The big selling point is the music.Ĭhess electrified the blues, Chuck Berry electrified white audiences, and after seeing this film you're going to want to find a compilation of Chess hits, settle in with a longneck and groove to some of the best American music ever made.Memphis, Tennessee, is credited with launching rock 'n roll and bluegrass and jazz and rhythm and blues and the musical careers of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. The film lacks a center, jumping from one bigger-than-life personality to the next. The jury's out.Īnd while suggesting a love affair between the long-married Chess and Etta James, the film avoids making a definitive pronouncement on their relationship. Maybe he employed creative bookkeeping - or perhaps he saved while they lavishly spent. It raises the possibility that Chess exploited his performers, getting rich while they often lived hand-to-mouth. "Cadillac Records" is coy on a couple of still-controversial issues. Narratively, the film is all over the place: a bit of racism here, some drug abuse there, a whole lot of sexual shenanigans (Gabrielle Union plays Muddy Waters' long-suffering spouse) and, of course, countless great songs being performed in the recording studio or on stage. The cast members do their own singing, and while only Knowles comes close to surpassing the original recordings they're all perfectly competent. The film's title refers to Chess' practice of presenting his new artists with a big shiny Caddy - visually "Cadillac Records" is a riot of towering tail fins, toothy chrome grills and candy-colored enamel. A late addition to the stable was songstress Etta James (Beyonce Knowles). Gravitating to Chess was a fantastic lineup of players: the harmonica-blowing, self-destructive Little Walter (Columbus Short), the gravel-voiced Wolf (Eamonn Walker), the songwriting genius Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer) and early rocker Berry (a scene-stealing Mos Def).
(Actually there were two Chess siblings behind the label, but to streamline the story the filmmakers eliminated all mention of brother Phil.) Chess opened a club that catered to black patrons, and when it mysteriously burned down, he used the insurance money to launch the record label that would make them both famous. Morganfield went up north to play his guitar and rechristened himself Muddy Waters. It begins with the parallel lives of guitar-picking Mississippi sharecropper McKinley Morganfield (the ever-excellent Jeffrey Wright) and Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody), a music-loving Chicago Jew.
CADILLAC RECORDS TV
It was also the home of Chuck Berry and as such has a claim to being the birthplace of rock 'n' roll.ĭarnell Martin (a veteran TV director making his feature debut) approaches this story of the label and the personalities who made musical history therewith equal parts nostalgia, humor and awe. Too fragmented and episodic to deliver much drama, "Cadillac Records" still satisfies as an amiable amble through a rich chapter of American pop culture.įrom the late '40s through the early '60s, Chicago's Chess Records was a hotbed of no-nonsense blues that gave us Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Etta James and Willie Dixon.
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