My Uncle Took The Message (Writing's On The Wall)

So it’s a little sad.

What it comes down to, I guess, is that tickets weren’t sold. They weren’t cheap, that’s for sure. In St. Louis it’s $30 to see Chuck Berry in the best of venues—a smoky basement that measures something like 50 feet by 100. You can’t beat that. But this English tour had captured my imagination. I had a vision of a dozen or so small theaters, little beauties, full of appreciative people; I saw him travelling with his own band, the guys and gal who back him month in, month out at Blueberry Hill; and I saw the performances gaining swing and heft and momentum day by day as ancient fingers loosened and jet lag faded and crowds grew. And I fantasized about the possibilities. Videotape the shows, I thought. Put together a compilation of the best performances. Stop at a recording studio.

But things wind down. If you’re B. B. King you’ve opted for professional management, you practice your guitar every day, you play in a new city every night or two, you’ve got an expensive big band that’s absolutely got it down.  The venues are fancy, full, the licks are still pretty, and the crowds adore you.

They adore Chuck Berry, too, but some bridges have been burned—small ones here and there that make it hard for people who aren’t as hard core as me to plunk down 46 hard earned pounds (dang!) and hope it feels worthwhile.  He's performed without a real band too many times.  He's mailed it in too many times.  I remember how mad I was last May, on my birthday, after I'd plunked down some small amount of money to watch Chuck Berry perform on the internet at a benefit in New Orleans.  B.B. King was great.  Little Richard was Richard.  But when Chuck Berry came on all I caught was a flashing glimpse and then got a blank screen.  News accounts said that he castigated the camera operators.  He obviously didn't allow the performance to be broadcast even on closed circuit to paying customers.  Dang!  (Read about it HERE.)Audiences don't know what they're going to get-- the happy man, or the grim reaper.  Why would they risk a day's wages?

This time a few people -- his core supporters-- bought tickets to travel from the continent to England.  They booked hotels and scheduled family holidays.

So it’s a little sad.

I saw some Chuck Berry shows I’d pay 460 pounds to see again. Wouldn’t that trip be amazing?  Lake Tahoe in, what, 1971, but from the perspective of a grown man who knows the music ahundred times better? (A decade older than the performer himself!)  (And showing it!)  Or Monterey from the foot of the stage..

I must admit I got excited about the possibilities of this tour, with a rocking band, and his men and women a waililn'.

Ah well. C’est la vie, says I.

Dang!

I was looking forward to it even though I wasn't going to be there.  And far away friends bought plane tickets.  Ah well.

http://www.nme.com/news/various-artists/48471

Here's another one.

http://www.clashmusic.com/news/chuck-berry-tour-postponed

And another.

http://www.gigwise.com/news/53526/Chuck-Berry-Postpones-UK-Tour-Until-2010

C'est la vie, I say.

Bessie and the Zinc Buckets

ACTUALLY, Sunday night at The Tyne Theatre in Newcastle, in northern England there will be some excited musicians from a group called "Bessie and the Zinc Buckets."  Read about 'em HERE.  And HERE.  (Apologies to whoever's picture I used here.  But the bass had to be seen.)  Or check them out on Myspace HERE.

I don't know why I'm so excited about a bunch of shows I can't go to.  But I am, and I'm jealous!

ELVIS LIVES! WILL OPEN FOR CHUCK BERRY IN NEWCASTLE!

Wait!  No!  He plays the day before!  At the Tyne Theatre! 

But how??!!  And why have all of our U.S. rock heroes gone to England?! 

I'm so CONFUSED! 

But see for yourself (and get tickets to Chuck's show) HERE!

Anyway, maybe they will finally meet?

Riding Along in WHOSE Automobile???????????

David St. John is a British comic and singer.  You can find out more about him, or maybe even book a performance, by clicking here.  But there was a time when David St. John was just a young kid, perhaps a bit like like the boys and girl standing and waiting by the convertible door in this picture from what I assume is mid-1960s England.  (It sure isn't mid-1960s Central California.  We didn't wear ties, or sweaters, or tweed.)  But in at least one important respect David was different from these polite Britains.  You note that they are standing outside the car, hands in pockets, silent, keeping a respectful distance while the photographer and Chuck Berry did their thing. 

Not David.  He was respectful, I'm sure-- and probably awestruck.  But that didn't stop him.  After a Chuck Berry concert in 1965 David escaped the auditorium through a side door, found the idling limo, and ...

But that wouldn't be fair of me.  David tells it much better.  And you can find it right here!

David is, of course, still out there.  "I'm now 61 and an established professional comedy entertainer all over the UK. Stand-up gags, impressions and some vocals although I also cover longer times with the music including many Chuck classics of course!"  David used to be in local bands, and still plays music.  "I do play electric 12 string guitar, which I started to learn a bit late in '72 when leaving bands so needed back-up. Still play blues harp and some keyboards, drums but for fun."  As a kid he was in all the right places.  Around the same time that he jumped into Chuck Berry's car and got a ride and an autograph he also found his way to a famous tavern in Liverpool!

