Mr. Berry's calculated showmanship began luring larger white audiences to the club. He also began singing the songs of Nat King Cole and Muddy Waters. "Listening to Nat Cole prompted me to sing sentimental songs with distinct diction," he said at Blueberry Hill. "The songs of Muddy Waters impelled me to deliver the down-home blues in the language they came from. When I played hillbilly songs, I stressed my diction so that it was harder and whiter. All in all, it was my intention to hold both the black and the white clientele by voicing the different kinds of songs in their customary tongues."

...."Maybellene" reached No. 1 on Billboard's R & B chart and had crossed over into the pop chart. By the end of the year, the song had sold a million copies and Mr. Berry had been named Most Promising R & B Artist in Billboard's annual disc jockey poll. Almost overnight, he had become one of the country's most popular artists.

In the same breath, Mr. Berry recently praised and criticized Leonard Chess and his brother. "They were great," he said. "They weren't honest but they were very helpful in my career. They gave me the first chance. That's a beauty. To rob somebody or to not give somebody what belongs to them is not honest. So they're both, you know. But they were good to me and cool."

Below is a portion of my bio of the Chess brothers from The Encyclopedia of Record Producers:

The story of the Chess brothers and their label burrows into the heart of such charged issues as art versus commerce and exposure versus exploitation - all tangled up in the miasma of race relations.

Lazer and Philip Chez, aged 11 and 6, were herded through Ellis Island on Columbus Day 1928 from their village near Pinsk, Poland, and transformed into Leonard and Phil Chess. They joined their father, who had been running a junkyard in a Jewish neighborhood near the South Side of Chicago. Their address, 1425 South Karlov Ave, provided the catalog number for the first Chess Records release.

Phil served in the Army during World War II. Leonard's childhood polio left him with a limp, ineligible for military service. During the war, Leonard pursued various business interests, including liquor stores and bars of less than stellar repute.

Eventually, Leonard moved up to the Macomba Lounge, an upscale jazz and blues club at the heart of the South Side. The club featured major national acts
including Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton and Louis Armstrong. The predominantly black crowds were regular and enthusiastic, and as label talent scouts sniffed around the back door, Leonard realized he could sell records as well as drinks to his customers.

....For his first Aristocrat session, "Johnson Machine Gun," veteran Chicago blues pianist Sunnyland Slim brought in a youthful guitarist, Muddy Waters, fresh from the Mississippi Delta. Waters recorded "I Can't Be Satisfied" in April 1948 and the first issue sold out in 12 hours. Reeking of the country funk of the Delta, Waters' single is a violent shout into the void that laid the foundation of the Chess sound - heavy on vicious electric slide guitar, thumping rhythm and
unadulterated blues wailing.

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