For two decades, a short stretch of Michigan Avenue hosted a concentration of creative entrepreneurship whose influence on Black popular music is still felt today.
This 95-year-old living legend has played jazz, written blaxploitation soundtracks, and arranged for Stan Getz, B.B. King, and most famously Curtis Mayfield—but he's probably most widely heard via hip-hop samples.
An expert negotiator, he went to bat for stars as big as James Brown and Muddy Waters, but he also clawed back royalties for countless forgotten artists who’d never gotten their due.