David is planning to see Chuck Berry in downtown Birmigham.  (England, that is.)  "I'm counting the days to the Birmingham concert and have a seat near the front! I doubt if I'll be able to jump in Chuck's car again, like I did way back in the Sixties!"   That probably wouldn't be wise. (16 year olds get it easier than 61 year olds when highjacking a ride.) But I hope he gets to say howdy-do and shake a wise and legendary hand.


But read the whole thing here on the chuckberry.com forum.

Weirder Teen Television

A reader gave me this one.  WOW!

Teen Television So Weird It's A Vision!

Become So Excited! Why Just Look At You Run!

A British newspaper is offering you a chance to meet Chuck Berry!  Check it out HERE!.

Ahmad B. Goode, Too!

Backed up by a jazz band, layin' on the wood,
Mixing Ahmad Jamal in my Johnny B Goode.
Sneaking Errol Garner in my Sweet Sixteen,
Now they tell me Stan Kenton's cutting Maybelline! 
Oh baby!

Lyrics, "Go Go Go" by Chuck Berry.

Chuck Berry's got no kicks against modern jazz.  Or the older stuff.  Count Basie's band backed him up at an early, but weirdly rhythmically challenged concert that's on the "Complete 1950s Recordings" (they must have had kicks against rock and roll!) and he played the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958. 



But who's that mixing into Johnny B. Goode?

Years ago I was lucky to be able to see Ahmad Jamal at Seattle's Jazz Alley back when it cost two drinks and a tip and that's all.  (They had good dinners, too!)  He was one of my favorites.  Here he is as a mere child!



Errol Garner?  Never got to see him, or Stan Kenton.  But thanks to the miracle of youtube...

His Hips Are Getting Weaker When He Tries To Do the What????

"Too Pooped to Pop" is a guilty pleasure-- one that I would have stricken from my "Golden Decade Volume One" album in favor of "Promised Land," or "You Never Can Tell," or "No Money Down." But it's one that sticks to the inner brain like glue.

Casey is an old man who wants to be a teen
He goes to all the dances and they call him "Cha Cha King."
He cha-chas when the band is playing rock and roll
He tries to keep in time but the beat leaves him coooooooold
Beeeeeecause heeeeeee's:
Too pooped to pop
Too old a soul
His hips get weaker when he tries to do "The Stroll"
Every time his feet get a movin' one way
Here comes a new dance and he's gone astray...

Feeling like Casey these days?  The following link will take you to a lesson on doing The Jitterbug Stroll.  But if you're like me (premature Caseyitus) you'd better just watch the teenagers.  Here you go:

Calaboose, Some Perfume, and de Basil Beans

I finally looked up “calaboose,” as in:

“Riding along in my calaboose. Still trying to get her belt unloose.”

The online dictionaries say it’s a southern or creole term for jail. I wasn’t completely satisfied so I went and looked at the big old dictionary my mother left me, and it says pretty much the same thing, a slang term for jail or prison, from the Spanish “calabozo” for “dungeon.”

Lots of you probably knew that. Chuck Berry obviously did.

Poets are like that—collecting interesting words and filing them away until they become ripe enough to express some powerful sentiment.

As it turns out, there's an old Missouri Calaboose just northwest of St. Louis in the town of Elsberry.  That's a picture of it there on this page somewhere!

And it makes sense—because he’s stuck and going nowhere until he gets that buckle off.

// // //

The lyrics online, even though they are often suspect or just flat wrong, have become invaluable to me. For example, one of my favorite songs is “Tulane.” But what was she supposed to say she swallowed? I always hear “tell him you swallowed cycle fuel,” (pronounced like “pickle”), but I always knew that couldn’t be right. The online lyric sites tell me it’s “some perfume.” That makes sense.

Or “You Can’t Catch Me.” For 35 years this is what I heard.

I bought a brand-new air-mobile

It was custom-made, 'twas a lightning vehicle (wrong!)

With a pow'ful motor and some highway (wrong!) wings

Push in on the button and you can hear her sing

Oh you can’t catch me!

If there is a single person in the world who is as confused as I was, (and I doubt there is) the airmobile is a “Flight DeVille” and the wings are “hideaway” models. What’s funny is that I always knew my version had to be wrong. What the hell is a “lightning vehicle?”

// // //

But I’m not alone. One reader of this site thought Chuck caught “a rollin’ off a writer” while sitting down at the rhythm reviews. Makes as much sense as a lightning vehicle!

