Chapter 11 - How a Small Town Promoter Held the Great Chuck Berry Hostage!

(40 years after meeting Chuck Berry between sets at Lake Tahoe I learn why he was sitting there!)

Five months after my first Chuck Berry show a distant relation passed through Orangevale on her way from Lake Tahoe to her home in the Bay Area. It was my brother’s sister-in-law. I hardly knew her. She lived 90 miles away. It therefore says something about the state of my madness, five months after that first Chuck Berry show, that she said “You’re a Chuck Berry freak, right?”


She bore glad tidings.

“He’s going to be at Tahoe this weekend!”

Say but the word. A few days later I found myself at Lake Tahoe, where my family had owned a small cabin for decades, and where my brother Danny was living that summer to earn some cash at the casinos. My mother drove me. A girl from my school and her friend got there separately by Greyhound.

The show was at a small hall built from the shell of a former grocery store just across the highway from the lake. We didn’t know it but the grocery store setting was historically appropriate. Chuck Berry’s professional career first got serious in the early 1950s at an East St. Louis grocery store-turned-club called The Cosmopolitan.

Yep, Chuck Berry Played Here.  A Great Show.  A Long Show.

This time, unlike the February show in Sacramento, the joint was rocking and the place was packed—so much so that my friends and I didn’t get near the stage. My friend’s friend was vaguely neurotic and afraid of the jammed crowd, so we stayed in the back, fifty or sixty feet from stage, in a loosely populated area where men in motorcycle club jackets twirled their partners around us.

At the time I had no idea who was backing Chuck Berry. I remember being embarrassed when the drummer, a thin black man with an afro and goatee stepped onto the stage. Half the crowd cheered, evidently thinking it was Berry. (There weren’t many African Americans at Tahoe in those days.) Chuck Berry never wore an afro. He wore his hair processed and slicked back. Nor did he ever have a goatee—at least to my knowledge. He usually sported a razor thin mustache.

Even from the distance of 40 years I remember that the band was a good one, well suited to the music, and that the show didn’t have the mournful quality of the Sacramento show in February. Otherwise my memories are fragmentary. I don’t recall what he sang. I remember the fifties style dancing in my part of the hall, and that I tried to do it with Lara, and how she laughed once she realized, quickly, that I didn’t know the first thing about dancing. (“You know you can’t dance but you wish you could!”) I remember that Berry played two sets—the only time I’ve ever seen or heard of him doing so. And I vividly recall walking away across the parking lot with the music still booming— the only time I ever did or ever will leave a Chuck Berry show early. I think we left because of my friend’s friend, who was feeling claustrophobic—but that’s how long the show was: I was satisfied.

But what I remember most clearly from that night is the handshake.

During the break between sets I spot Chuck Berry sitting near the stage, looking somber, like the model
on the cover of his most recent album, “Back Home.” He’s smoking a cigarette and talking with a big, bearded guy. I assume they are old acquaintances, or that the big guy is making interesting conversation. I’m a shy, skinny kid, but I’m brave enough to push forward, hold out my hand, and blurt:

“You’re my idol!”

Even then I know it’s an idiotic thing to say, but I’m fifteen and it’s all I can manage.

Chuck is serious but gracious. He studies me, nods solemnly, and shakes my hand, probably pondering the market implications suggested by this skinny, long haired, fifteen year old. I’m the width of a pencil, with baggy jeans and wisps of fine hair on my upper lip. Aware that I have absolutely nothing to add to his life or store of knowledge, I leave him to his conversation and his cigarette.

Forty years later, having progressed but little, I will meet Chuck Berry and tell him, stupidly, about that handshake. I suppose it makes sense. I suppose, if Juan Diego met the Virgin Mary 40 years after the incident at Guadalupe, he’d mention their earlier encounter.

“You appeared before me once before, oh Blessed Mother, and we built a sanctuary for you on that spot!”

