If we were to measure success in terms of record sales, then we would have to place Fontella Bass somewhere near the very top of the St. Louis music hierarchy, because she had one of the biggest-selling records by any St. Louis artist. With its unforgettable bass line intro and Fontella’s warm, soulful voice, the 1965 recording of “Rescue Me” is an enduring classic that generated sales in excess of a million copies, earning her a gold record along the way.
An accomplished pianist, Fontella spent her formative years accompanying her grandmother and mother, gospel artist Martha Bass, at numerous church and concert programs. Joining Little Milton’s band in 1961 as a pianist, her first recording session was accompanying Milton for the St. Louis–based Bobbin Records. In 1962 Fontella made her debut under her own name, recording four sides for Bobbin Records, “I Don’t Hurt Anymore”/“Brand New Love” (Bobbin 134) and “Honey Bee”/“Bad Boy” (Bobbin 140). It’s probable that Fontella is also playing on other Bobbin sides by Oliver Sain, the Earthworms, and Leon Patterson. Bobbin Records boasted an outstanding roster of artists, but this did not translate into sales and the company was forced to close its doors in late 1962. Little Milton’s contract was sold to Chess Records, who also purchased numerous other Bobbin masters, including the Milton session with Fontella on piano.1 The following year a dispute between Little Milton and his bandleader, Oliver Sain, resulted in the musicians resigning and reforming as the Oliver Sain Revue. Fontella Bass suddenly found herself, along with Bernard Mosely, as the featured vocalist. In late 1963 she recorded a further two sessions in St. Louis, this time for Ike Turner’s labels: “I Love the Man”/“My Good Loving” (Prann 5005) and “This Would Make Me Happy”/“Poor Little Fool” (which also featured Tina Turner) (Sonja 2006).
The differences of opinion between Milton and Oliver Sain were soon resolved, and in 1964 Milton, by this time relocated in Chicago, recommended Oliver, Fontella, and Mosley’s replacement, Bobby McClure, to Leonard Chess. Up until this time Fontella’s and Oliver’s various records had met with little or no success, but the situation soon changed dramatically. Following a request by Leonard Chess, she recorded a duet with Bobby McClure, Oliver Sain’s composition “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing” (Checker 1097), in June 1964. Although not released until January 1965, it proved to be an immediate hit and ended the year being voted the number 12 best-selling R&B single. And although their follow-up, “You’ll Miss Me”/“Don’t Jump” (Checker 1111), didn’t meet with quite the same success, it did sell reasonably well. However, following a disagreement with Oliver Sain, Fontella moved to Chicago to pursue a solo career. Around the middle of 1965 Fontella entered the studio to cut what would eventually become her biggest-selling record and the one that will forever be synonymous with her name, “Rescue Me.”
Checker 1120 was spotlighted by Billboard on September 4, although they singled out the Sain composition “Soul of the Man” as the top side. On September 25 “Rescue Me” entered the Top 40 R&B charts at 37, climbing to number 1 on October 30, simultaneously being on the Hot 100 at 9, eventually climbing to 6. It remained at number 1 for four weeks and for a total of 19 weeks in the Top 40 R&B chart. Its follow-up, “Recovery,” entered at 36 on January 29, 1966, though it had lingered in the bottom half of the Top 100 for the previous two weeks. “Recovery” proved not to be as successful as its predecessor, only managing to climb to 13 in the R&B Top 40. The United States was not the only country in which “Rescue Me” established good sales. Entering the English charts at 21 on December 11, it eventually reached 6 on January 1. Fontella made a promotional trip to England and was presented with the gold record on the BBC [television] program Top of the Pops.
Fontella toured for some considerable time behind “Rescue Me,” but a subsequent album, The New Look (Checker 2997), and several more singles could not equal its phenomenal success, and by the end of 1968 a slightly disenchanted Fontella was asking for a release from her contract with Chess. Numerous sessions for Jewel/Paula Records in the early ’70s and lone sessions for Epic and Nentu met with very little commercial success. Fontella continued to work as a solo act and also with her husband, Lester Bowie, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago and occasionally recording with them.