// // //

I still wonder what sort of bean is mentioned in “Oh Louisiana!” It’s usually put down as “basin beans” on line. I haven’t found that term on google. I personally hear “basil bean” and there are references to “basil bean salad” all over the internet—but it doesn’t seem to be a southern tradition.

Who knows? I’m the guy who hears “cycle fuel” and “lightning vehicle.” Maybe it isn’t a bean at all.

But anyway, just in case it is basil bean (salad???  hell no!) here's one way to make it!

Off Schedule Train!

Dominic, who commented on Nadine, supplied this one via his youtube playlist.  Only 29 people were shown as having seen it.  You can be Number 30!

Nadine! Nadine! Nadine! Nadine! Every Time I See Ya Darling You're Up To Something New!

Thank you Doug and Jan for this beauty!



I've always said, it's never quite the same.  Here (17 years earlier) he picks up the pace and volume a bit.



Back when the song was released they thought the girls were more interesting.  (But that ain't Nadine back there!  Nadine, I'd look at!)



In his eighties he's virtually rapping!

Sidemen Up Front! Bob Baldori

Baldori played harmonica on "Back Home," and he and his band The Woolies backed Berry several of the "San Francisco Dues" pieces. That means he helped make some of my favorite Chuck Berry songs:  "Tulane," "Have Mercy Judge," "Flying Home," and "Oh, Louisiana."  Those four songs would make for a songwriting career, by the way.

New London Sessions!

Chuck Berry has always had a strong connection to England. He toured there in the early 1960s. The musicians of the British Invasion championed his music. He recorded two of his albums for Chess in England—Chuck Berry in London (about half of which was recorded there) and The London Sessions. Some of my favorite live performances were captured in London by BBC in 1972 and fill these pages via youtube. There are pictures of him in the new Geffen set from the 1960s surrounded by adoring English boys. At least three recent books about Chuck Berry were written by English fans—Bruce Pegg (who evidently lives in the U.S.), John Collis and Fred Rothwell.

And he can still do a good tour there, with a bunch of theaters, and excited fans.

I’m jealous of those fans. I figure if I were in England, I could see two, maybe even three of the shows. A train ride here, a short drive there. And what seems especially cool, is that Chuck Berry is going to get some practice in during those weeks in England.

Here in the states the shows are becoming more and more rare, and when I saw Chuck Berry perform last January at Blueberry Hill it was a great, fun show—but the guitar work? A little rusty.

But then I see tapes of him playing there last September, coincidentally after playing B. B. Kings in New York just a few days earlier, and what a difference. The licks were flying pretty high. It didn’t sound exactly like the guy in those BBC tapes, but it sure sounded good.

So I’m betting that some of the crowds in England are going to be treated to something pretty special—a Chuck Berry show with his own band and with that little extra something you get by playing every day.

Buy those tickets, boys and girls. Reward him with your love and applause you lucky &$^%(5es.

You really are lucky as hell.

P.S. to Charles, Sr. Since you’ll be in a groove, this might be a good time to stop in at a London studio and record something new with the band and your two band mate children. A nice family style album, with Charles Jr. on guitar, Ingrid on harp and vocals, piano by Bob Lohr, and bass by Mr. Marsala and rhythm supplied by Keith Robinson.

And YOU. One last time. At least!

Sidemen Up Front! (Billy Peek)

You'll catch a moment or two of Chuck Berry on this one. And Ike Turner.

Billy Peek toured and recorded with Chuck Berry in the 1970s. Chuck used to teach him licks, and Ike played at his high school prom! Lordy! (Like I said-- history is everywhere!)

Where Chuck Berry Blues Burgers Sizzle On An Open Grill Night And Day!

Read about here .

MORE than a Sideman (But Not the Songwriter)

Sing these two lines:

“As I was motorvating over a hill”

“She remembered taking money earned from gatherin’ crops.”

It just occurred to me that the main verses of “Maybellene” and “Bye Bye Johnny” have the same melody. Who’d have thought—especially when the basic feel of the two songs are so different? “Bye Bye” chugs along like a freight train, “Maybellene” bounces along on an alternating bass line, and they both take different routes on their distinctive choruses—but those main verses are nearly note for note identical.

It’s just an interesting observation.

I discovered this while thinking about Chuck Berry and “melodies” and the somewhat crazy claim that Johnnie Johnson was a co-author of Chuck Berry’s hits. Bruce Pegg does a good job addressing the “controversy” in chapter 15 of his book “Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry.” As usual he’s a thorough scholar, a gentleman, and fair.

I guess that Keith Richards is the one who first suggested that Johnnie Johnson was the real author of Chuck Berry’s music, or at least the prime mover. Richards’ comment came during the aftermath of the 60th birthday concerts. He seemed exhausted and a little drunk and the idea—something he’d probably hatched during his time with Berry and Johnson at the rehearsals—just came out. He based it in part on Berry’s songs being recorded in what he called piano chords—“Johnnie’s keys!” The idea took root, however shallow, and even Johnnie Johnson seemed to buy in for a while. He wound up filing suit against Berry.  It was dismissed.

