Chess Records: How a Chicago Label Changed the Sound of the World

There is a building on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago that changed the history of music. Between 1957 and 1967, 2120 South Michigan Avenue was the address of Chess Records — and what happened inside those walls reverberated around the world for decades.

The Brothers and the Blues

Chess Records was founded by Leonard and Phil Chess, two Polish Jewish immigrants who came to Chicago in the 1920s and eventually found their way into the nightclub business on the South Side. In 1950 they renamed their small label Chess — and planted it right in the middle of one of the most musically fertile places on earth.

The postwar South Side was electric. The Great Migration had brought hundreds of thousands of Black Americans from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago, and with them came the blues. Chess Records became its home. Muddy Waters recorded there. Howlin' Wolf. Little Walter. Etta James. Then came Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley — and in capturing that sound, Chess essentially invented rock and roll.

When the Rolling Stones came to Chicago in 1964, the first place they went was 2120 South Michigan Avenue. They recorded a song there and named it after the address.

The Legacy

Chess was sold in 1969. Its catalog, now owned by Universal Music, remains one of the most important archives in American music history. Every rock band that ever plugged in a guitar owes something to what happened on the South Side of Chicago.

The Chess Records Retro T-shirt is a nod to that legacy. Find it in the Chicago collection.