No less than Rolling Stones' rhythm prophet Keith Richards has described it as "Mecca," and no it's not a pharmaceutical factory. 2120 South Michigan Avenue is the site of Chess Records, the label that broke the great blues artists of the 20th century: Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry, Koko Taylor, Sonny Boy Williamson, Etta James and countless other soulful musicians who were drawn to the studio from the Mississippi delta and thereabouts.

Dixon's widow recently purchased the site, and plans for legal teams to reclaim royalties for aging blues legends and other philanthropic activities under the auspices of Willie Dixon's Blues Heaven Foundation are in varying stages of development.

If you're not into the blues don't bother making the trip. If you've ever got a chill from the chords to "Little Red Rooster" don't miss it. There are all kinds of contributions and artifacts, but the most incredible thing is just standing in the space where the magic was cast. Standing in the space occupied by the legends in their long-shot assault on the aesthetically bankrupt white bread musical mores of the day, the audacity of bringing the blues to the city, the entirely unforeseen musical revolution that followed...the world was changed and 2120 S. Michigan Avenue was the epicenter of the quake that followed.

Like most revolutions this one wasn't seamless. The relationship between the black musicians and the Chess brothers, Polish Jews who owned the place, were checkered at best. Leonard Chess was, by all accounts, more interested in making money than anything else but he was a shrewd businessman who eventually ran multiple labels and also broke major jazz artists like Ramsey Lewis and Ahmad Jamal. Phil Chess was more diplomat than businessman and maintained the semblance of unity that allowed the revolution to gain critical mass.

It's a modest building, just a few miles from the urban center of Chicago. It would be easy to miss it if you're not looking for it, only a small testimonial plaque from the Chicago Historical Society distinguishes the exterior from that of an upper echelon flophouse, or struggling electrical business.

Which it was. Both. Chuck Berry slept here, in the basement when times were tough. The studio itself is not preserved intact, but there's enough left to give you a sense of how things were. There are adjustable walls, high ceilings, piping providing a low-tech echo chamber, and an exposed interior wall so you could watch it shake...nothing that your neighborhood long-haired savant doesn't have in his garage, but these were original moves at the time-innovations by studio visionaries like Leonard Chess and Willie Dixon.

The technicians were more than matched by the talent. Berry was particularly notorious for demanding repeat takes, until he would finally make the good-sounding mistakes that he believes gives his stuff that earthy appeal.

Great paraphernalia abounds on the top floor. Bo Diddley's hats, Koko Taylor's dresses, gold records all around. Downstairs beautiful ornate china dolls made by Big Mama Thornton reflect a dedication to detail and sensitivity that the uninitiated don't associate with the blues.

The walls are filled with tasteful photographs of the greats. My favorite is one of a youthful Willie Dixon with his big arms wrapped around Koko Taylor, great smiles on their faces. If the artists were persecuted by Chess, and they were, it was at least to a lesser degree than they were persecuted by a society that wouldn't have otherwise given them a chance.

There's an argument to be made that 2120 is saturated with Willie Dixon memorabilia at the expense of the other great artists. If it's a legitimate complaint there are at least good reasons for it: as Dixon's widow owns the joint she has more access to his stuff than anyone else's, none of the other blues greats contributed a comparable amount to the studios in terms of songwriting (more than 500 titles), arranging, production, or session time (Willie plays bass on what's best estimated as "thousands" of cuts by other artists), and a legitimate argument can certainly be made that Willie Dixon was the greatest of them all.

There wasn't a star system. Everyone was treated the same, which is to say badly. Our guide's voice broke as he took us to the famous back stairway that the blues greats were forced to ascend so that they wouldn't mingle with the white business folk on the first floor.

Unfortunately very few of the millionaires who fed on the musical fountainhead of the masters have paid tangible homage to their roots. The Rolling Stones are well represented, Ron Wood donated several original drawings including a self-portrait and a typically soulful rendering of Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, and Stones artifacts can be found throughout, but there are no hints of the existence of most of the millionaire musicians who received worldwide acclaim for essentially electrifying existing music and feeding at the trough of Chess musicians.

Of course the Stones have always been the most gracious in lavishing praise on their blues inspirations. Mick Jagger once asked an interviewer why anyone would want to hear him sing "King Bee" when they could hear Slim Harpo sing it, and Keith brought the Chess location into rock audience consciousness with his purist "2120 S. Michigan Avenue." A 1981 Checkerboard Lounge recording of Mick and Muddy's rendering of "Champagne and Reefer" has been one of the most treasured recordings by bootleg collectors since the first tape hit the streets.

Keith Richards says he was introduced to Muddy Waters while Muddy was painting the walls of Chess. No one disputes what Keith thinks, he's a paragon of honesty unmatched in politics for example, but no one ever remembers Muddy not wearing a suit and a silk shirt with cuff links either. Fertile ground for surrealist film there, I think.

Ghosts and ironies abound in the place. A white guy who didn't really like them (or anyone, perhaps) but had great business acumen led an army of musical visionaries into a promised land of reasonably high living and social acceptance of their music. The masters took the back stairs, but their legacy bought their own jets and islands.

The blues has never been about tangible things, except for maybe strong and amiable women. The blues has never been about accepting your plight and hanging your head. The blues has definitely never been about sentimentality or reliving the past. When I saw Willie Dixon in New Orleans in 1985 he came out and growled, "I'd like to dedicate this set to nuclear disarmament."

The blues has always been about taking things as they are and moving forward, having a damn good time all the while of course. In its own way 2120 S. Michigan Avenue is doing just that. The impending lawsuits are just a sign of our times, of previous wrongs being righted. Chess itself is no longer a working studio, the stuff in there is just an artifact of something eternally fresh.

But if you've already got the blues, think you might, or really want them...you're going to get that second wind or jump-start or epiphany from that little room where Muddy and Willie played a few chords and looked at each other and nodded, from that room where Muddy leaned down into one of those old microphones and his deep voice snarled out like a mudslide out of creation, " Ah'm a MAAAAAAAN!!!!!"

Who could have doubted that the revolution would follow?

AWL-RAHHHT, BABEH, let's bring it on home