Rotary Connection was an American psychedelic soul band, formed in Chicago in 1966. In addition to their own recordings, including their 1967 debut album Rotary Connection, the band backed Muddy Waters on his 1968 psychedelic blues album Electric Mud. The band's members included Minnie Riperton, who would later emerge as a solo artist. Career Foundation and debut album The highly experimental band was the idea of Marshall Chess, son of Chess Records founder Leonard Chess. Marshall was the director behind a start-up label, Cadet Concept Records, and wanted to focus on music outside of the blues and rock genres, which had made the Chess label popular. This led Marshall to turn his attention to the burgeoning psychedelic movement. He recruited Charles Stepney, a vibraphonist and classically trained arranger and producer. Marshall then recruited members of a little-known white rock band, the Proper Strangers: Bobby Simms, Mitch Aliotta, and Ken Venegas. Sidney Barnes, a songwriter within the Chess organization, also joined, as did Judy Hauff and a Chess receptionist named Minnie Riperton, who would later be successful in her own solo career. Marshall also called up prominent session musicians associated with the Chess label, including guitarist Phil Upchurch and drummer Morris Jennings. Chess described the band's members as "the hottest, most avant garde rock guys in Chicago". The band released their self-titled debut album in late 1967. It had various styles, borrowing heavily from pop, rock, and soul, but was not radio friendly. The album also boasted an Eastern influence through its use of the sitar on the tracks "Turn Me On" and "Memory Band". Stepney's arrangements, brought to life by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, imbued the album with a certain dreamlike quality; this would become a trademark of both the arranger and the mouthpiece. Electric Mud and The Howlin' Wolf Album As a result of the success of The Rotary Connection, Chess felt that he could revive the career of bluesmen Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, by recording two albums of experimental, psychedelic blues with members of Rotary Connection as the backing band for the singers, producing the albums Electric Mud (1968) and The Howlin' Wolf Album (1969). Chess hoped the new albums would sell well among fans of psychedelic rock bands influenced by Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. In place of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf's regular musicians were Gene Barge, Pete Cosey, Roland Faulkner, Morris Jennings, Louis Satterfield,