In the early 1980s Fontella moved back to St. Louis after a couple of years of living and working in France. She managed to keep a foot in both the rhythm and blues and gospel camps, a rare phenomenon, appearing on shows with Oliver Sain, Martha Bass, and Fontella’s brother, David Peaston. A quarter century after its release, “Rescue Me” was given a new lease on life when the song was featured in numerous television and radio commercials. Unfortunately, not being one of the writers, Fontella saw little of the revenue the song generated. Fontella Bass died on December 26, 2012. In this interview Fontella recalls her early years in St. Louis through the 1960s and her involvement with Chess Records.
—Bill Greensmith
Fontella Bass Interview
Bill Greensmith
Blues Unlimited #147 (1986)
I’m assuming your mother was your influence?
Oh, definitely, my grandmother and my mother. My grandmother was a singer also and all of her children were musicians. All of my uncles are musicians, so that’s how I got into it. All gospel, they still in the gospel world today.
I was born in St. Louis on Stoddard, 2726 Stoddard, July 3, 1940. I started singing at the age of five. Well, I really wasn’t a singer, I was a piano player and I played for my mother at a very early age. At five I was gigging. I was playing all the mortuaries, funeral homes.
I played for Ellis and for Buddy Walton,2 and that’s who paid for my music lessons. I got paid $7 a night. And if I was good I got paid $10. I was very nervous about going into funeral homes, around the dead people, you know, and if my nerves were—“We’ll give you $10 if you play.” And I’d go for the ten. I’d hold out till they say ten. You know, in 1945, ’46, $10 was a lot of money for a five-year-old. And I guess it was big business for the funeral homes. I played at many funerals at an early age, up until I was 12 or 13, until I just said, “No.” I didn’t want to do it anymore.
Would your mother sing at these funerals?
My grandmother and I, not my mom. My mother was traveling at the time with Clara Ward and Marion Williams and all those. Traveling through Texas on her own, too. So my grandmother kinda raised me, you know, and as I got older then my mother settled in from traveling around the world.
Did you ever go out on tour with your mother?
Oh, sure. I traveled all over the United States with my mother, my grandmother, and myself.
As an act?
Yeah. I played piano, it was like three generations—grandmother, mother, and granddaughter—and we all had different segments. My mother would sing, I’d play piano for everyone, my grandmother and I would sing. And they would take up a collection, like three baskets, and everybody would give to who they thought was the greatest. And my grandmother won every time, every time. Her name was Navada Carter. That’s how I left St. Louis, after my grandmother died in 1965. I went to seek the world. She died in January of ’65 and by January of ’66 I had a gold record.
Fontella Bass. St. Louis, 1984. (Photo Bill Greensmith)
When did you stop playing with your mother?
I never really ever stopped, believe me. I still do. If she has a program and she needs a piano player, I’ll go if I can.3 After about 13, I started playing for various churches around St. Louis. I was the church organist and pianist. One church I worked for years was Morning Star. The first organ they bought for the church was for myself. I played for so many churches.
What prompted the crossover to rhythm and blues?
Well, being in the church, my grandmother was very hard-cored, you know. They didn’t want me to listen to rock on the radio. After I reached high school I would play in school, we would have talent shows. And the first time I got busted was when Ray Charles was in town and they was having a talent show before Ray Charles at the Club Riviera, which was up on Taylor and Delmar, and I played for this group.
I had a schoolteacher friend to ask my mum, could he take me to the show? He knew I was gonna play, so he dropped me off at the club and told me he would pick me up at 12. I was in good hands! So my picture came out in the Argus paper because we won, right? And all my mother’s church members was calling, “Did you see your daughter’s picture in the paper?” There I was on the piano getting down and we won the contest. This had to be in ’57, because I graduated from high school in ’58, so we’re talking about ’57, around in that area.
My grandfather and two of my mother’s brothers used to go out to all of the blues places like Ned Love’s, all over in Illinois, Lakeside, and the Red Top. They would sneak me out the window and I would dress in the car and I would be gone all night till six and seven in the morning. And then they would sneak me back in the house and they did it for years. My mother never told me until about two years ago that she knew.
They’d have me out and they’d send a note up and I’d sing or either I’d go up and I’d play. I was about 16 and I was too young. All I was there for was to sing and dance or play the piano. So my grandfather and my uncles were a great influence on my career, because they just pushed me, I don’t care where we went.
