Chess/Acoustic Sounds Series Releases Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson IIThe Chess/Acoustic Sounds series has officially launched Little Walter’s The Best of Little Walter, a collection of hits by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and accomplished harmonica player, and Sonny Boy Williamson’s The Real Folk Blues. 

Founded in 1950 by Polish immigrant brothers Leonard and Phil Chess, Chess Records emerged from the south side of Chicago and quickly crossed lines of color and culture to create rhythm and blues music that influenced listeners the world over. Chess’s unmatched roster—and its savvy founders—enhanced and transformed the blues from folk music to a popular sound. 

Today, Chess Records is not only recognizing its own rich musical heritage but inviting fans and new audiences to discover its storied roster and the music revolution that was born over seven decades ago in Chicago. 

Over years the monumental Chess catalog has had various homes, including a 1975 sale to All Platinum Records, and eventually a couple of decades ago the Chess master tapes were purchased by MCA Records, now Universal Music Enterprises. The UMe label for many years has re-released top-notch Chess Records packages, compilations and boxed sets manufacturing product configurations for radio, retail, and digital streaming outlets.

Marshall Chess, born in Chicago, Ill. on March 13, 1942, and was raised during the heyday of the independent record business. Leonard Chess had a piece of a record company named Aristocrat Records in 1947, and later in 1950 he brought his brother Phil into the fold and the brothers assumed sole ownership of the company and renamed it Chess Records. They also operated a club on the South side of Chicago, the Macomba Lounge. 

Marshall “started” in the family business at age 7 accompanying his father Leonard on radio station visits. For sixteen years Marshall worked with his dad and his uncle Phil, doing everything from pressing records, applying shrink wrap and loading trucks to producing over 100 Chess Records projects, eventually heading up the label as President after the GRT acquisition in 1969.

During the seventies Marshall served as president of Rolling Stones Records. In 1984, Chess became a partner in the ARC Music publishing company.  

Now living in Upstate New York and at 84 years old, Marshall Chess is still a record man above all - tending to the Chess Records legacy for his grandchildren and generations to come. He maintains The Chess Records Tribute YouTube channel, which features recorded live performances of Chess Records artists and a multi dozen-part Chess podcast hosted by Marshall where he chats about producing classic Chess albums and songs.  

In March 2026 Marshall sent me an email touting the recent Chess/UMe re-reissues.

"As a member of the Chess family I am so pleased that some of the great Chess music is being released in high quality vinyl again…When I played The Best Of Little Walter LP these two quotes came up in my mind. Willie Dixon told me after  Walter’s ‘Juke’ came out, ‘every blues band added a harp player.’ That's how much influence he had…and years later Miles Davis told me that he thought Walter was ‘a musical genius.’ I agree; he definitely was one of the Chess greats…

“When I played The Sonny Boy LP I remembered one of the most original and creative of the Chess blues artists …his lyrics always seemed more like poetry to me …I remember him coming in my office wearing a suit with  all the parts were different colors a derby on his head …He put his harmonica completely in his mouth and played a short tune…Took it out and asked for some cash so he could buy some wine….Some old memories from an old record man.”

During 2009 and 2010, I interviewed Marshall Chess at length in person in West Hollywood, California at the Sunset Marquis Hotel and by telephone from his office in New York.

In our 2010 discussion, I asked Marshall about the Chess studio.

“We had fabulous engineers. Ron Malo and Malcolm Chism. They were the two best engineers. Ron came from Detroit. He had worked on Motown studios and he was a big part. Before Ron, we had these two Weiner brothers, who actually built the studio.

“It was a basic classic studio design, with the echo chamber in the basement, very small control room. One of the secrets of the Chess studio was not the studio but our mastering. We had a little mastering room with a lathe. Eventually we had a Neumann lathe. The first one was an American one. We did our own mastering and had these Electrovoice speakers on the wall.

“The great part about that room that when it sounded right in that mastering room it would pop off the radio. That’s what it was all about. And the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, later Fleetwood Mac had to make visits there.

“I’ll tell you a story about the Chess artists that sort of sums up the ‘blues nerds.’ This is going back to the ‘60s, right. Driving me crazy. I knew the blues fans, the guys from Blues Horizon, Mike and Richard Vernon. I knew them well and loved them. They would come to Chicago and I would show them the original Chess master book, and they’d put their fuckin’ hands on it like it was the bible.

