Leonard reportedly couldn't understand what Waters was singing in the studio, but he understood the sales and somehow knew the records sold because, not
in spite, of the track's rawness.

This insight is of such importance that American Heritage magazine (December 1994) selected the Chess brothers as among the 10 most important agents of change in America since 1950 with the following comment:

"The Chess brothers made records that helped transport African-American culture, especially its language and music, to its central place in American culture...The Chess brothers' story is one in which greed and inspiration swirled together in a characteristically American pot where the ingredients did not so much melt as alloy in a metallurgical sense: steel guitar, electricity, and vinyl transmuted into a wholly new cultural substance."

....Willie Dixon tends to minimize Leonard's contributions as a producer, indicating that his main contribution was to rile up the musicians in the studio with a string of friendly curses and then leave them to take out their frustrations on the music. (Leonard was notoriously crude, answering the phone with a "Hello, Motherfucker.")

However, an ability to bring out the best from musicians is one of the very definitions of producer. Also, it was in Dixon's interest to play down Leonard's input in that Dixon was also a producer and writer with the company, and felt rather unappreciated by the Chesses, especially financially.

Dixon's account of the first Chuck Berry session in 1955 leaves Leonard out of the picture entirely; Berry's account in his autobiography firmly places both Leonard and Phil on the scene as engineers and supervisors: "We struggled through the song, taking thirty-five tries before completing a track that proved satisfactory to Leonard," Berry wrote, observing Leonard was clearly in charge of the session.

Perhaps inadvertently, the Chesses contributed to the perception that they were exploiters of black music by downplaying their personal interest in that music. They both claimed to be "just businessmen." Perhaps this attitude stemmed from some vestigial Old World notions of hierarchy, division of labor, or even the unseemliness of the music that they produced. Perhaps downplaying an affinity for the music helped the Chesses maintain emotional distance from their artists - many of whom they clearly took advantage of financially with recording, publishing and personal appearance contracts that screamed of inequity but were standard for the time.

Another way to view them is as paternalistic: The Chesses "took care" of their most important artists. Muddy Waters worked with them for 20 years without a contract; they paid for the funeral of a destitute Little Walter; Howlin' Wolf grumbled but stuck around, and the like.

Despite their protestations, the Chesses, especially Leonard, had a feel for the blues, rock and roll and their permutations. Leonard's son Marshall (who would become president of the company and runs the Chess publishing company,
ARC) put it this way to writer Peter Guralnick in his classic Feel Like Going
Home: "My father was a music lover in a very strange way. People used to talk, they'd think he was kind of a freak, because all he'd ever want to do was to go to these little funky clubs that no white person would ever dream of going to, to hear new acts, to buy new talent."