I decided to leave St. Louis at one time. I was gonna go on the road with Leon Claxton, that’s the Royal American Carnival. And my mother heard about it. Well, I worked the two weeks here in St. Louis with the show and it was paying $175 a week. That was the greatest gig in the world at that time. And my mother came and took me off the train, I mean bodily. I was so embarrassed, because I thought I was grown. She said, “No way.” Bip, boom, bam! And I was off the train in two jumps. But you know what? I’m really thankful that she did that to this day.
Well, anyway, Oliver and Milton heard me on the Leon Claxton Show. And I thought I was a little dancer. Leon said—well, one of the girls had got sick on the show and he said, “You been watching the show for a week, do you think you could put on this costume and go out and dance?” I said, “I’m not a dancer.” He said, “$550.” I said, “I’m a dancer!”
They put me on the back row and they were playing this tune, I never will forget, “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be.” And you were supposed to go one, two, three, and snatch. The girls were snatching from the front and the back. They went front and I went back. They went back and I went front. I mean, you know, it was all mixed up, but it was a lot of fun. Nobody knew the clumsy girl on the back row who was dancing. But that was the end of my dancing career. I said no, that’s not for me.
I was living in the project and Oliver came down and told me who he was and that he heard me on the show. But before I went with Leon Claxton I was working out here at Chain of Rocks, it used to be an amusement park. They used to have a place called the Showboat up on the hill that kinda overlooked the Mississippi. And at that time blacks weren’t allowed to go in and sit to listen to the music. And I had my one little special table. Of course, I never sat at it. I was always back in the kitchen, like, “Fix me this, fix me that.” I was a great eater. Me and the cooks were great friends. When I felt like really getting boozed up. I’d be in the kitchen and they’d be saying, “It’s time for you to go back on.” And they used to pass the hat on me, I used to make so much money in tips. I mean, I used to sing “Georgia.” It was a piano bar–type club and I would do “Georgia” maybe four or five times a night. Maybe somebody would fall in love with this tune and he’d be crying, “Oh, my wife left me, here’s $10, $20, just play it again.” It was fun. Anyway, then I got with Oliver and I started playing piano with Little Milton.
Oliver had the band behind Milton?
Yes, he was the band director. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t hired as a singer, but as a musician. One night Milton decided to get soused and we were there on the gig and everybody waiting for Little Milton and he wasn’t there. Oliver said, “Hey, sing.” And I’ve been singing ever since. So it got to be that I would do my little set. Oliver and Milton came from the same hometown—they were just like two brothers. They even married at the same time, they has a double wedding together. They were very close.
Oliver Sain Band, 1962. Left to right: Willie Dotson, Bobby Lunair, Oliver Sain, Jerry Lee Walker, Fontella Bass, Vern Harrell, and Oscar Reynolds
So this was 1961 when you joined Milton?
Yeah.
Who was in the band when you joined?
Willie Dotson on bass; Vern Harrell, baritone; Jerry Lee Walker, drums; Larry Protho, trumpet; James Carr, tenor; Oliver Sain, alto; Milton, guitar. Matter of fact, my ex-husband used to play trumpet with us for a while, Lester Bowie.
After Milton it was Phillip Westmoreland on guitar. But before Phillip we had a fellow named Oscar. He played with us for about a year. I’m trying to think of Oscar’s last name,4 because his brother played bass with us when Willie went off on the road with Albert King. He died from exhaustion. We used to call him Blue.
Would you go out on tour with them?
Oh, sure. We used to travel through Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, the whole months of January and February. We couldn’t stay in the hotels or use the bathrooms in the South—we used to have to live with people that we knew. I tell you, the road was rugged. Last stop for the bathroom: Memphis.
Memphis you could get some decent food, because you had your own black soul food restaurants you could go to, decent toilets and hotels you could go to and take a bath, keep yourself clean and get a good meal. And after that, no stop until you get to Greenville. That was Milton’s home, him and Oliver. We never did go through Clarksdale at night, we left early enough to go through during the daytime. Because we were a traveling band and that was a hell of a town. And that was Ike Turner’s home, that’s why Ike is hell! But we’re talking about 18 years, not so long ago.
But I’ve been to Greenwood in the last five years, because my brother is down there. I don’t know as an artist what the conditions are like down there as far as travel. But I think when I was trying to deal with “Rescue Me” everything was pretty cool.
