Chicago

The self-described rock and roll band with horns. A group of DePaul University music students formed it in February 1967 in Walter Parazaider's apartment, played the late-night clubs around the city as The Big Thing, and became Chicago Transit Authority before a threatened lawsuit from the actual transit operator shortened the name to Chicago. Producer James William Guercio took them to Los Angeles, and their 1969 debut arrived as a double album by a band nobody had heard of — a record that stayed on the Billboard chart for 171 weeks. What followed was a decade of numbered albums and a run of hits nobody else was making: Chicago Transit Authority, Chicago, Chicago V, Chicago X and Chicago 17 carried 25 or 6 to 4, Saturday in the Park and If You Leave Me Now, jazz-schooled players writing three-minute pop singles with a horn section in the middle of them.

Terry Kath, the guitarist Jimi Hendrix reportedly admired, died in an accidental shooting in January 1978 at 31, and the band that emerged from that loss was a different one — softer, built around Peter Cetera's tenor and later David Foster's production, and commercially enormous all over again. Cetera left in 1985. Chicago have sold more than 100 million records, placed 21 singles in the American top ten and five albums at No.1, and rank second only to the Beach Boys among American bands for Billboard chart success. They entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 8, 2016, and they are still on the road.