by Renée Rosen
“Do they know that I’ve been an active member of CORE, that I marched in Birmingham? Do they know that I was a Freedom Rider? My husband and I were just down in Washington marching with Dr. King. I’ve met Dr. King. I’ve shaken his hand, I’ve—”
“Of course they know all that, Leah, but they’ve made their decision.”
“Can we appeal it?”
He gave a long heavy sigh. “As your lawyer, I have to say that I don’t see this turning in your favor. James is seventeen already. By the time we get this through the system again, it’s going to cost more money, more time. He’ll be eighteen soon and this’ll be a moot point. He’ll be an adult and can decide for himself.”
After Leeba hung up with the lawyer she tried not to cry. She had cared for James as her son from the time he was eight. When he got sick, she was there. When he came home from school with his first A she was there. She had held his hand the first time he went to a dentist and had five cavities filled. She’d been there. Through birthdays and holidays she and Red had been there. And now the courts were denying them custody just because she was white. It was so unjust, and if her lawyer hadn’t discouraged her from doing so, she would have gone to DCFS and talked to them, made them see how unfair this was. She and Red couldn’t be the only couple trapped in this predicament.
Leeba heard the deliverymen out in the living room and went to see what was going on. The coffee table and sofa had been pushed out of the way and Aileen’s plant, now full and thriving, was scooted to the side. Three moving men, in matching green uniforms, rolled in something big and bulky covered in a blue quilted blanket, secured on a dolly, held in place with ropes and buckles.
“What is this thing anyway?” she asked.
“A piano.”
A piano? What was Leonard thinking? She already had a piano. Where was she going to put a second one?
The movers unbuckled the ropes and she was trying to hide her annoyance as they unwrapped the piano, piece by piece. When they unveiled the main section Leeba’s eyes grew wide. This was not just a piano. This was a baby grand. They unwrapped the next section and the next. The whole time Leeba stood with her hand covering her mouth, thinking, Oh my God, it can’t be. It wasn’t just any baby grand but a Bösendorfer. She inched closer and let out an audible gasp. She couldn’t believe it. There it was on the fallboard—the scratch, the thunderbolt. This was her piano—from the Maxwell Street Radio and Record Store, the one she’d been saving for that Bernard Abrams had sold out from under her. But like a lost cat that finds its way back home, her baby grand had come back to her.
“You okay, miss?” asked the driver. “Mr. Chess said to deliver it to this address. He said, ‘Take it to Leah. She’ll know what to do with it.’”
Leeba nodded, wiping the tears from her eyes as she signed the delivery form.
• • •
Days later Leeba was still stunned over the piano. She found out that Red had spotted it at the radio station, saw the scratch on the fallboard and realized that it was her Bösendorfer. He’d talked to Leonard about it and Leonard said he wanted Leeba to have it. Red coordinated the whole thing with Leonard. Even measured the room to make sure it would fit and made arrangements to have the old upright removed.
Leeba was thinking about all this as she was heading toward the studio. Coming up the sidewalk she saw a cluster of guys in mod-looking vests and jackets. Even before she heard their accents she knew that these boys with the long, long hair—even longer than the Beatles’—had to be the British musicians who were coming to record at Chess. They had pulled up along the curb outside of 2120 and were unloading a van packed with a drum kit, guitars, amps and a case of Jack Daniel’s.
She remembered the day she and Marshall went into Leonard’s office to tell him and Phil about this band. Marshall had grown up around the studio and now he was working there full-time. He and Leeba understood why this band wanted to record in their studio, but Leonard wasn’t in favor of it.
“Why the hell do they want to come all this way to make a record?” Leonard said. “We don’t rent out the studio to bands. We record our own artists and that’s it. They’re not booking the studio for two solid days.”
“They’re huge blues fans,” Leeba said. “Remember when the Beatles first came to America? All they wanted to do was meet Muddy and Bo Diddley.”