My episode down in B. B. King’s Club Ebony in Mississippi … B. B. owned a club down there. So they had a free-for-all fight before the dance. We were setting up. This was chairs, tables, turn over cowboy-style, and one of the splinters stuck in my leg from a chair over a fellow’s back. And there was this black police who was by himself, but he had a gun strapped on him, so he was the police. And these fellows, he was trying to break them up, but they was just fighting all over the club. So this police got a hold to them and all three of them on the floor, so he hollered, “Somebody go and get the police.” It was so funny to me. I said, “But you are the police.”
There was over two or three hundred people in the club and this was my first awareness of what whites had on blacks in the state of Mississippi. One white cop walked in the club, silence. I’m looking, saying, “Who’s breaking this stuff up?” And here comes this one fellow and he’s just walking through taking his time and just looking. And even the fellows on the floor, everybody’s getting up. This was in ’62.
What clubs would you work at in St. Louis?
The Moonlight, that was the big place. Chuck and Al’s in Brooklyn, Illinois. Then we worked a club for three years down in Herculaneum, Missouri, this was an allwhite club. I used to have to sing for three years, every Friday and Saturday, “Take Your Hands Off Him, He Don’t Belong to You.” That was my featured number. And after we left there we would come into Chuck and Al’s at two in the morning. Two till six, double gig on the weekend. Seven o’clock we were sitting in Crown’s Restaurant eating breakfast. We used to play the Harlem Club Blue Mondays, 11 to three. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday—the Moonlight. Sundays we would have dances, the Masonic Hall or the Chase, the Electrician’s Hall. We’d double gig the Manhattan Club in East St. Louis.
We got into a lot of incidents with the band, but it didn’t happen often. I remember James Carr was dating this lady wrestler. We’re all on the bandstand and this fellow had come over to the lady and ask can he sit with her. James is steady playing, steady looking over at the table. The lady finally got up and danced with him and the waitress brought drinks. So on intermission, James, he was just about, “Is this real?” and he smacked her, bam! We didn’t know the lady was a professional wrestler. Anyway, when you come out of the Manhattan it was a funeral home next door, and you had to go out of the back. This lady was out there and she was just crying. So I went over to her and said, “Sweetheart, it’s not worth it.” She said, “I know, but I’m gonna wait for him.” James came out and she just looked at him, she dropped her conversation with me, she wiped him out. Bim, bam, boom! On the ground! She did a thing on him. He got up and started hauling, he was running. Oh, we never forget that! But this lady, I mean body slam, if you could have seen the look on his face.
Oliver Sain Poster, 1963.
Jerry, the drummer, he could spot something in the crowd. He’d be playing the drums, but his eyes would be like a camera through the place. And most places we played in it was one door. We was playing over in East St. Louis at the Cosmopolitan Hall. Jerry picked up on them, he said, “Take down.” When he said, “Take down,” it was time for the band to find a hiding place, because it’s fighting. I’m running off the bandstand and I grab the back of this fellow’s coat and I’m running with him, trying to get out the door. But I’m running with the fellow that they trying to shoot! And Oliver would always save me. I felt someone just lift me up and bring me over. And they did shoot him. I don’t know if he lived or not, but they did shoot him.
Did you make any of the record dates with Milton for Bobbin?
All of them.
From 1961 onward?
Yeah. That’s how I met Bob Lyons, at that time he was the owner of KATZ.5
Where did you record the Bobbin things?
We were in an eggshell room down on Grand and Olive. There used to be a big building there, they tore it down about 10 years ago and they used to be upstairs there.6 It was just a little room, egg crates all around, ceiling and everything, and that’s where we did it. Then we went to Chicago for Chess with Milton. That was really big-time.
The things that Ike Turner recorded … ?
We did at Technisonic.
The label credits Oliver’s band on the Prann sides.
No. It is the band, but we mixed with Ike’s band. That’s Oliver playing piano, it might be Ike, because he played piano on one of the tunes, too.
Who are the girls on there?
Robbie Montgomery, Venetta Fields, and Jessie Smith, the Ikettes. I forgot about this record. I probably haven’t heard it since I recorded it. It’s a shame, isn’t it? But I was still with Oliver when I recorded these songs.
Did you ever record locally for anybody else?
No. Bobbin was the first in the studio. I remember playing a session with Albert King for Bobbin. One night he needed a piano player and I played on a set for him. That was my first meeting with him other than in the clubs.
Why did Milton and Oliver part?
