white artist, Tennessee Ernie Ford. Mabon's original was played on Alan Freed's early radio shows and also sold well to white audiences, crossing over markets at the start of the rock and roll era.
  
  wn.com/Willie_Mabon

Playing Chess: The Making of Cadillac Records (2009)

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• Documentary
• Short

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