“They’re gonna tie up my whole operation here for two days,” Leonard said.
“I spoke with their manager,” said Marshall. “These guys are big in England. And Leeba’s right. They’re huge blues fans. They know all of Willie Dixon’s and Howlin’ Wolf’s music and Little Walter’s and Sunnyboy Slim’s, too. They said their favorite bluesman is Muddy and they want to come record in the very same studio that their idol recorded in—and yeah, they called him their idol. These guys even named their band after one of Muddy’s songs.”
“No kidding, huh,” said Leonard. Leeba could tell that he was beginning to soften.
“And don’t forget,” said Marshall, “if these guys record one of Mud’s songs and it takes off like their other songs have, can you imagine the kind of money we’re talking about?”
“He’s got a point,” Phil said, starting to come around to their side of the argument. “Those songs weren’t worth shit when Muddy and Willie and the others first wrote them. Now think about the royalties that could come in for the songwriters.”
“Not to mention the royalties for Arc,” said Marshall.
“Okay, okay.” Leonard held up his hands. “You can stop selling. Go ahead and book them. But you”—he pointed at Leeba—“keep an eye on them while they’re here.”
Leeba was remembering all this when one of the Brits called to her. “Excuse me, miss? Is this the location of Chess Records?”
“It is. And you must be the Rolling Stones.”
“Yes. Yes, we are.”
“Welcome.”
Leeba looked up the sidewalk and there was Muddy, right on time. She’d called him earlier and told him that his biggest fans were coming to record with Chess and invited him to the studio to meet them. “Hey, Muddy.” She waved to him.
“That’s him?” said one of the band members, visibly giddy and awestruck. “That’s Muddy Waters?”
Leeba smiled. “That’s him, all right. Hey, Muddy, I do believe these fellows have come quite a long way just for you.”
Muddy said hello and shook their hands and the Brits gushed like schoolgirls meeting their crush. The one guy named Mick just smiled—all teeth, cheeks puffed up high. The band members had their guitars, drums and equipment stacked up on the sidewalk next to their van, the June sunlight glinting off the cymbals.
“Let me give y’all a hand here,” said Muddy, grabbing hold of an amp. “We’ll go up the back way. Closer to the studio.”
The band members were nudging each other, grinning—they couldn’t believe it.
When they got inside, Leonard and Phil came into the studio. Leeba made the introductions and again the Rolling Stones gushed over meeting the brothers.
Leonard shook their hands and said, “Just don’t make a mess.” He turned around and walked back into his office.
Phil, being Phil, stood around and made small talk with the guys, asked about their flight over, their hotel and when the hell they were going to get haircuts.
When it was time to start recording, Leonard and Phil were both out of the office, over at WVON. Leeba hung around the studio in case the band needed anything. She watched the Rolling Stones guzzle whiskey, each band member pulling from his own bottle and firing up cigarettes between takes. There was a giant cloud of smoke hovering above them. The studio always took on a certain scent during recording sessions: a combination of sweat, smoke and booze. But this time, the smell was more acrid. The studio reeked of them. It was like they hadn’t bathed in a week and the stench grew more pungent over the n
ext two days. They were working hard and fast, laying down a slew of tracks. They recorded Muddy’s “I Can’t Be Satisfied” and Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around.” They did some old Willie Dixon numbers and Big Bill Broonzy songs, too. Each time someone came into the studio Brian Jones or Keith Richards would stop playing and say, “Is that him? Is that Willie Dixon? Was that Little Walter?”
After they’d recorded their last track the engineer marked up the master tapes and stepped out of the booth. Leeba took a seat in the control room and through the glass window she looked out onto the studio, watching the Rolling Stones coil up power cords, tuck guitars in their cases. They were just about done packing up when Muddy stopped by. They seemed just as starstruck around him then as they had been the first day they met him.
“Where y’all rushin’ off to?” Muddy asked, picking up his white Fender electric. “Thought we’d have us a little fun before y’all leaves town.”
