Chicago is the third largest city in the union, at the crossroads between the west and east coasts. It is situated on Lake Michigan, in the top north-west corner of the state of Illinois. By the 1950s the black population was 800,000 plus, with many more, mainly from the south, arriving each week for new opportunity.
Source: National Atlas of the United States (Wikimedia Commons)
During the 1950s, the main hub of the entertainment industry was on South Michigan Avenue, spanning the ten blocks between Roosevelt and Cermak. It attracted the nickname of Record Row. The area had previously been filled with car showrooms, but seventy years ago the music industry began to take over. It was an ideal location, as many of the Black musicians and performers lived not far away. There were also several radio stations in the area, that provided an outlet for the artists who recorded on Record Row.
South Michigan Avenue from Grant Park 2013
Photo: Ken Lund (Wikimedia Commons)
By the end of the 1950s in the Record Row area, there were seventeen major independent record distributors and six independent record labels with national and international exposure, producing million-selling records on several occasions. The main record companies at which the Chicago R&B sound was developed, were Chess Records, Vee-Jay Records, Mercury Records, Brunswick Records, Curtom Records, One-derful Records, and Okeh Records (a division of Columbia Records). This group of labels created music in Chicago that made the city a very influential recording centre from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s.
Several of these companies were actually founded much earlier, with a history going back decades. The city of Chicago also played an important part in the development of sound recording. All genres of music were produced in the city.
Then, in the 1950s, an African American woman kick-started the Northern Soul sound of Chicago. Her name was Vivian Carter. She worked as a radio DJ and then opened a record store in Gary, Indiana, with her partner Jimmy Bracken. When some young lads from the local high school came asking her advice about making a record, she borrowed five hundred dollars and set up the recording herself. Out of that random project grew a record company that set the direction for Chicago’s contribution to American Soul and R&B music for the next twenty years.
Vivian Carter at Radio Station WWCA (Wikimedia Commons)
Header Photo: South Michigan Avenue 1978 (Downtowngal, Wikimedia Commons)