Well, Milton would get mad at the band and he would fire the whole band. If he got mad at one person he was mad at everybody. And you know, every night it just didn’t go well, if you’re traveling on the road every night. Milton would get mad at someone, then he’d fire the whole band. And we were tired of it. He did it about three times. So the band just got together and said, “Well, the next time he fires us we’re really gonna be fired for good.” Sure enough, he did it. So we struck out, did our own thing.
When I was going strong on the road and my husband was playing trumpet with Little Milton, I used to go out and be vocalist. I used to go under the name Sabrina. And Milton would pay me. I’d be traveling on the road with them. I’d go out there and be his female vocalist. I’d go out and do my thing, be background anything, make that money. I wasn’t too proud, I didn’t mind. I would tell all the artists on Chess, “If you need a background singer, whatever you need, I’m available.” And I used to get on a lot of sessions. I got on one of Muddy Waters’s sessions doing background.
Every time I played with Milton when he had “We’re Gonna Make It” and we were traveling through Texas and Louisiana—we never played that tune all the way through—there was a turnout. Ladies just looked like, when they say, “You may not have a cent to pay the rent”—their purses go upside their husbands or boyfriends or whoever, bam! We never finished that tune on the road. ’Cause they been drinking all night and that was a helluva tune. They was drowning in their sorrows and they was thinking about what he’s saying. And I’m telling you, every time Milton sang that song it was a free-for-all, a fight would be over here or over there. The story of everybody’s life.
See, when you was in the city it was a different crowd, but, like, going through Texas and those towns, and they be coming from towns 30 and 50 miles around, whooo, they be hanging loose, boy, pocketbooks be flying upside people’s heads. And when they got ready to start that tune, everybody be looking, getting ready to run, because they done partied all night and this would be the last number of the night, it’s time to go home. And when this record would come on they just couldn’t take it. I have several scars on my body from fights trying to get out the way.
Were you still with Oliver when you recorded “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing”?
No. Bobby was with Oliver, but I was not. I moved to Chicago. I left Oliver January 11, 1964.7 We had a New Year’s show with Dick Gregory and Jimmy Smith, New Year’s Eve. The night before I had a gig with George Hudson, because I used to do little vocal things away from the band. And this night there was a draft in the place and I went to sing “I Don’t Hurt Anymore” and I didn’t have a voice. So the band kicked it off again and I could hardly get through the number. So I didn’t go to Chuck and Al’s that night, I told Oliver I’m going home. We used to double gig on the weekend. We worked at Chuck and Al’s for many years.
So the next day I had a gig with somebody else at the Masonic, then we were gonna give our big New Year’s Eve thing. Oliver went to bring me home and he said, “Well, you don’t have to worry about the gig.” Well, that gig was paying big money. He said, “You couldn’t make the little $25 last night, you’re not gonna make the gig tonight.” I said, “Are you serious?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Bye.” Slammed the door.
I left on the 11th and moved to Chicago. I was talking to John Burton, that’s who brought me to Chess Records. He was the attorney there and that’s how I got in there at Chess. He had been talking to me for months, you know, but I hadn’t made up my mind to really go. But when that incident went down I said it was now or never. And I was sort of grief-stricken after I lost my grandmother. So I left, I had to get out of St. Louis.
John and I used to get rehearsal rooms downtown in Chicago. He played a little piano. Then Leonard proposed a question to me after I joined up with Chess. He asked me would I record with Bobby McClure and I told him I didn’t mind. So I did record with Bobby and we brought out a hit, “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing,” “Don’t Jump,” and “You’ll Miss Me.” We had those three hits, then I went as a solo artist and my first 45 was “Rescue Me.” Then “Recovery” and on and on.
B. B. King, Big Bill Hill, Fontella Bass. Chicago, 1964.
You toured a lot behind those records?
My first professional gig out of St. Louis was the Apollo Theater with “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing,” Bobby McClure and myself. This was without Oliver and I had to have music and everything. So it was sort of like my thing and I would pay Bobby to come out on the road and we were making great money. But we were in Washington, D.C., and the split of Bobby and I became over a financial situation. Oliver had a gig for him here in St. Louis and he felt obligated to Oliver, and I can understand that, but at the same time, it was messing up my business on the road, so I had to let Bobby go and I got another Bobby, which his name was Bobby Hutton. So I used him and just paid him a salary to do those numbers with me on the road.