“So, this blues nerd was driving me crazy. ‘I’ve got to know what kind of microphone Little Walter uses to get that sound.’ It drove me crazy. Just so happened, Walter was recording. And I knew Walter from being a very little kid. I said, ‘Walter. This crazy mother fucker is driving me crazy. He wants to know what kind of mike you use?’ ‘Are you crazy mother fucker? Whatever microphone I didn’t pawn that week!’ (laughs).

“You get it. These artists were great and would have been great in any studio. It was the artistry, the playing. The studio was great and we captured a sound, and it had a sound, but it was our artists that made that sound.  

“The best explanation is, this may sound way out. It contains magic. The most apparent magic that we can see or experience is music. Let’s face it. Music changes the way you feel. That’s magical. Chess Records for some reason was a magnet for amazing artistry and all these magicians came to Chess. And we were able to capture it. And it’s something that can be experienced through audio. The music has stood up without a cinematic aspect like video. And the method of recording.”

Marshall then reflected on the Chess catalog.  

“As I grew older, and was a person of the hippie generation, and discovered things like meditation, psychedelic drugs, Buddhism. I realized what was happening in the early Chess studio was like a high Buddhist monk meditation manager. Because when you recorded in mono and two-track with 5 or 6 players and a singer there wasn’t any correction possible. One of the main jobs as a producer was like a meditation manager master.

“I love Chess Records. Because it was the greatest, happiest place in the world. You would love going there. You laughed all fuckin’ day. The artists hung out there, no, not all the artists, but what we would call the family artists. Sonny Boy, Muddy Waters, Dells, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley. I’m proud and I’m thrilled, and helped historically continue the legacy of the Chess Records label. I’m not a classic blues fan, a blues collector, I am not into the anal aspect of what guitar strings Muddy used, or what harmonica did Little Walter play.

“I only wanted to be around my family, and my father, who was a workaholic. It was a family business. They were immigrants and embraced that. For age 7 to age 12 or 13, my dad took me on the road, not because I wanted to be in the record business but because I wanted to be with my father. So, I got it really by osmosis, and that was my real reason for hanging out there.

“But being around the blues, and all these records being made, and knowing the artists, I don’t know, man, it just, got into me. It just became part of me. It’s part of my life. I’ve never even considered it work. I appear and promote Chess and the blues in films and TV documentaries. I do as much as I can because I get a buzz out of it. I’m just amazed, man, that this music that we made in Chicago has become so historical.

“When I play Chess records, I see my dad and uncle. Man, that’s what goes through my head. Sonny Boy Williamson and Muddy Waters went to my Bar Mitzvah. A lot of black people were which was a very unusual event back then in 1955.

“The Chess recording artists were always writing about women problems and sex. That’s all I ever heard from them when I was a kid. I saw some of these records being recorded. I sold them originally. I helped their initial exposure and on the SiriusXM radio program I hosted, I brought them exposure.

“With the TV programs on Muddy, The American Masters documentary, it’s all very gratifying. We always knew it. Gratification is the best word. Not for all of them. Muddy, Wolf, Chuck Berry. These are like Beethoven and Bach. They should be right up there.”

In our dialogue, Chess commented on Little Walter.

“He’s the truest genius of all the Chess artists. Because he invented and perfected a new way to play the harmonica, and did it with tremendous creativity and talent. Very much like Hendrix with guitar. They’re exactly alike. Miles Davis considered Walter a genius. Hendrix considered Walter a genius. I liked him as a person but he was always drunk. I never knew him when he wasn’t fucked up. Smelling of liquor. But, yeah, I liked him. There was something ‘sloppy drunk’ about him that I liked. But he had a mean side to him, too. I saw him and my dad go at it with anger numerous times when he was drunk. He’d be a mean drunk. But we loved him. And my dad and my family loved him. We buried him.”

Marshall then reminisced about how the Chess recordings had a devoted following on the west coast in the late sixties.

“At that time, I was very aware and very on top of alternative FM radio. I drove across the United States, visiting FM deejays like Tom Donahue and Bobby Mitchell in San Francisco. I’d meet all the deejays at radio stations in Los Angeles like KMET-FM and KPPC-FM and meet all these people.  And these guys would be smoking joints on the air and they’d take an album right from your arm and play it immediately five times on the air!  Those were the great days. I was part of the generation. When everyone took LSD to watch the Grateful Dead. I’ve been at the Fillmore West sitting on the floor. What happened to me was that I was part of that sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll generation and it blew my mind.

“[Promoter] Bill Graham was the greatest for that for the blues artists of that era. B.B. King on the bills. FM radio was a godsend for the blues. The big commercial AM stations would not play the records at all except some black stations. And I decided to repackage Chess to that market that was getting stoned and going deep. It was a big boost when the English groups covered the music earlier. On records and at their shows. We loved it and something we thought could never happen.

“Some of the Chess artists were booked in San Francisco places like The Matrix Club, Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane was a part owner, and The Avalon Ballroom, where Chet Helms brought the acts in.     

“Muddy Waters and B.B. King really dug white people doin’ their stuff. Sonny Boy was very much into white people doin’ his stuff. So was Howlin’ Wolf It blew our mind, of course it was a fantastic thing. We loved it. And we never thought that could happen. It was a total fantasy.

“But we first noticed it with the Muddy At Newport album came out. I can remember we got all these orders from Boston on the Muddy album and we knew it was white college kids buying it. The first thing we noticed as the album market developed.”  

With the 2026 reissues on vinyl of Little Walter’s The Best of Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson II’s The Real Folk Blues I spoke with some musicians, record producers, and writers about their relationship to these LP’s and the epic Chess Records label.    

Mark Sebastian: Hearing Chuck Berry on a car radio was a rite of passage for us teens of a certain era. I realized within a few bars how capable he was with lyric. Songs like “Maybelline” or “Johnnie B. Goode” were blueprints that explored a topic in verses and a reoccurring chorus.

“Having an older brother helps shape one’s musical tastes. Aside from the fact our dad [John Benson Sebastian Pugliese] was a famous harmonica virtuoso in classical music, my brother, John, was spending all his allowance on blues records, so the apartment was awash in Sonny Terry (a friend of Dad’s,) Little Walter and any other Blues players from who he could learn.”  

Dr. James Cushing.  One of my favorite parts of David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. is the scene when a dark-suited giant enters Adam Kesher’s house bent on revenge (and knocks out Billy Ray Cyrus). The music accompanying the scene is ‘Bring It On Home’ from Sonny Boy Williamson’s The Real Folk Blues, a brilliant choice on Lynch’s part — the scene’s surreal blend of humor and menace is fully present in the song. I envy any young person discovering Williamson’s music for the first time, especially on this LP. Each cut is a drama all its own

“Little Walter Jacobs also sang and played harmonica, but his great contribution was the thick, saxophone-like sound he got from blowing his harp directly into a microphone. If Williamson was an actor on record, Jacobs was a painter, filling the audible spectrum with unique coloration. The Best of Little Walter is as good a place as any to start — but the man never made a bad record.”

Gene Aguilera: Growing up as a kid in 1964 and spinning 12 x 5 by the Rolling Stones on my suitcase record player had its benefits.  As the LP played, I studied back cover minutiae. Who wrote the songs? Who was the producer?  Who wrote the liners?  Who was the photographer?

“On side one, track two . . . ‘Confessin’ the Blues’ stuck out.  It was hypnotic.  Years later as I explored the birth of the blues, I found out the song belonged to Little Walter.  He wrote it and played it.  And I finally figured out how much Jagger (and a generation of British musicians) wrung out every note and feeling from this extraordinary harmonica player and singer named Little Walter. From then on, every chance I got, I bought Little Walter LP’s and 45s on Chess.

“British musicians’ fascination with Little Walter was evident. Digging deeper, I found out ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin’’ (Cream) and ‘Key To The Highway’ (Derek and the Dominos) were recorded by Little Walter years earlier.  As for this, I say thank you, Little Walter, for mesmerizing and influencing this East L.A. soul.”

Robert Marchese: Little Waltermade the harmonica sound like a saxophone. He was the first harmonica instrumental act to get on the charts. He was the first Chicago Southside blues cat to play The Apollo Theater. The only photo that Muddy Waters had on his mantle inside his home was Little Walter.  Paul Butterfield and I were talking around 1965 at The Trip club on Sunset and Paul listed some of Walter’s solos. He mentioned some of the solos were like a train comin’ through.

“Paul and I loved ‘Blue Midnight.’ Paul said it was the greatest blues harp playing he ever heard. Walter took the harp to such of level of strength and volume. It was electric for an instrument you couldn’t plug in. Walter was crazy…Even though he was half juiced when he recorded, his instrumentals were terrific.

