Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody), a white boy from Chicago, promised his girlfriend's father that when he married, his wife was going to drive a Cadillac. McKinley "Muddy Waters" Morganfield (Jeffrey Wright), was a sharecropper from Mississippi when Alan Lomax (Tony Bentley) came through making recordings of folk music for the Library of Congress. The year was 1941 and the seeds of rock and roll were planted.
Inspired by hearing himself sing and play guitar on Lomax's recording, Muddy hiked to Chicago and began playing on street corners. Later Chess was approached by a "race" records producer outside Chess' blues club in southside Chicago. She was looking for talent and asked Chess to call her if he heard anything. Muddy met Little Walter (Columbus Short), a 17-year-old harp player extraordinaire, and they formed a perfect duo.By 1947, they added Jimmy Rogers (Kevin Mambo) to become The All-Star Trio and were playing in Chess' Macamba Club.
When Chess asks Muddy to break up the trio so Muddy can record solo, they head to Mississippi in Chess' Caddy to peddle the record to radio deejays, including one (Vincent D'Onofrio) who promotes the heck out of Muddy's new records helping Muddy earn his first Cadillac from Chess.
After the Macamba Club mysteriously burns down, Chess uses the insurance money to build Chess Record Studios and produce Cadillac Record. He reunites Muddy with Little Walter and Jimmy Rogers and makes them all big sensations. Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer) enters the picture with songs he's written specificially for Muddy to sing in the early 1950s, Along comes Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker) to challenge Muddy's place in Chess' studio.
And then comes country singer Chuck Berry (Mos Def) and his "Maybelline." Muddy tries to discourage Chess from recording Berry because he isn't playing the blues but Chess is committed and knows Berry's music is "something else." When Chess and Berry take their recording to Alan Freed (Eric Bogosian), freed declares it to be "rock and roll -- and it's too fun for anyone to sit out on, white or colored" and the airwaves are integrated. "And all it took was one man duck-walking across the stage to bring us together."
With the popularity of television and American Bandstand, rock 'n roll rocked the nation. Chess was hunting for a woman performer and meets up with the outspoken Miss Etta James (Beyonce Knowles). Chess knows how to change Etta's internal anger into great passion in her recordings.
The rest is history -- history that includes Leonard Chess' stable's influence on the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton and many others while Chess was trying to update his own stable of performers to the up and coming style of rock 'n roll.
Also appearing are Emmanuelle Chriqui as Chess' wife Revetta, Gabrielle Union as Muddy's wife Geneva.
Written and directed by Darnell Martin.
Run time: 1 hours, 49 minutes
Rated R for pervasive language and some sexuality.
My personal rating: B+
