Who actually set the Stones connection up? Do you remember that?

I think they called me. They knew me, you know, I actually Mick Jagger once told me that I, he had sent to Chess for records and I had sent him records years before. I, I was very much into the international expansion of Chess. It was like my chance to prove myself, you know. And I got very excited when the stuff started to sell in Europe. I, I made all the deals: Germany, France, Italy.

He was the young blood.

What did you think of the Stones' records prior to coming to Chess?

We'd never heard them probably. You know I, I think I had heard a little of them but I never, I was, ah, they, prior to coming to Chess they had only had a few, you know, that one album, that first album, ahm, which I think I must have heard a few times but.

What was your personal reaction when they came in and you met them, the way they looked, etc.?

Well I, I know my uncle, my father thought they were very strange, you know, because, first of all the way they looked, the way they spoke. They weren't used to English people the way they dressed. Their manager, Andrew Oldem, he was a real character.

I couldn't understand what he was talking about.

I couldn't even understand.

'cause that brogue, he had such a high thick accent, I didn't know what he was saying.

I'm the same age as the Stones so I was quite fascinated, you know, with the whole beginning of the English rock scene the Yardbirds the Stones.

They were very friendly, they were very friendly, they were 'cause after a take we'd walk in the studio and talk to them just to tape, play back, you know.

Did you see it as a form of flattery that all these bands wanted to be like the Chess bands?

Yeah, I did.

We began to see during that era.

Builds your ego up a little bit, you know.

Yeah, we began to see that it was happening because our sales in Europe were increasing. We were getting mail. And there were these appreciation societies.

What was the sound that the Stones wanted to get at Chess that they couldn't get in England?

I think that, this is what I think from having spent a lot of time in England after that. You know I think peop, people think that the studio is what gives the sound. Chess Records had this distinct sound. I think that, that they thought just recording in the same room might give the same sound. I think what most people that came there learned was it was the way you played that made the sound. The room and the mikes and our engineers did have something to do with it.

That was the biggest part really because you go back and look at Sun Records, everybody flocked to Sun because they wanted to get the same sound that Sun had. So where do you go? You go to Chess Studios because you want to get the Chess Sound. And you go five miles down the line be another studio that's got a sound, they're going to run over there. It's just ...

I think the Stones at that time wanted the sound like a Chess artist. They would have loved to have sounded like Howling Wolf.

Yeah, by being in Chess Studios they thought…

Yeah they thought by being in the studio maybe it would add that little bit of magic to make it, you know, in their ears sound that way. I don't think they would have ever thought that the public would have known it 'cause it was too obscure. The Chess music was too obscure to white people at that time.

But it worked, the sound was better at Chess.

I don't remember all of the songs but of course they used our, you know, our engineer, our techniques. Ron was the engineer.

No, yeah, Ron yeah, he’s dead.

"Red Rooster" they did.

Yeah they did "Red Rooster" and they did "It's All Over Now" which I thought was great, a great cut.

What made the Stones a great band?

They're a great band. Now what makes a great band? The ability when playing together to play like one, to lock in, you know. The Stones are really and true great band. The one thing that I, I knew from being raised around Chess was, when a great band, when a great rhythm section locked together you knew it you know it was like you became one. It was magic. The Stone are, were just a great band that's, that's what makes them a great band. Whether with, with no, you know, no pre-planning when they all play together they sometimes lock into this magical oneness, you know, which makes a great band, which transcends describing it. You can't describe it. You can hear it.

Did you see that kind of magic when they came and played at Chess?

No because we didn't, we weren't in the control room the whole time. We, we didn't, it's not something you would see, you know, that's what you see from working with the band recording them. Only saw that later when I worked with the Stones.

Only reason I went there, be honest with you, is to take my daughter and my granddaughter and my, and my, and my niece to listen to them 'cause they didn't mean nothing to me. I mean I hate to put them down that way, you know, I'm not putting them down.

No, that's not a put down.

They just didn't mean nothing to me.

Do you think, in some ways the Stones carried on the spirit of Chess?

Definitely.

Could you start, etc..

Well I mean the, I think that the Stones understood a certain sexual energy that was in Chess Records music and amplified that into their own music and turned it into their own music. To me that was the essence of Chess that I, I got from the Stones. There was something, there was a certain kind of Chess music that was sex, sexy. "I'm A Man" you know and those kind of things. And I think the Stones definitely picked up to that and built on it and made it into their own sound and took it beyond it.

Did they do "I Want To Make Love To You" too?

All those kind of things. That was all their thing.

People have said about Chicago sounds that it was maybe the first blues that you could dance to which became a big thing with white teenagers. Do you think the Stones took some of that dance element from Chicago music?

Yeah, definitely. I mean I think that they, they, the material that they picked and what influenced them, definitely was music you could dance to and it wasn't so much the slow, you know, the slow kind of blues.

What drew you into managing them?

Someone called me up, I never managed them actually but I set up and ran their record company, Rolling Stones Records and what happened was after I left Chess I was in a period of a few months doing nothing and someone called me and asked me if I'd be interested in, in going after the Rolling Stones, a guy named Bob Krasnow who now is the president of Electra records. And I told him, ah, after thinking about it, no, but I was going to call Mick Jagger anyway. And I actually just called Mick Jagger up and said, I'm doing nothing now, I'm looking for something to do and I heard you were looking for something. He said, oh great man, come over and see me. He said, I can't come to you I've just been busted for amphetamines at the airport. And two weeks later I went to England and that's how it began, seven years of my life a seven ride with the kings of rock and roll.

Thinking in terms of the Chess spirit, what for you the times when the Stones caught that sexy driving thing that you were talking about?

Well I worked with them on all, I think seven different records in the studio and there were just times when, I don't know, it's, you know, again I, I always say I can't describe it in words, it's music, you can hear it, you know, you hear, you hear music that just carries you away, you know, you know that it's special. It happened to Chess, it happened to my uncle, my father when they heard the right record. It happened to me with the Rolling Stones. It hasn't happened that often to me but the Stones captured that many, many times on many of their records. And Chess Records captured it and it's something you can't describe but when it happens it makes you stamp your, stomp your foot. And it makes you feel good. And you know he knows and the Stones had it too. I mean in a way it was a continuation of the thing that I got from Chess musically without even knowing it.

Do you think the spirit of Chess lives on now in the Nineties?

I think it lives on more than ever now the MCA releases of it.

And you have the Blues Heaven that Willie Tex's wife is starting in the old studio which is a landmark now. She's put, putting up a museum.

You know blues has integrated, ah, white audiences worldwide. Man, they're bootleg, bootleg Chess blues tapes from Thailand now. Little Thai kids are hearing blues from Chicago, you know, something, blues is all over now. The Chess sound will always live.

The way I can go along with that is, I went to a, to a session one time for a friend of mine in California, went to the Roxy and they announced I was in the place. There saying, people coming to me, man, I want your autograph, I said, I, I felt kind of foolish, what, you know, autograph. But I couldn't get them away from me. So I, I said, man, let me go in the dressing room with you 'cause I, I don't want to hang around. You know these, driving me nuts. Half of them, hey man, you're a real myth man. Man, many you're, I says, yeah, man, okay. Go. Get away from me, you know. So I guess like he said, Chess lives on.

Yeah.