Chess Records called Chicago home but the label often looked elsewhere for singers and singles. Usually, this amounted to some variation on direct licensing – independent record producers or studio owners would send sides to Chess, hoping for release – but between 1967 and 1969, Chess sent a number of its artists down to FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals in Alabama. This wasn't a burst of inspiration on the label's part. Chess was following the path of Atlantic, who had considerable success recording Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge at FAME, but once Atlantic's Jerry Wexler fell out with FAME's Rick Hall, the Alabama studio had space for Chess artists and the Chicago label was willing.
Charly Records presents The Chess Story, Vol. 3: From R&B to Soul. Jan Bradley, Sonny Boy Williamson, Tony Clarke, Little Milton, Ramsey Lewis, Etta James and many others.
This box set is a companion piece to the 8CD set From Sacred To Secular: A Soul Awakening, which traced the history of soul music from its earliest antecedents in 1927 right up to the first true soul records released in 1962. Here we continue the story from 1962 up to the end of the decade, covering a large portion of soul music’s Golden Age with 100 tracks by soul’s greatest 60s superstars (from Aretha Franklin to Stevie Wonder) and a whole host of “lesser” names whose contribution to the musical genre shouldn’t be overlooked. The CDs cover all of soul’s many styles from early doo-wop and R&B influenced music to the funk grooves which were to prove so popular in the 70s. Other harbingers of the coming decade can be found here in the first sweet-soul Philly sounds from the Delfonics and Intruders, early funk rock (Sly & The Family Stone) and Chicago’s renaissance via Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions.