Sun Studio boss helping out with old Chess Records site in Chicago

The Chicago Sun-Times reported earlier this week that Sun Studio president John Schorr has been in talks with the operators of the old Chess Records studio about helping to turn the Chicago building into a similar destination music landmark.  The Chess site is owned by an organization headed by the widow and daughter of legendary Chess producer, songwriter and bassist Willie Dixon.

The Sun Studio is a successful for-profit company, while the Dixons are adamant about maintaining the non-for-profit status of Blues Heaven.

"A partnership can be done in different ways," Schorr said from Memphis. "We never discussed a dissolution of Blues Heaven and what they've done. We would be an addition, bringing our expertise on site. We would open an enhanced attraction and recording studio in line with what we have built in Memphis. Making it a functional studio is a big part of the idea, if people know it is a place where magic still happens as opposed to a museum that is behind glass, dead and non-functioning."

The article is deep with background about the many connections between Sun and Chess, Memphis and Chicago, especially the great Howlin' Wolf, one of Sam Phillips' earliest artists who left Memphis for the Windy City in the year's between "Rocket 88" and "That's All Right Mama." (Here's another.) Here's yet another one (the Whites grew up in South Memphis):

Earth, Wind and Fire co-founder Verdine White Jr. grew up with the magic of Chess. His brother Maurice was a Chess session drummer, and White learned bass from the late Louis Satterfield, the iconic Chess session trombonist and bassist.

"It's not unusual that Chess would be struggling," White said before his band's recent stop in Chicago. "Maurice brought a lot of those Chess Records home. To the public it was just a blues label, Howlin' Wolf and those guys. But it was a very diversified label. You had Ramsey [Lewis] with jazz, the Rotary Connection [psychedelic rock and soul], Phil Upchurch, [jazz-soul singer] Terry Collier."

As Schorr, the Sun honcho, points out, it should be easier for Chicago to develop such a musical landmark site than it was for Memphis in the late '80s:

"Probably one-tenth of 1 percent of my business is people from Memphis. That's not the market. With blues, Chicago is a bit more developed with all of the blues clubs. People in the city enjoy that heritage. But the fact that there are only four or five visitors at Chess on the afternoon of the Chicago Blues Festival is a little obscene. Chicago has a pretty defined tourism market, which really was the impetus for me wanting to speak with the Dixons."

PICTURED: Guide Michael Finney is shown in front of the Blues Heaven Foundation, formerly the home of Chess Records in this April 17, 2001, file photo.