There’s no doubt that Johnnie Johnson was a prime force in the early recordings and in Chuck Berry’s early sound. He was a great piano player. But Richard’s statements were mostly nonsense.

Chuck Berry seemed to get a chuckle over the notion of “piano chords” in an interview in Guitar Player magazine back around the time that the movie “Hail! Hail!” came out.

Berry:  He, about these keys-- did you catch want Keith was talking about?  Piano keys, and all that?

GP:  He observes thatseveral of your classics are in E flat or B flat or other "unusual" keys for guitar.

Berry:  I wonder if he knows what he's saying!  Man, the symphonies are in B flat or E flat!  Those keys, they've been around!  He said, well rock guitar players play in A!  Come on, baby!  You can tell that Keith must be a modern rock player [laughs].

The Rolling Stones were basically a guitar band, and only a guitar band guitar player could be as insistent as Richards about “guitar keys” like E and A. Berry himself grew up listening to standards and big band jazz, which were played in all sorts of keys. He wasn’t afraid of B flat or E flat. (Neither is anyone else, as far as I can tell.)

I noticed that lots of B. B. King’s songs on a recent album were in A flat. Who’s key is that?

I suspect Chuck Berry put songs into the keys that 1) he was used to, and that 2) fit his voice and the melody. If anything, call them singer’s keys! And he was enough of a guitarist not to care much which key he used.

But beyond the chords, there’s the “melodies.”

Chuck Berry has number of songs with very distinct melodies—“You Never Can Tell” comes to mind. But a lot of his songs are built on old blues licks and blues tunes that are old as the Mississippi Delta. “School Day” has riffs (and therefore a melody) that Robert Johnson might have played, and probably did. Blues musicians slice and dice and mix and match words and notes and licks and lyrics and even names of songs until it’s virtually impossible to know who originated what.

(Recently I was read a simple but brilliant observation in the book “Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters.” A young blues musicians is asked if he “wrote” the melodies of a song. His response: “Hey, it’s blues, all the melodies were written before I was born.”)

On many of the 12 bar blues based songs that Berry sings the “melody” seems almost insignificant to him. These days he practically speaks the songs. In old outtakes you can hear him experiment with minor variations of the “melody” throughout the day as the song takes shape. In live versions there are often subtle variations. It’s the same with the guitar breaks and intros. The blues, at its best, is alive with improvisation, and improvisation is something that Chuck Berry has always insisted on. The versions of his hits that we accept as gospel are simply the ones that were put out as a single or that made it onto the records we own. We’ve gotten used to them, and copied them, and tried to duplicate them—but Chuck Berry has moved on, playing each song a little bit differently every time.

If I were to single out any aspect of Chuck Berry’s tunes as unique to Chuck Berry it would be those elements of the songs that don’t come from the blues—and specifically the country tunes like “Maybellene,” “Thirty Days,” or even “Johnny B. Goode,” a “country song” written over 12 bar blues chords. But I call that unique to Berry only because I don’t know country well enough. Here’s “Ida Red” by Bob Wills—song with the same name Berry wanted to use for “Maybellene.”



The truth is that Chuck Berry wrote his own songs, doing what every musician has always done, borrowing bits of what came before and throwing in sounds and influences from his own world, including the sound and influence of Johnnie Johnson.

Then he did what only a few artists are able to do: he took these old things and created something brand new that changed our lives.

None of which is to minimize the contribution of Johnnie Johnson. What he put on those records, and into Chuck Berry’s professional musical education is huge. You can’t catch him.

And Berry has always been the first to credit him. Author John Collis quotes a 1997 letter Berry wrote supporting Johnson’s nomination to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Watch Berry sidle up to Johnson during various jams presented in “Hail! Hail!,” or their easy musical communication when a contemplative Berry starts strumming old standards. Berry clearly loves the guy, and kept working and collaborating with him throughout Johnson’s lifetime.

Johnnie Johnson was a big part of it—but Chuck Berry wrote the songs.

Sidemen Up Front! Matt Murphey

Matt Murphey played with Chuck Berry on a couple of sessions in mid-1960.

Sidemen Up Front! (Odie Payne, in a tiny club)

Odie Payne played drums on a bunch of later 1960s Chuck Berry songs including "Nadine," "Promised Land," and "No Particular Place to Go." Imagine meeting him in a place like this! (I wish I'd been there.) History's all around us.



My brother Stevo was in a bar once listening to some old man talk on and on about his piano playing days.  Stevo assumed it was all ^%$#&.  Then the guy sat down at a piano.

