Sporting Life Blues

In the film Cadillac Records, it seems on the surface at least, that Chess takes good care of his artists. If you were an artist and you gave him your loyalty and a hit record he would in return give you a brand new Cadillac. That Cadillac that the movie gets it's name for is significant. It represents something more than the car i think. To me it's Chess's way of distracting the artists while he reaps the benefits of owning the rights of the music. All the musicians, with the exception of Chuck Berry i believe, have no legal rights to their music. It seems as though their revenue comes from pocket change supplied by Chess himself. This really does a good job of portraying how manipulative the producers can be. The artist becomes dependent on the producer, and once the relationship between the artist and the producer dissolves, what is the artist left with? Today record producers can be just as manipulative. Only a small fraction of cd sales are awarded to the artist, leaving the artist constantly touring to make enough money just to get by. I feel like the Cadillac in this film has a lot of depth and should be discussed beyond the simplicity of a car. What do you think the Cadillac represents?