Chess' family is planning a private service in Tucson, Arizona, according to his nephew.
Phil Chess, the legendary co-founder and record producer behind Chicago label Chess Records, has died. His daughter Pam told the Chicago Sun-Times that her father passed away at his ranch in Tucson, Arizona. Originally famous for releasing career-defining music by nearly every major electric blues musician, the recordings issued on Chess in the "50s draw a clear through line between the gutbucket innovations of Howlin" Wolf, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters, and the heavier proto-rock'n'roll innovations of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Elmore James.
The music that was released through Chess Records - Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" and "Roll Over Beethoven", Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats' Ike Turner-penned "Rocket 88", Muddy Waters' "Mannish Boy" and "Rollin' Stone", Bo Diddley's "Bo Diddley" and "I'm a Man" (released on the Chess brothers' Checker Records), Howlin' Wolf's "Smokestack Lightning" and countless more blues classics - became the backbone of what would eventually become rock and roll. Leonard died later that year, and Phil retired in 1972.
Started in Chicago by Leonard and Phil in 1950, Chess Records was home to numerous major blues artists of the following two decades and also took on such musical pioneers as Berry, Etta James and Ike Turner, whose "Rocket 88" is considered one of the earliest rock songs.
One of today's greatest bluesmen, Buddy Guy, credited the label with raising Chicago's status to the capital of blues.
More news: Cheer up, Americans, say Canadians _ you're great
"It was a scrappy kind of existence", Cohodas said of the Chess brothers' early years in Chicago.
Born Fiszel Czyż, in a Jewish community in Częstochowa, Poland, Phil and his brother Lejzor, who became Leonard Chess, immigrated with their family to the USA when they were just 7 and 11, respectively. Neither of the two played an instrument but together they had golden ears for talent.
As late SUN-TIMES film critic ROGER EBERT once wrote: "The former studios of CHESS RECORDS on South Michigan [Ave.] in CHICAGO are as important to the development of rock "n" roll as SUN RECORDS in MEMPHIS".
"The Blues had a baby, and they named it rock and roll", Waters once said.
Chess Records' first release was a Gene Ammons' version of "My Foolish Heart".
