Lester Franklin Melrose was born in
Sumner, Illinois, He also worked for
Columbia and its
Okeh subsidiary. In many ways Melrose can be considered a founder of the
Chicago blues, although he favored acoustic over electric performances. Most of his recordings were made with a small group of
session musicians and had a similar sound overall. called it "
sweet jazz". The music was a mixture of black blues and vaudeville styles and material with newer swing rhythms. Melrose's chief contribution was to establish a sound with full band arrangements, ensemble playing and a rhythm section, which appealed to the increasingly urbanised black record-buying audience and prefigured the electric blues and R&B of the late 1940s and the small group sound that became dominant in rock and roll. The Melrose sound dominated Chicago blues before
World War II, but the arrival of large numbers of Southern African Americans in Chicago during and after the war brought Melrose's dominance to an end as a harder, deeper blues sound proved more popular with the new audience. However, Melrose continued to work into the 1950s. He then retired to Lake,
Florida, and died there in April 1968. Although he could not play or sing a note of music, he owned the copyright to over three thousand songs, mostly blues. As was the widespread custom at the time (and not just in blues music), Melrose often assigned composer credit and performance rights of the artists' songs to himself, paying the artists only for the recording session. His name appeared on "Reefer Head Woman", recorded by Jazz Gillum, and featuring 16-year-old electric guitarist
George Barnes (the song was later recorded by
Aerosmith), and "
Me and My Chauffeur", recorded by Memphis Minnie (and later by
Jefferson Airplane). His name also appeared on three Arthur Crudup songs recorded by
Elvis Presley. Melrose is a member of the
Blues Hall of Fame. ==Family members==