Cadillac Records

5 Stars for the music- 3 stars for the story- Cadillac Records
So it averages out to 4 stars then.
The music is just great with many key blues performances from Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Etta James, Howlin'Wolf and Willie Dixon recreated. The story is a blend of fiction and fact and one wonders why the half truths and lies had to find their way into the story. Just a few of the "mistruths":
-There were 2 Chess Brothers, not just one and both had a strong involvement in the company.
- Len Chess died 2 months after he sold his company not just after stepping foot outside the door.
-Etta James did not record "I'd Rather Go Blind" in Chicago although she did record her composition for the Chess label.
-Etta had already been a star for 5 years prior to joining Chess.
-Len Chess did actually serve as a session musician if the situation demanded it.
-The Chess company recorded many other musicians and styles during their career.
-Whether Chess ever dated Etta James is debatable. She had a boyfriend who was...

Cadillac Records
An outstanding new book, Ted Gioia's "Delta Blues" (2008) tells the story of "The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters who Revolutionized American Music." Much of Gioia's book is devoted to the blues singers who left the Delta in the late 1940s and relocated to other American cities, including Chicago. With Gioia's book fresh in my mind, I was eager to see "Cadillac Records", a new movie which tells of transplanted blues, early rock and roll, and Chicago -- and of the association of many great blues artists with Chess Records and Leonard Chess. The movie offers compelling portraits of Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf, of the Mississippi Delta, together with Little Walter, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry, guitarist Hubert Sumlin, and Etta James together with its portrait of Leonard Chess. The movie is directed by Darnell Martin.

Gioia writes: "Like Muddy Waters, the Chess brothers were outsiders trying to establish themselves in Chicago." ("Delta Blues, p. 216). Leonard and...

Sex, Guns, Rythmn & Blues, and Payola
Cadillac Records is the story of Chess Records opened by Leonard Chess in Chicago in the late 40's, and which quickly became a successful and influential record label (would Rock `n' Roll have existed without Chess?)

The movie is narrated by Willie Dixon (Cedric The Entertainer) and he tells of Chess' (Adrian Brody) beginnings with a bar and a club on the south side of Chicago. The main players in the movies are Muddy Waters (Jeffery Wright) and Little Walter (a standout performance by Columbus Short) who are respectively the best guitar and harp players in Chicago. Chess discovers them when they crash his club and show up the band that is playing. Through the fortuitous burning down of his club Chess opens Chess Records and seeks out Waters, records him, and starts touring him in the south. Chess insures radio airplay with a little payola and Waters career takes off and so does Chess Records. When the money comes rolling in Chess pays Waters with new Cadillac's. New...

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