He provides his stars with Cadillacs and basic living expenses by shuffling around unpaid royalties, taking from what he owes one artist to pay another. The small record label becomes the center of a new urban "race music" (the term used prior to the emergence of rhythm and blues to classify virtually all types of African-American music) and Leonard Chess aggressively markets his recordings. A rivalry develops between Muddy and Howlin', partly fueled by professional jealousy, but there is more to it than that: the latter contends that Waters is too dependent on Chess and too trusting. Then comes Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer), primarily a song-writer, and Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker). Muddy and Little Walter are among the first. Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody) begins recording a constellation of gifted musicians. He also collects a large number of girl-friends, all of whom apparently he supports to one extent or another. Muddy's fortunes skyrocket when he plugs his guitar into an amplifier and electrifies his sound. There, he hooks up with wife-to-be Geneva (Gabrielle Union) and Little Walter (Columbus Short), a brilliant but unstable teenage harmonica player.īanding together against poverty and racism, and the Chicago weather, the trio form a self-proclaimed family unit. With a new self-confidence, McKinley Morganfield becomes Muddy Waters and heads north to Chicago. "I'm meeting myself for the first time," says McKinley (Jeffrey Wright) when he hears the Lomax recording. Cadillac Records, the new movie by American director Darnell Martin, begins with this episode and moves on to chronicle the rise and fall of Chess Records in Chicago, whose roster at one time or another included such musical giants as Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry and Etta James.
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