Along with Atlantic, Stax and Motown, Chess Records is undoubtedly one of the greatest record R&B labels of all time. Set up in 1947 (originally under the name Aristocrat) by Polish émigrés Leonard and Phil Chess, the legendary Chicago-based company (and its subsidiary imprints, Checker and Cadet) is celebrated by this excellent 100-track/4-disc box set, which features some of the Chess's greatest and most influential sides.

The set opens with Jackie Brenston's seminal 45, 'Rocket 88,' recorded in 1951, which many music historians believe to be the record that singlehandedly spawned rock and roll, thereby giving birth to modern popular music. But Chess's bread and butter in the 1950s was undoubtedly blues music and on its roster, it had some of the idiom's best practitioners – like Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and John Lee Hooker, all of who are represented on the first CD. The 1950s was certainly a rich and fruitful period for Chess, not least for their acquisition of a gifted songwriter called Chuck Berry, who scored hit after hit with well-crafted rock and roll anthems like 'Maybellene' and 'Johnny B Goode.'

The second CD focuses on the late-1950s and early '60s, with Berry's work well-represented along with proto-soul sides by Etta James, The Vibrations and The Marathons. The final two CDs – spanning the mid-'60s to 1975, when Chess closed its doors – features some terrific soul sides, which include key tracks by Fontella Bass, Sugar Pie De Santo, Billy Stewart, the Knight Brothers, Mitty Collier, Laura Lee, The Dells, Irma Thomas, Marlena Shaw, Terry Callier, Gene Chandler and Solomon Burke. Jazz is represented by the Ramsey Lewis Trio (their immortal 'Wade In The Water') and there some more esoteric cuts which appeared on the label, like harpist Dorothy Ashby's 'Afro-harping,' the Soulful Strings' 'Burning Spear,' and the Rotary Connection's psych-soul cult classic, 'I Am The Black Gold Of the Sun.'

The accompanying liner notes feature an introduction by Marshall Chess (the son of co-founder, Leonard Chess, and who ran the company in the late-'60s) as well as a useful track-by-track commentary. All in all, then, an unimpeachable introduction to an iconic and profoundly influential American record company.