“I talked to Miles Davis one time when he played The Troubadour. I managed the club 1970-1983. He told me Little Walter was a genius. Michael Bloomfield and I knew each other. I met him at The Trip in 1965 and connected again with him in 1967 at The Monterey International Pop Festival.  He loved Little Walter. He was from a whole different part of Chicago than Walter but he related to him. Captain Beefheart loved Little Walter. He told me ‘I won’t play one of his songs. I wouldn’t disrespect him like that.’ Beefheart loved him, and he played a lot of chromatic harmonica.

“It’s very hard to master an instrument. John Coltrane chased notes and took it beyond that. Charlie Parker did that to a degree. Walter was the thing on that instrument. Butterfield amazed me with the respect he had for him. And we talked about Walter’s very unique voice. He was a good singer and he had good material. ‘I Hate to See You Go,’ and ‘Whose That Knockin’ On My Door’ are hilarious songs. Great phrasing.”   

Ira Ingber: Because of my older brother, [guitarist/songwriter] Elliot, I was exposed a range of blues and ‘real’ R&B at an early age, well before I was playing guitar. In the early 1960's when most of my contemporaries here in Los Angeles were listening enthusiastically to surf music, I was under the spell of just about everything that was on the Chess, Duke, Sun, King, Ace, Federal, as well as a number of other smaller labels. 

“Chess obviously stood out because of the sheer magnitude of the stars who recorded for them. That Chuck Berry was also on the label didn't seem to be a coincidence. Everything fit neatly together for me. The added important bonus was getting to see most of those luminaries live in my own neighborhood at a fabled joint called The Ash Grove. Muddy, The Wolf, Little Walter; they were up close, and very personal.

“When I later worked with Lowell George, he made clear the major requirement for anyone to be considered for our musical circle would be that they were ‘versed in the ways of Chester Burnett.’

“A very important album I listened to endlessly was the live recording of Sonny Boy with the Yardbirds at the Crawdaddy Club. They were already heroes to me on their own. With them backing Sonny Boy, they took on a new dimension of validity. 

“The archive of the aforementioned giants will be discovered and re-discovered for generations to come. Of this I'm certain!"

In his review of Sonny Boy Williamson His Best (MCA/Chess) for Napster in 2005, music journalist Kirk Silsbee wrote “His harmonica figures were simple enough but he embellished them by cupping and baffling them with his huge hands.  This produced all manner of wondrous sound effects.

“As a songwriter, Sonny Boy was a singular talent.  He was a country poet, putting his experiences and observations into his tunes without a trace of self-consciousness.  For the last ten years of his life (1955 to ’65), Williamson recorded for Chess, Sonny Boy Williamson II was that most rare blues entity: an innovator and an original.”  

(From 1964-1978 Harvey Kubernik witnessed live performances of several Chess Records artists and collected their catalog last century.

Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015's Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016's Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017's 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love.

Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 they wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble. 

Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll TV Scenes) was published on February 6, 2026 by BearManor Media.

Harvey spoke at the special hearings in 2006 initiated by the Library of Congress held in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation.

Kubernik was in the 2013 BBC-TV documentary spotlighting Bobby Womack: Across 110th Street, directed by James Meycock. Other interviewees included Ronnie Wood, Chuck D, Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz, Barney Hoskyns, actor Antonio Fargas, Bill Withers, and family members.    

In 2017, Harvey appeared at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in its Distinguished Speakers Series and as a panelist discussing the forty-fifth anniversary of The Last Waltz at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles in 2023.

During 2025, Kubernik was interviewed in the Siobhan Logue-written and -directed documentary The Sound of Protest,airing on the Apple TVOD TV broadcasting service. The film also features Smokey Robinson, Hozier, Skin (Skunk Anansie), Two-Tone's Jerry Dammers, Angélique Kidjo, Holly Johnson, David McAlmont, Rhiannon Giddens, and more.

Harvey was an interview subject along with Iggy Pop, the Beach Boys’ Bruce Johnston, Love’s Johnny Echols, the Bangles' Susanna Hoffs, Victoria and Debbi Peterson, and the founding members of the Seeds for director/producer Neil Norman’s documentary The Seeds: Pushin' Too Hard. In summer 2026, GNP Crescendo will release the film on DVD/Blu-ray). Author Miss Pamela Des Barres narrates).

Muddy Waters photo (top) courtesy of ChessUMG

Other photos courtesy of Anthony PolisThe post Chess/Acoustic Sounds Series Releases Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson II first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.