Countdown: Go Head On Out

I started this blog more or less by accident in March 2009, during a temporary breakdown at the www.chuckberry.com/forum. I had posted three or four things there in the winter and realized that I enjoyed spouting off about my old hero. (I enjoy spouting off about lots of things, whether I know about them or not.) Then one day the forum conked out, locked some of us out, and my old posts disappeared. It turned out that the forum was being targeted by spammers, and the first effort to block them ended up knocking off lots of other people and jettisoning hundreds of posts, including mine.

You don’t miss your water till your well runs dry. I had the rolling arthritis-- so I started this blog. And somehow I just kept blogging, even after the forum got going again and my old posts returned. Whenever I’d run out of ideas, I’d head towards youtube and type something like “Odie Payne,” and the rest took care of itself.

Which is a typically long-winded way of saying that I started this thing, and it’s here, and now I have to figure out how to end it.

So, as is my practice, I’m drawing a line in the sands of time. I’ve put it in February. I’ll aim for one full calendar year of heading on, and then head out.

(Mr. Berry--- that gives you less than four months to get your next record onto the market, because I want to celebrate it here. [I’m sure you study my advice carefully and will act on it with due diligence and haste.] I say make it a box to end all the boxes—everything you’ve got left in that vault of yours from “Rockit” onward. And by all means, if you haven’t recorded with your St. Louis band yet, do that, too. They’ve earned it. And we all want to hear it.)



Now can anyone beat that?  And what's there to write about?

Sidemen Up Front! Fred Below, as close to the front as you'll find him.

Man-- you want to hear good drumming carried to it's simplest, most impossible form...

Here's Fred Below, who backed Chuck Berry on a bunch of his records, lined up side by side with J. B. Lenoir, as close to the fore as you'll probably find him. (This is one haunting performance of the blues!)

It's a Family Affair (Part Three)

Photo by Kevin Reynolds.  (For more great photos see Kevin's website and look under "Music.")

This site celebrates Chuck Berry-- his music, his influence and his influences. I don’t want to dwell on aspects of his story that get covered ad nauseum elsewhere-- especially his legal troubles.  But Berry’s legal problems have been a big enough part of his story that I can’t ignore them completely.  I sometimes think about them when I think about why I'm such a fan.  I'll admit: most of his criminal troubles don't bother me at all-- except for the one that was so patently unfair.  That one bothers me because it was unfair-- a racist attempt to silence him and knock him off stride.  But there's at least one alleged incident that bothers me, assuming there's truth to it.  How does a fan deal with that (and still nominate him for a medal of honor!?)

His troubles with the law hurt him badly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, knocking him completely off the charts for a time despite releases like “Bye Bye Johnny,” “Come On,” “I’m Talking About You” and “Jaguar and the Thunderbird.” But there's a yang to every yin.  Later in the 1960s I think the same incarceration had the opposite effect, giving him “street cred” as a survivor of hard, unfair knocks. I’m sure that the first time I heard about Chuck Berry I also heard about his prison time, because my informant was Stevo, who’d spent some time behind bars himself and had some respect for a good ex-con. In the late 1960s and early 1970s everybody knew that Chuck Berry had been shafted by a racist legal system and had come out rocking and playing the blues even harder. It was part of his legend, and by that time no one had a problem with it.

He says himself that “every 15 years, in fact, it seems I make a big mistake,” and that it’s “the naughty-naughties” that get most of the coverage in articles and interviews. Most of the mistakes are pretty well known, and honestly covered in his Autobiography.

It started with a youthful armed robbery and car-jacking (he and his friends politely left his victim near a phone booth and then took off down the two-lane blacktop; guess who the poor guy called?) He went to reform school. Autobiography, Chapters 4 and 5.

The next legal problem was bogus and racially motivated—two arrests, three trials (one overtly and triumphantly racist), a successful appeal, and ultimately one conviction for violating the most bogus law ever devised by man to put away a man considered uppity. He went to prison, at the height of his success. It says something big about the man that he went on a recording rampage prior to his lockup; that in prison he wrote some of his greatest songs, practiced guitar, studied business and accounting; that he was released on his birthday, and made one of his best and most energetic live recordings (with the Motown session players) just a few weeks later. Then he left the country. (Carl Perkins said he was a changed man after that term. So, later, did Johnny Johnson.  Then, who wouldn’t be?) He revitalized his career with some of his greatest hits—“Nadine,” “No Particular Place to Go,” and some of his greatest songs: “Promised Land,” and “You Never Can Tell.” Autobiography, Chapters 11 and 12.

Berry's third encounter with the legal system was more legit. He took pay under the table.  He didn’t pay taxes. They figured it out. He went to prison again. He took a typewriter and wrote a book that revitalized his career yet again. And he admits it all in his Autobiography, Chapters 17 and 18.  (The photo of him at Lompoc putting on a show for and with his fellow inmates is courtesy of Sky.)

