the funk of sweating bodies on the dance floor made it hard to breathe

epub or mobi, with thanks to the original sharer

Ahmet told Leonard Chess he had been listening to the radio as he drove through Atlanta but had not heard a single Chess record. Pulling over to the side of the road, Ahmet said he had called the deejay and said, “ ‘Listen, motherfucker, this is Chess Records. Have you got a wife and a family? You want ’em to live? Well you better start playin’ our records.’ That’s what I call promoting records. Now, what are you doing for Atlantic in Chicago?” Ahmet used to torture them with practical jokes. When Leonard said he had made an agreement with Muddy Waters to come over to the Chess house to do the gardening once his records stopped selling, Ahmet said he had cut a different deal with Big Joe Turner. “If his records don’t sell,” Ahmet said, “I can be his chauffeur.” Ahmet would later say that when he visited Chess Records, Leonard, who “was a good friend of mine, took me around. The office was a storefront and there was a receptionist when you walked into the office who had a phone and a typewriter. There was a fellow sweeping up. Leonard Chess introduced me to this guy. His name was Muddy Waters. He hired him part-time to do the cleaning in the office. He was also one of the artists. I said to Leonard Chess, ‘Where is your accounting department?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Accounting department? Oh, our accountant is that girl at the entrance.’ I said, ‘She’s the receptionist and she’s also answering the phone and she’s also typing your letters and she’s also the accountant?’ ‘Yeah,’ he said. When I asked him about royalties, he said, ‘Royalties?’ And he smiled and we didn’t go further into that. We were not run that way. Other independent labels were selling records for cash and didn’t even deny it. They were proud of it.”