Machers and Rockers: Chess Records and the Business of Rock and Roll

"On the South Side of Chicago in the late 1940s, two immigrants - one a Jew born in Russia, the other a black Blues singer from Mississippi - met and changed the course of musical history. Muddy Waters electrified the Blues, and Leonard Chess recorded it. Soon Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry added a dose of pulsating rhythm, and Chess Records captured that, too. Rock & Roll had arrived, and an industry was born." "Rich Cohen tells the engrossing story of how Chess, with the other record men, made this new sound into a multi-billion-dollar business - aggressively acquiring artists, strong-arming distributors, riding the crest of a wave that would crash over a whole generation."--BOOK JACKET.