I worked steady for a year behind “Rescue Me,” I mean steady. After that, my workload, I slowed it down, I became impregnated! So after three months I went to Bermuda and worked a gig there, I laid over for two weeks after the gig and I just took off from there. Then that’s when the big fight came with Leonard and I, and I wanted out with Chess.
I remember one town I played in, Pulaski, Virginia. Never heard of it. They hadn’t had entertainment there since Silas Green in 1927! And they had the high school band that played behind me. They had practiced my music and it was the best band that ever played behind me on the road. I couldn’t believe it. But my luggage, we had went down on Trailways and my luggage was mixed and it was late on a Saturday and I told this fellow, “I can’t go on, I don’t have my clothes.” He said, “No problem, what you need?” He opened the stores, get on the telephone, “Bob, open your store.” No problem. And on the album cover of Rescue Me, that’s where I got that outfit, out of Pulaski, Virginia. The cap, the boots, the whole outfit. And the guy just came out, he said, “Well, you guys is the first niggers that ever stayed up in the Howard Johnson.” I thought I was a big star. We couldn’t sleep all night, we was looking at the tree out there, which one they gonna hang us at. This was just me and my husband. I tell ya, first time! I said, “Well, I must be on the town’s history books in Pulaski, Virginia.” He promoted the thing, but the band was excellent. I was one of the first black females up for a Grammy Award for contemporary, 1965. I don’t know how many years the Grammy Awards have been out, but I was nominated, a lot of people don’t know that. And at the time not one black was going to the Grammys.
How did you get along with the people at Chess?
Oh, Leonard was great. Max Cooperstein, my buddy, and Phil. You know, we were like one big family and I got a chance to meet a lot of people. At that time I didn’t realize that nobody was going in the office but me, jolly old Fontella. They ring the buzzer and I come in every morning and go back and say hello to everybody, and a lot of times I would have lunch with Leonard or Phil or Max or whoever. I met quite a few people just through the office. Leonard was more involved in the radio station, more so than the—and I was always coming in to argue about something, like, “Leonard, what is this?” One day Leonard was so mad at me, after he had his big heart problem, you know, he used to have his little nitro pills. So I was upsetting him this day, he said, “I just don’t know about you, Fontella.” He took his pillbox and was doing his little pills. “The trouble with you, Fontella, is you just don’t trust no one, you don’t even trust your mother.” I said, “You’re right, Leonard. ’Cause I know if I got some money in my purse my mother gonna take it.”
Leonard, after we went through our little thing, he did want me to come back, but at that time I’d got off into the commercials and I just wanted to see the world and get off into the new music and that’s what I did. ’69 is when I left. I asked him for my contract back and I did get that back. And I think it was that June or July, right after I left that March, I read about it in the paper that he had deceased. But I was gonna come back and we was gonna resolve things and do things. But, you know, after the head of anything goes … 8
It really went down the pan?
Well, I’m the one that brought it up. Although they had a lot of catalogue things, it was extensive, but they hadn’t had a hit for a while till “Rescue Me” came along and Chess became as hot as a firecracker.
Your mother was also on Chess?
I took her to Chess. I took her there, “Record my mother.” And Ralph Bass was handling my mother and she had four albums out on Chess, she did more albums than I did. And I play piano and background on all of them, sure did.
And it was after this that you went to France?
Yeah, and it worked out for me, because every year my mother, brother, and me tour, two or three times a year, it’s great.
1. “I’m Satisfied”/“Someone to Love Me,” Checker 1012; “I Need Somebody”/“So Mean to Me,” Checker 994.
2. Ellis and Buddy Walton, two St. Louis funeral homes.
3. [Martha Bass died in September 1998.]
4. Oscar Reynolds.
5. Bobbin Records owner Bob Lyons was also the station manager of Radio KATZ in St. Louis.
6. 3903 Olive was one of several addresses for Bobbin Records. According to Oliver Sain, the studio at the Olive location was used only for rehearsals and their sessions were recorded at Technisonic Studios.
7. There is some confusion about this date, as Fontella gives both 1964 and 1965 as the date of her departure for Chicago. St. Louis appearances by her and Oliver Sain were still being advertised in St. Louis in late 1964. There was also a show advertised featuring Fontella and Oliver Sain at the Cosmo Hall, East St. Louis, April 11, 1965.
8. Leonard Chess died on October 16, 1969.