Then comes the stuff that actually bothers people.

It’s sort of funny that the tribute song I wrote about Chuck Berry when I was 15 was called “Bathroom Rockstar,” because Chuck Berry’s most recent (though now ancient) legal problems allegedly involve bathrooms and bathroom acts. They came after the Autobiography. The allegations are all over the internet and are in two recent biographies. One seems to be a personal issue that became public because it was videotaped. The other involved allegations of hidden cameras in the women’s room of his old restaurant, The Southern Air.

I have no idea if either of these stories are true, or to what extent. I don’t care about the first. It seemed to involve two people, not including me, hopefully consenting. I therefore refuse to investigate further. But the story of the women’s room, if true, was a sad violation of other people’s rights. (Somewhere way back there—and certainly before 1973-- I remember reading an interview with Chuck Berry where he said the key was “not to infringe.” He used Berry Park as an example. He said something like: “If you’re alone in Berry Park, you can do no wrong. But if you are there with other people, you have to be more careful. The key is not to infringe on other people.”) But to the extent I understood the retellings, it seemed bound up in other false accusations, and the whole thing was such a convoluted mess that it’s impossible to know what happened, and hard to really care. All I know for sure is some form of the story comes up once in a while when Chuck Berry gets mentioned.

My response to his messes?

That he’s family.

All of us, in our smaller families, have screwed up, or have watched helplessly as our loved ones have done so. It doesn’t change how we feel.

Chuck Berry isn’t part of our blood family, of course—at least not mine-- but he’s definitely part of our spiritual and cultural family. He’s the Father of Rock and Roll, the son of Henry William Berry and Martha Banks Berry, the father of devoted kids, married 60 plus years, a man surrounded by his family at home, on records, and on stage, and who generously includes all of us in his larger family.

I remember well him walking rapidly back and forth across a stage, feigning shocked double takes as the crowd sang “Go, Johnny Go, Go!,” and beaming kindly as he said: “All my children! Listen to all my wonderful children!”

And as Sly says, "Blood's thicker than the mud." 

Even when it ain't really blood, it's family.

Sidemen Up Front! (Allstars!)

According to my Golden Decade records, Volumes 1 and 2, Otis Spann played piano on Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me," "No Money Down," and 'Downbownd Train," back in 1955, but author John Collis and Berry himself both say no-- that it was probably Johnny Johnson at that session, along with Chess stalwarts Fred Below and Willie Dixon. Ah well.  If it was Spann, then the trio had already played together on Muddy Waters' "Hootchie Cootchie Man" (the musical ancestor of "No Money Down.") Here Muddy stands back and strums rhythm while Spann takes a starring role.



Read more about Spann right here.

More Whole Body Synching From Way Back

Chuck Berry may not have liked to "lip synch," but when he was forced to, he put himself into it body and soul.

With Hurry Home Drops In Her Eyes

Here's a nice little article in the New York Times... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/opinion/02mon4.html

Riding Along in his Automobile!

A couple months ago I wrote a piece that included a bit from Fred Rothwell's book, "Long Distance Information," where he describes his brief encounter with Chuck Berry. When I wrote that post, I thought of this picture, which I'd seen months before on myspace, but I couldn't find it.

Rothwell had just missed getting a ticket to a show in London. Then:

“[I]n the corner of my eye I spotted a long cherry red Mercedes hidden in the shadows of the flyover. The limo had dark glass but the side window was down and through it the familiar face of Chuck Berry could be seen busy videoing the façade, no doubt very pleased with the ‘Sold Out’ sign.”

Rothwell ponders what to do or say, (“I got my chance, I ought to take it”) when suddenly “the glass slid down noiselessly to reveal a smiling Mr. Berry. ‘How come you are in the right place at the right time?”’ he asked.

My thanks to Jan, in Germany, for searching his files for this great shot of what looks like a very Euoropean car. I hope that all of you in Europe see some great shows later this month (and that you tell us all about them!) (I know those fingers are going to limber up over the course of the tour-- you're very lucky, you know.)  And I hope that for some of you the window slides down and that you meet the maker of rock and roll as we know it!  (But please-- use your seatbelt Mr. Berry!) (They unlatch pretty well nowadays.)

Bathroom Rockstar

I am a lawyer (sort of) and sometimes I give talks to other lawyers and legal staff members.  And I often begin by saying (truthfully):

“I never wanted to be a lawyer. What I wanted to be was Chuck Berry-- but that didn’t work out.”

Then I show a really cool slide with a picture of Chuck Berry in a white suit on the cover of Smithsonian.

I only missed by a little bit. If I had had the looks, the talent, the musical ability, the poetry, the showmanship, the dancing, the comic timing, the genius and the nerve, I could have given it a good run for the money.

But as it stands, I’m a lawyer, and quite fuddy-duddy.

