[JPL] Chess Records film puts facts in check

[Jazz Promo Services]

Chess Records film puts facts in check

November 30, 2008
BY DAVE HOEKSTRA dhoekstra at suntimes.com

Beyonce Knowles channels the scorched soul of rhythm and blues singer Etta
James in covering her hit "I'd Rather Go Blind" at the end of "Cadillac
Records," the cinematic story of Chicago's legendary Chess Records.

Gene Barge looks straight at the screen.

"Well," he says, "that movie was a Hollywood production that departed from a
lot of the truthful things that happened."

"Cadillac Records," opening Friday, is advertised as a true story. Adrien
Brody portrays Leonard Chess, the label's co-founder, and hip-hop star Mos
Def nails a young Chuck Berry. The story is told through the narration of
Cedric the Entertainer as Chess bandleader-songwriter Willie Dixon.

Barge, 82, is the right guy to take a test spin through "Cadillac Records."
He was a producer, arranger and sax player at Chess from 1964 through 1971.
He worked with Muddy Waters, Billy Stewart, Fontella Bass and many others.

Barge is also an actor. He was a cop in "The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford, a
cop in "Code of Silence" with Chuck Norris and a cop in the Pam Grier-Steven
Seagal flick "Above the Law." All three films were made in Chicago -- unlike
"Cadillac Records," which was shot in New Jersey.

"It didn't have the Chicago feel," Barge says. "The guy playing Leonard
looked like him a little bit, but he didn't have a Chicago accent. Leonard
had that Chicago accent, like [actor] Dennis Farina and those guys."

"Cadillac Records" depicts a torrid relationship between Leonard Chess and
James (born Jamesetta Hawkins, and said to be the illegitimate daughter of
pool shark Minnesota Fats). "I don't recall Leonard having that kind of
relationship with Etta James," Barge says.

Leonard's son Marshall Chess, who still runs the family publishing company
out of New York, is even more emphatic, insisting that while the two were
"very close" they were never involved sexually.

"I asked Etta right to her face," he recalls in a phone interview. "She
said, 'No, all the m----------- did was kiss me on the cheek.' They had a
close relationship and he felt protective of her. We had that with a lot of
artists."

Chess, the film's executive music producer, knows people will walk away from
"Cadillac Records" thinking the steamy Etta-Leonard relationship really
happened. "Those are the things that bothered me," he said. "But it only
really bothers the immediate family. All my life I've been getting blues
artists mad at me for trying to expand the blues. This is the best thing for
expanding the Chess legacy to a new generation."

Leonard Chess died of a heart attack in 1968 after leaving Chess Studios on
the Near South Side. He was driving a Cadillac and hit a parked car after
his seizure. He was 52 years old.

The movie makes no mention of Leonard's brother Phil, who co-founded the
label.

"Phil was an integral part of the scene," Barge says. "The film was correct
in how Leonard was always in the studio. Every day. But Ralph Bass produced
Etta James. Nothing about him. He produced 'At Last' [her 1960 crossover hit
for Chess]."

And "I'd Rather Go Blind" wasn't even recorded in Chicago. In 1967 Leonard
Chess dispatched James to Muscle Shoals, Ala., to obtain the emotional depth
shaped by drummer Roger Hawkins, keyboardist Spooner Oldham and the rest of
the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. The same 1967 session also yielded the
James hit "Tell Mama."

Marshall Chess, 66, had only seen rough cuts of "Cadillac Records" as of
last week.

"I know it's a Hollywood movie," Chess says. "But I was disappointed my
uncle wasn't in it. To be honest, I don't think they wanted to buy his life
rights. [Phil Chess is still alive.] He was supposed to be in it. They said
they couldn't make everyone a character. I'm sure he has mixed feelings, but
he hasn't seen it yet. Chess wouldn't have become Chess without the both of
them. The biggest thing I had to remember is that it isn't a documentary. It
is fiction based on fact.

"The point is that this is a great thing for Chicago blues. They're
promoting this film in Harlem and not suburbia. Young black people and even
white people will get exposed to Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry for
the first time. The movie was not made for blues junkies, which is something
I had to get over myself."

One person who knew nothing about Etta James was Beyonce.

