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

A tour-de-force history of Jews, blues, and the birth of a new industry. On the south side of Chicago in the late 1940s, two immigrants, one a Jew born in Russia, the other a black blues singer from Mississippi met and changed the course of musical history. Muddy Waters electrified the blues, and Leonard Chess recorded it. Soon Bo Diddly and Chuck Berry added a dose of pulsating rhythm, and Chess Records captured that, too. Rock & roll had arrived, and an industry was born. In a book as vibrantly and exuberantly written as the music and people it portrays, Rich Cohen tells the engrossing story of how Leonard Chess, with the other record men, made this new sound into a multi-billion-dollar business aggressively acquiring artists, hard-selling distributors, riding the crest of a wave that would crash over a whole generation. Full of absorbing lore and animated by a deep love for popular music, Machers and Rockers is a smash hit.

Author: Rich Cohen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 09/17/2004
Pages: 220
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 5.80h x 8.60w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780393052800

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/23/2004 pg. 50
Booklist 09/15/2004 pg. 190
Library Journal 10/01/2004 pg. 82

About the Author
Cohen, Rich: - Rich Cohen is the author of Tough Jews, The Avengers, and Lake Effect. He lives in New York City.