That was all it took for the guitars to come back out, and within minutes all of them joined in on a jam session. They were playing Muddy’s “Baby Please Don’t Go.” Muddy was sitting down, dressed in a beautiful silk suit and tie. Mick, Keith and Brian stood around him in their sweat-soaked shirts with sleeves rolled to their elbows, top buttons and vests undone and ties loosened about their necks. Charlie Watts was back on the drums and Bill Wyman was laying down the bass line. Mick and Muddy traded off, taking turns with the lyrics, Muddy calling out a line and Mick answering back. Muddy and Keith did the same with the guitar solos.
Leeba wished they’d been recording this because she recognized that she was witnessing a powerful moment. Back in 1947 when she went to work with Leonard and Evelyn at Aristocrat, who would have imagined, who could have possibly predicted, that what they once called race music would become all this? Who knew that the music could have crossed an ocean and erased the line that separated white from black?
She watched Muddy singing and laughing with his new friends and she just knew that something historic was going to come out of this day.
EPILOGUE
• • •
“Windy City Blues”
1969
Phil sobbed the whole way back to Glencoe. How he made the drive he’d never know. The police had telephoned earlier. He’d been at the office, on another call with a distributor, which he’d put on hold. He never went back to that call. The officer said he needed Phil to come down and identify the body.
It had started to drizzle and as Phil turned on the windshield wipers it cleared away the present and took him back. All the changes from the last few years flashed before him. There were young boys going off to fight in Vietnam, Martin Luther King had been fatally shot, some crazy cult in California had gone on a killing spree, Elvis was playing Vegas and outdoor concerts were lasting three whole days.
Closer to home the Chess family had lost Little Walter, his antics finally catching up to him in February 1968. Walter opened his mouth to the wrong guy and got beaten to death. Record Row was dying, too. Vee-Jay Records had fallen on hard times. Some of the other labels had also gone under.
Chess, on the other hand, had expanded. They’d outgrown 2120 and moved to a bigger building at 320 East Twenty-first Street. Leonard had always dreamed of having a one-stop shop with a studio, a pressing plant and all their offices—the whole operation—under one roof. And he finally got it.
But the biggest change came when, after all that, Leonard and Phil decided to sell the label. It was time. It was everybody’s music now, not just music for blacks. And they were blacks now. Not coloreds, not Negroes. It was the age of Black Power and Leonard and Phil had had a good run. So they sold Chess Records to GRT, General Recorded Tape. GRT made reel-to-reels, and those new eight-tracks and cassettes. They wanted to get into the record business and Leonard and Phil wanted out.
Leeba was smart. She’d seen what was happening and even before they sold the company she had one foot out the door. She was still doing a little songwriting here and there, but now her real work was for the Department of Children and Family Services. She’d found her calling in finding homes for orphaned and abandoned children. It made sense. She and Red had fought their own battle trying to adopt James. So now she was helping other couples do the same and by the time they sold the label, Leeba had already resigned and accepted a job with DCFS.
When the artists found out they were selling Chess, they took it hard.
“I’ve done for you all that I can,” Phil remembered Leonard saying to Muddy and Wolf. “You’ve got major rock bands covering your songs now. I put you motherfuckers on the map—you don’t need me anymore.”
Phil blinked away fresh tears and thought about the last time he saw Leonard. It was just that morning. October 16, 1969. Leonard had gotten into a screaming match with the guys at GRT over some outstanding bills and Phil recalled walking him out to his car trying to calm him down.
“You gotta watch your temper, motherfucker,” he’d said, waving a finger in Leonard’s face.
Leonard had cracked a smile as he got into his Cadillac and drove off toward WVON. Phil was supposed to meet him at the station after lunch that day for a meeting that would never take place. Because fifteen minutes after Leonard left Phil, he suffered a massive heart attack while he was driving. It happened just a few blocks away from WVON. Leonard was found slumped over his steering wheel. His Cadillac hit two parked cars.