She spent most of 2008 dividing her time among three personalities: herself,
James and the hellcat alter ego of her new album "I Am ... Sasha Fierce"
(Columbia). A "Cadillac Records" executive producer and Golden Globe nominee
for her role in "Dreamgirls," Beyonce didn't meet James until the film was
completed.

"One thing Etta taught me is her fearlessness," Beyonce said in a statement
from her label. "She was Etta all the time. She did not try to change for
anyone. If it weren't for her crossing over -- she was the first
African-American woman to cross over on the radio -- I wouldn't have the
opportunities I have. It was the best performance I've done on screen. It
gave me the strength and the confidence to step out of my comfort zone even
more."

Barge liked Beyonce's performance, although he thought she was too thin to
play James. Beyonce reportedly put on 15 pounds for the role.

Eamonn Walker of HBO's "Oz," the first African American to portray Othello
at the Old Globe Theatre in London, plays Howlin' Wolf.

"Howlin' Wolf was great casting," Barge says. "Cedric the Entertainer didn't
look like Willie Dixon. He was a massive figure and weighed close to 300
pounds. He was a militant guy, a friend of Malcolm X."

The source material used by "Cadillac Records" writer-director Darnell
Martin ("Their Eyes Were Watching God") included Chess biographies and
interviews with Howlin' Wolf guitarist Hubert Sumlin and Willie Dixon's
widow, Marie. Chess says Martin "was a big Little Walter fan and she uses
him a lot in the script."

Little Walter -- harmonica great Walter Jacobs -- is seen drinking a lot,
talking back to cops and driving around in a Cadillac without the doors.
"Little Walter was crazy," Barge says. "They had that right. At the end of
his days, he was hanging out with Johnny Pepper [the owner of Pepper's Show
Lounge, home base of Muddy Waters] around Harvey after the show lounge
closed. He was out of money and playing his harmonica."

Chess was not interviewed in depth for the film. Does he wish he had been?

Chess pauses and answers, "Oh, God. What good would it have done? It was a
great lesson to me how this works. These are not documentaries. Its just
about an era that no one knows about. Everyone's driving Cadillacs and
wearing do-rags."

The dialogue in "Cadillac Records" doesn't always ring true. When Leonard
Chess finds James TKO'd from a heroin overdose near a fireplace in her home
after her furniture had been repossessed, Brody actually says with a
straight face, "Sure, marshmallows and smack go real well together."

Barge says, "The film really needed a Chicago lingo, a Chicago language."

Chess adds, "What I missed was a lot of the laughter that went on at Chess
Records. This movie was deeper, darker."

Jeffrey Wright, who plays Colin Powell in Oliver Stone's "W.," delivers one
of the film's strongest performances as Muddy Waters. Sumlin even plays
guitar on Wright's cover of "I'm a Man" (written by Bo Diddley, also missing
from the film). Throughout "Cadillac Records," the even-tempered Waters
never strays far from Leonard Chess' dream of running the label as family.

"Muddy bought into it, but at the end of the day if you talked to Etta James
she was bitter," Barge says. "She felt like Leonard screwed her.

"On the day of Leonard's funeral, Ralph Bass and I flew out to the West
Coast to record Etta. We left the cemetery on the West Side, and Phil Chess
said, 'Since you already have the studio booked, go ahead.' In the meantime
Leonard had paid for Etta's house [in Los Angeles] and kept the deed so she
wouldn't lose it." Marshall Chess said Chess bandleader Paul Gayton held the
deed for his father.

But it wasn't always like family. Barge looks around the empty movie theater
and whispers, "Willie [Dixon] got his money, but he didn't get it from
Chess. He got it from his publishing company because he was a songwriter. I
helped Willie copyright some of his songs at the end of his time."

Dixon sued Chess' partners, Gene and Harry Goodman (the brothers of big-band
leader Benny Goodman), who had formed Arc Publishing. When an artist covered
a Chess song, the royalty did not go to the original artist, but to Arc.
"Willie got a lot of his music back," Barge says.

Chess is full of stories like that -- maybe too many for one movie. "
'Cadillac Records' was a nice story," Barge says, "but fictional."

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The views expressed in these blog posts are those of the author and not of
the Chicago Sun-Times.