But when I was still a kid it hadn’t yet occurred to me that I couldn’t 1) sing, 2) dance, or 3) play any instrument worth a damn. When I heard Chuck Berry, I pretty much decided to be him.

At the time I was trying my hands at being a drummer. I was a pretty bad drummer, but I could keep a beat as long as it wasn’t a fast one. I sure as hell couldn’t keep a Chuck Berry beat! Chuck Berry had a back beat that left me in the dust, lost as can be. I “boom-boom chuck, boom- boom chucklebuckled” all day long, every once in a while slamming a broken, dented cymbal that sounded like the lid of a garbage can.

When I was about 14 I discovered Chuck Berry, first live, then on his double record set “Chuck Berry’s Golden Decade,” and then on the refined and wonderful “Back Home.” The latter gave me the name of this blog and my user name on chuckberry.com—“Tulane.”

Since I wanted to be a rock star it became incumbent on me to write a song. My first effort, at age 14 or 15, was written to the tune of “Tulane.” It was about a kid who stole a B-52 and realized too late that the prank would be taken seriously. I still have a copy that I managed to find in a trunk in my basement. The second verse is probably the “best.”

I stole it from an air show, see I keep what I find
I didn’t tell the officers, I didn’t think they’d mind
But you never know with soldiers—boy, they make such a fuss
I’d barely hopped inside it when they started to cuss
So I rumbled up the engines and I stepped on the gas
And we tore right down that runway (we was really shaking ass!)

I say, please my friends, that ain’t no stick I see
Come on guys, don’t point that gun at me!
Listen here, I was just fooling ‘round
Leave me be, I promise I’ll bring it down
Here I come, I’m ready to land
But why you got those tanks there?
(This is getting out of hand!)

My second song was more original, but just as indebted to Chuck Berry. I wasn't completely delusional.  I obviously already knew my place in the world of rock and roll. The song was called “Bathroom Rockstar.”

I’m a bathroom rock star
Chickenwalk in front of the mirror
Yes I’m a bathroom rock star
Chickenwalk in front of the mirror
You know my music’s so good
That it’s inaudible to the human ear.

(Chickenwalk was my name for the duckwalk or the scoot. Since I have the physical grace of a chicken, it was a fitting name for whatever move I was referring to.)

The second verse was brown-nosed boasting at its best.

I’ve taken lessons from the greatest
I mean the Berry, Berry best.
I’ve taken lessons from the greatest
Good, better, Berry, I mean best.
And if you like that red hot rhythm guitar
I’ve got the Diddliest.

Strong words from a guy who didn't have diddley squat and had never played more than G and D on the guitar. But when I finally went off to college I took an old garage sale electric and began to teach myself. The guitar was a truly bad one that I made worse. I sanded off the red and black finish to find some sort of aromatic wood that smelled like and old import store. I took off all the hardware and stained it brown. (This was the early 1970s, and aesthetics had reached absolute rock bottom.) The guitar had a stainless steel slightly dented finger guard (or whatever you call the plastic below the strings on a guitar.) It was crap reduced by my refinishing to utter, ugly, total and unrefined crap. But it served its purpose. Somewhere I found a drawing of “the blues scale.” I started plucking. And I understood. The blues scale fit Bathroom Rock Star. It fit all the music I knew. Within a few days I could play simple leads and rhythm. (It has never gotten any better.)

The closest I ever came to performing as a guitarist was during the following summer at a swim party for a bunch of nine year olds. My band, (the worst band that has ever performed in public, no exceptions) had been hired for $50 to entertain the tots. I was supposedly the drummer in this band. We had a good rock and roll guitarist with a weird and wonderful old German semi-hollow body guitar, and during a break the guitarist and I switched instruments. I had the nerve and gall to perform a comic but loud version of the great B. B. King song, “How Blue Can You Get.” The kids stared in disbelief while running from the pool stairs back to the diving board. By the time I got to the climax—“I gave you seven children, and now you want to give ‘em back,” I was screaming blissfully. I’m sure I got to play twelve bars or so of guitar. It was pitiful, pitifully bad, disrespectful of the genre, and fun.

Beauty: The Battered Guitar of Chuck Berry

There’s a great scene in the Chuck Berry movie “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll” where he’s walking through an airport talking about how he travelled back in the day—i.e., toothbrush, guitar, and a roundtrip ticket. And when he’s asked if he checks the guitar he says something like:

“Oh yeah, each one about six months, then a new one. Deductible. Tools, you know!”

Years ago I used to see him with a cherry red Gibson, but for decades he’s often been seen with a reddish brown one.

I assumed it was one of many—tools, you know, deductible.

