Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16219 in Digital Music Album
• Released on: 2009-04-13
• Running time: 4760 seconds

Customer Reviews

The story of Chess
This is the soundtrack for a new film about Chess records and its artists including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Etta James (played by Beyonce Knowles). I haven't seen the film, which has received mixed reviews in the States with criticism for the accuracy of the script but generally praise for the acting. I think that the story of the Chess Brothers and their record label and its wonderful artists is definitely worth telling and if you are going to do that and get bums on seats it makes sense to get modern artists like Beyonce and Mos Def (who plays Chuck Berry) to participate.

The soundtrack (available in single and double CD versions) consists of a number of the classic Chess blues and R&R songs reinterpreted by Jeffrey Wright (Muddy Waters), Eamon Walker (Howlin' Wolf) and Columbus Short (Little Walter) etc. I found these versions are a bit hit and miss - Mos Def is up and down - 'Come on' and 'Maybellene' are fine but 'Promised land' is totally uninspired - the Muddy Waters' songs are all very average but I liked Columbus Short's 'My babe' and Eamon Walker's 'Smokestack Lightning'. Beyonce is also surprisingly OK as Etta James but sometimes her modern R&B vocal stylings grate a bit.

We also get a number of contemporary songs (although I'm not sure how these fit into the film) - again some of these work, others don't. I really liked 'Let's take a walk' by Raphael Saadiq and 'The sound' by MaryMary which are both full of energy but didn't think that '6 O'clock blues' by Solange worked as well. I don't particularly like the blues/hip hop tracks 'Evolution of a man' and 'Bridging the gap' both of which sample 'I'm a man' but that probably says more about my age and my love of the original Bo Diddley song.

I find that overall this CD is just average, some tracks work others don't but maybe they all work better in the context of the film, which I'll definitely try to see when it opens here. I'm in favour of adding more contemporary music to the film if it means getting younger black kids in to see the film and discovering their musical heritage. After all Chess was never only about blues- it started as a jazz label and was always just as important for rock and roll, doo wop and soul.