Phil dried his eyes as he pulled up to Leonard’s house in Glencoe. He recognized the cars out front. Marshall, Susie and Elaine were there. So were Revetta, Sheva and Phil’s kids. They all knew there’d been an accident; they heard it had been Leonard’s car, too. Now Phil was confirming what they already knew, though they didn’t want to accept it: the body inside was that of fifty-two-year-old Leonard Chess.
• • •
After the funeral, after the family had sat shiva and everyone had gone back to their lives, Revetta found herself alone. No one there to coddle the grieving widow. What was there to do but wander through the big house that had meant so much to Leonard, even though he was hardly ever there. Now it seemed too big. It was so empty, so quiet. She could hear the water lapping against the sides of the swimming pool out back. She should have already drained the water for winter, but that was something Leonard always handled. If the pool remained filled it seemed like he was still around, just waiting to get to it. But that game only worked for so long. Truth was he had left her with all this and now she didn’t know what to do with it. She sat down on the staircase and sobbed.
Weeks went by and it was time to pack up Leonard’s things. He never did make out a will. Phil had already taken the few things he wanted, mostly old photographs. Marshall had his father’s watch and Elaine had his ring resized for her. Susie got the diamond from his stickpin. Even in death he was still giving them things when what they wanted was him. Now it was too late.
She sealed up a box of his sweaters and vests, and tried to picture life without him, forecasting five, ten, fifteen years into the future. She stacked the box on top of the others she’d already packed. Goodwill would be by in the morning to pick them up. There was still the chest of drawers in their bedroom that she needed to go through. Socks and boxer shorts, undershirts and pajamas. She scooped them up and dropped them into a box. When Revetta opened the bottom drawer she found handkerchiefs and a couple old sweaters he never wore. And under those she saw the Saks Fifth Avenue boxes. She knew immediately what they were. Her thirty-fifth birthday presents. He was supposed to have taken them back to the store, but obviously he never did. Two of the boxes were still gift-wrapped, the tape and bows yellowing with age. She looked at the necklace, remembering how furious she’d been with him when he gave it to her. She still had no idea what was in the other boxes that she had refused to open.
As promised, Goodwill came the next day and carted everything away. After they left, Revetta fixed her hair and makeup. It was
the first time in weeks that she put her face on and dressed up, changing into a brown tweed skirt and jacket that was one of Leonard’s favorites. She’d never liked driving into the city and rode the train downtown instead. It was chilly; the November winds were already picking up steam, coming off the lake. Some of the stores along Michigan Avenue already had their Christmas decorations up.
As she pushed through the revolving door at Saks Fifth Avenue, the store was playing the Muzak version of “Johnny B. Goode.” Leonard had always liked that Chuck Berry song. She took it as a sign.
As she made her way to the jewelry counter she tried to recall the last time she’d seen Shirley. It was back in the old neighborhood. Shirley was at the butcher’s buying skirt steaks. She remembered thinking at the time that Shirley had heavy legs.
When Shirley turned around at the cash register, Revetta double-checked her name tag to make sure it was her. It had been that long, and Shirley’s hair was more gray than brown now. She had a ribbon on her tag, some sort of award for excellence. By now Shirley noticed Revetta and both women looked at each other for a moment before either one spoke.
“Revetta,” she said finally, “I’m sorry about Leonard. Really I am.”
“I know you are.” Revetta smiled and they lapsed into another silence.
“Is there something I can do for you?” Shirley asked eventually.
Revetta shook her head as she reached into her pocketbook and pulled out the gift-wrapped boxes she’d found in the bottom drawer. She handed them to Shirley along with the necklace.
“I think Leonard really bought these for you. I think he’d want you to have them.”
• • •
He was nervous, standing backstage, too afraid to steal a glance at the audience. He’d never played in front of so many people before. This wasn’t like the little neighborhood gigs and joints he was used to. No, this was the big time. This was the Chicago Theatre.