A photograph on Chess Records’ studio wall depicts how the studio looked in its active years, featuring Willie Dixon, standing, Buddy Guy, center, and Muddy Waters, right, playing during a session. Dixon’s family purchased the building shortly after his death in 1992. (Amy Sokolow/Medill)
Historic Chess Records studio set to reopen in 2020
By Amy Sokolow | November 19, 2019
A little-known Chicago cultural gem is housed in an unassuming beige building at 2120 South Michigan Avenue. Artists such as The Rolling Stones, Etta James, and members of Earth, Wind, & Fire have all recorded in this building, which was once home to Chess Records. Steven MacAulay, 57, a docent at the historic studio, now a museum, called it “the most important one in the history of music.” For now, the studio space is used only for tours, but starting next year, it will reopen as a recording studio.
Because it is such a historic space, those working to reopen the studio aim to recreate it with the technology available in the 1960s as much as possible, despite the challenges this goal presents. “We were initially trying to revisit the analog era and to go in that direction with the equipment. And it's very hard to find, it's very expensive, it's difficult to maintain,” said Jacqueline Dixon, 49, president and CEO of Willie Dixon’s Blues Heaven Foundation, which is the driving force behind the project. After visits to other studios doing similar restorations, she learned how to combine analog and digital technologies to maintain Chess’s signature sound while staying practical.
That sound was created by multiple technological innovations considered groundbreaking in 1955, when the studio was built. These innovations included thick concrete walls, which deadened outdoor noise, and a lack of right angles, which allowed the sound to reverberate through the room. “There’s just an amount of reverb on that to thicken the sound,” said MacAulay, the docent. “It’s a Rolls Royce of sound.” He said the sound in that room inspired Etta James’s low riffs on “At Last” and Phil Spector’s famous “wall of sound.”
While the room’s acoustics may be unique, artists who recorded there remember the studio more for its collaborative and supportive atmosphere than anything else. “It was like family, we became like sisters and brothers,” said Pastor Mitty Collier, 78, a recording artist at the original Chess Records, who now runs a church in the South Side. She recalled the creative process at Chess, where she shared stories about her new marriage at the time. “You sit around the studio all day and you talk to somebody about it, and next thing you know, they've written a song that focuses in on it,” she said.
Chess’s famous recording studio was designed in 1955 with unique architectural details, like its walls’ angles, which enhance the sound. Willie Dixon’s Blues Heaven Foundation Director Janine Judge says of the space, “It's the only place in the world that was intentionally designed to bring blues, and therefore rock and roll, to the rest of the world.” (Amy Sokolow/Medill)
Aaron Cohen, 50, who recently released a book about Chicago’s soul music scene, underscored the importance of Chess, and Record Row generally, to the city’s social and creative fabric in the 1960s. At that time, “black teenagers were not visible,” he said. “Just having space for people to assert their identities in that environment was very important.”
The studio’s target opening date is June 2020, during the “Year of Chicago Music,” as dubbed by
Mayor Lightfoot. Judge, the foundation’s director, said she has been working with Mayor Lightfoot about promoting the city’s musical heritage. “We want Chicago to be recognized as one of the music capitals of the world,” said Judge, “and Chess Records will help make that happen.”