From left, Kevin Mambo as Jimmy Rogers, Columbus Short as Little Walter and Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters.

Parkwood Pictures

Before Elvis Presley shook up the nation with the driving rhythms of rock ’n’ roll in the mid 1950s, there was already Chuck Berry and his wacky duck walk, the mellow R&B sounds of Muddy Waters and the heartfelt singing of Etta James.

Although they never got the national attention of Elvis because they were black, they paved the way for the changes that would come in American music. And they were all discovered and under contract to Leonard Chess, a white Jew from Chicago whose Chess Records created a musical revolution in the late 1940s.

Cadillac Records, so named because Chess gave his biggest stars big-finned Caddies in lieu of a bigger cut of their record sales, presents that musical history in a rambling, dramatic way. It’s an ambitious film that sometimes seems as though writer-director Darnell Martin, a middle-aged white woman who has mainly directed television episodes, has taken on a challenge far exceeding the time limitations of a two-hour film. Occasionally the focus is a little hazy since Martin attempts to tell the stories of Chess himself (a very good Adrien Brody) and the ups and downs of his Chess Records, while also spotlighting the career ups and downs of singers Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright), Little Walter (Columbus Short), Chuck Berry (Mos Def) and Etta James (Beyoncé Knowles), with asides to Howlin’ Wolf (Eamonn Walker) and songwriter Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer), who delivers the film’s occasional unobtrusive narration.

Although Martin eventually manages to weave these many stories together into a fascinating musical history with Chess at the center, nevertheless sometimes one has the feeling that something is missing. For instance, one wished that more time had been devoted to the relationship between Chess and James. The film tantalizingly only hints that there was more to it than the brief, awkward moment of passion we do see.

Yet Martin presents enough of the very human crises and misgivings of the Chess stars to let each of them shine. Brody is the dynamo with a million ideas that drives Chess to its particular niche in the musical world. He loves the music, but also is a hard-nosed businessman who, the film implies, had his Chicago nightclub torched so he could use the insurance money to start Chess Records in a black Chicago neighborhood. Adored by his artists, whom he calls his family, he nevertheless kept most of the profits they made for his record company, something that eventually wins him the ire of the black community.

Yet he was loyal to his stars, giving James a shot at becoming a “crossover” artist, one who can sell records to both black and white listeners. Previously, in that segregated era, black artists didn’t have their music played on radio stations that catered to whites. At one point in the film, Chuck Berry is startled to discover that the Beach Boys have stolen one of his songs and later successfully sues them. All the actors do their own singing, copying the originals. Knowles does such a terrific job on James’ classic “At Last,” complete with original orchestrations, that one might think she is lip-synching to James’ recording.

Between the musical numbers and the drama of Cadillac Records, without a lot of hoopla Martin explores the racism that had kept the nation’s music segregated (although it was Elvis, singing black music and doing moves that black stars had used for years, who really changed the sound and look of American music). Yet Chess himself did help to erase the black-white divide in music, sometimes underhandedly. He bribed disc jockeys to play his artists’ records, starting an illegal practice that later became a ’50s scandal that was labeled “payola.”

Matching Brody dramatic point for dramatic point is Wright as Muddy Waters. A shy Mississippi sharecropper, he brought his humble musical sound to Chicago where he was encouraged to switch from acoustic guitar to electric and to ramp up his sound until he had the gals swooning, something that suited the womanizing singer, if not his long-suffering wife (Gabrielle Union). With fancy clothes and a high pompadour, he had transformed himself. Although he was one of Chess’ first and biggest stars, Wright lets us see his insecurities as he faces competition from newer rising stars and the jealousy he feels toward them as his own star dims.

If Short’s Little Walter is a tragic-comic figure, a seemingly irrepressible character whose quick-to-anger temperament eventually brings him down, then Mos Def’s Chuck Berry is the film’s livewire comic relief. He’s a whirlwind on stage, a smart and sassy guy whose inability to keep his hands off underage girls finally lands him in prison (though in Def’s performance it’s easy to see how he could woo anyone).

Knowles is the film’s real revelation as James, however. What might have been just a throwaway cameo appearance is turned by the singer-actress into a dramatic tour de force. On the surface, James is a self-assured, hard-edged young woman, who can sell a song with her powerful voice. But Knowles goes beyond all that in several emotional scenes that show the hardscrabble circumstances under which James has long been burdened. A brief meeting with the famous father who never acknowledged her goes badly, which leads to a heart-rending scene played with Brody as he tries to comfort her.

At first Cadillac Records seems as though it will be no more than a breezy musical history of an era. But soon it turns into much, much more as it explores the reality behind the larger-than-life legends many of us grew up with.

****

Starring: Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Mos Def, Columbus Short, Beyoncé Knowles, Gabrielle Union, Cedric the Entertainer, Eamonn Walker.

mjanuson@projo.com