But if you look at http://www.chuckberry.com/forum, you’ll find wonderful details about that particular guitar—a beat up, scratched up, battle hardened, Gibson ES 355 with missing knobs, a missing tremolo bar, and duct tape (or something like it) stuck carelessly along the base. And the details come from "a reliable source"—his son and backup guitarist, Charles Berry, II (a/k/a CBII, a/k/a “Son of Rock and Roll.”)

You can and should go to the original sources on the forum—but I can't help sharing some of it here.  From what I gather, this particular old guitar is one helluva specimen. Says CBII: “It has a tone like very few Gibsons I have ever heard. They (Gibson) really built that Guitar to perfection! Other than an electrical conduit brace being added, the only things that have been done to it are string changes, setups, and me polishing it on December 13, 2008 before a show here in St. Louis.”

I can testify personally to this much—when Chuck Berry plays it, it has a sound of its own, like railroad airhorns, beautiful to hear.

In another post CBII describes the guitar in more detail: “It's a 1978 ES-355. My father bought it new here in St. Louis. It's a true work horse of a guitar. What's really special about it is the tone. For it to be from the 70's, it's one of the best sounding 355's made (excluding of course the one's made in the 50's - mid 60's). Yeah, it's been beat up but it has a really rich sound quality to it. The newer ES-345's have a REALLY, REALLY good tone to them as well."  He says a little later that it was a factory second, with blemishes of some kind, stamped "second" somewhere.

But first in our hearts.

My favorite story on the website is about a time when CBII tried to do his dad a favor, and fix up the old guitar just prior to a show at Blueberry Hill.  He put on new knobs and a new tremelo bar.  

“They were off the guitar before we went on stage,” says Charles.

(You may have seen Berry react to someone's effort to adjust the sound on his amplifier in “Hail! Hail!” The man knows his mind.)

Read all about it here. And here. And here.

Guitars can be beautiful things.

I got my own guitar in about 1975—so evidently I've had it even longer than Berry's had his brown one.  Mine is not a Gibson—but I bought it because it looks like a Chuck Berry guitar-- except prettier, maybe, with a light natural finish-- spruce up front, and maple in the rear.  It's pretty gorgeous, to tell you the truth.

But it's also one of the weirder guitars on the planet—an Ovation semi-hollow body called something like a “Thunderhead.” I have only seen two others outside the internet. One was held by David Cassidy of the Partridge Family in a publicity shot.  The other was played on stage by a guitarist for Zydeco star Queen Ida Gillroy at the Sacramento Blues Festival sometime around 1975 or 1976. The Partridge Family guitar made me feel pretty ridiculous, but the Zydeco blues guitar made me happy. I loved Queen Ida, I liked her guitarist, and he was a real musician playing my slightly unreal guitar.

Even if you’re not Chuck Berry guitars wear out, and after 34 years I’d worn certain frets on my Ovation down to the rosewood. And the action got bad, especially up high.  So a few months ago I took it to a Seattle luthier with the very contradictory but poetic name of Cat Fox.  (Find her here.)  Her initial plan was to file down the frets, but when she got started working on the guitar she realized there was no hope for the little filaments that remained.  She called me to say that we needed to replace them all.

I was happy.

I had an immediate vision: Chuck Berry’s beautiful yellow guitar encased in glass near the front door of Blueberry Hill.  The guitar that played Maybellene.  The guitar that rocked the Apollo and the Brooklyn Paramount.  I remembered staring at the fretboard and those beautiful frets, thinking what had come off them and how those sounds had affected my life.

“I want those big fat frets,” I told her.

When I picked up the guitar a few days later, it was better than it ever had been—the action low, the hardware tight, the neck straight! The jack slipped in with a hearty clunk and stayed put. The strings glistened millimeters above big fat frets.

Ah, ‘twas a joy.

(She even took out the Ikea battery that my youngest child had inserted into the guitar at some point long ago, and which had been clunking loudly and helplessly for several years!)

I’m not much of a guitarist. I have a certain feel for music, but not much technique or talent. But I love my guitar and play it all the time.  (Or one of them anyway.  There are others.)

And I love that Chuck Berry seems to love his guitars, too, and that he's kept the one so long. In an old interview in Guitar Player Magazine he fondly remembers one of his first electrics. In his book he talks about his first four string.  Somewhere else he talks about fat frets. In his “poem” he talks about playing his favorite old guitar to the sound of rainfall. (“Sometimes it will be classics, and sometimes lullabies. But mostly rock and roll, which I’ll surely improvise.”) In a song he sings a lot these days-- "Love in 3/4 Time"-- he mentions his liking “my best red guitar.” And as you'll see above, his son can go on and on about the details of various Gibsons.

If you play guitar, or want to, you probably understand.

Chuck Berry in Cordoba-- Bienvenidos!

I have to thank chuckberry.com/forum and an Italian fan for this wonderful clip and interview.  (And they say he doesn't give 'em!)  And he's speaking espanol! (Sort of!) Great music, too.