“Whatever,” she’d think. But she’d respond politely. Chuck did.

But here’s the real point of the story: forty years later I learned why Chuck Berry was sitting there, and who the big guy was.

By then I was blogging about Chuck Berry, and using the blog as an excuse to resurrect and reconstruct the dim, fading fragments that constitute my memory. This work was important to me. Some people remember everything, but I retain only broad strokes and a few specific details of what has happened in my life. I had a vague idea when these early shows occurred, and I remembered bits and pieces of each show— but I wanted more. I wanted more detail. I wanted corroboration. I wanted to verify my own memories, and to see how they fit into the chronology of my life.

Once, in the early days of the internet, long before I began blogging and at a time when I didn’t care much about Chuck Berry I actually saw someone advertising a poster for this Lake Tahoe show. He was asking $35. This was before PayPal. You had to send an e-mail, and follow it with cash or check in an envelope. I tried to buy the poster, but never heard back from the seller. Now I spent hours googling permutations of “Chuck Berry South Lake Tahoe,” trying to find that poster again, or any evidence of the show that might tell me what I’d seen, who’d backed him, when it was—anything. I did the same for shows in Sacramento and Monterey.

And one day, after months of repetitious googling, it paid off. I stumbled across a website where aging musicians and middle-aged former teenagers exchanged memories of teen dances at Lake Tahoe. (The internet is an odd but sometimes wonderful place.)

I posted an inquiry asking for anyone with a memory of the Chuck Berry show: “What was the name of the rock hall on Highway 50 at Bijou in a little grocery store building?” I asked. “I saw Chuck Berry there in about 1971— though I'd love to pin down the actual year. If anyone remembers that show, or who backed Chuck Berry, or when it was, I'd love to know.”

I got a couple of responses. Someone named Eddie told me he’d been to the show but got kicked out for being underage. (He must have been kicked out for another reason. It was an all ages show or I wouldn’t have been there.) And I learned the name of the place—either The Sanctuary, or The Fun House, depending on the year.

But then, a week or so later, I hit pay dirt, with a response from J.B.

J.B. is a name I knew. He was a local legend at South Lake Tahoe. I remembered him chiefly from signs posted outside the old American Legion Hall near our family’s cabin. J.B.’s band played teen dances there, and his name was always on the sign out front. When we were children my brother Danny thought J.B.’s name was funny, probably because it contained letters from the word “burp,” and if Danny thought it was funny, so did Ann and I. Now I learned that J.B. promoted the Chuck Berry show I’d seen at Lake Tahoe, and that his band backed Chuck Berry. “Peter,” he wrote, “I would have to dig up the exact year for you. I can tell you it was the last year that I operated the Fun House or the Sanctuary they were one in the same. My band backed Chuck Berry. More to that story.”

I was thrilled. I had found a witness to my history. Not just a witness—a perpetrator, the man who’d helped to create the object of my memory and obsession. He’d actually performed with Chuck Berry that evening.

But where I wanted to learn about the show and the music, J.B. appeared obsessed with the contract.

I had paid Mr. Berry half of his money when the contract was signed. The night he was to perform he asked for the balance (normal). After he got his money he refused to sign the contract and said he would be doing a short set. I reminded him what he had agreed to do in his contract and he said ‘What contract?’ I remember telling him there would be several hundred disappointed young people. He shrugged his shoulders.

Then came the killer line:

I asked our security to escort Mr. Berry to the stage and escort him back in 90 minutes, the time he agreed to do and that's exactly what happened.

He asked security to “escort” him back! This was fascinating stuff. But I was so excited to finally get information and hopeful to learn more about the music, I missed the full import of what J.B. was telling me. I replied, saying it was one of the longest, best Chuck Berry shows I’d seen. J.B. responded with more details about the contract.

I too was and still am a Chuck Berry fan. It is disappointing when you have to do business with someone you admire. At that time the band and I like a million other bands were doing Berry songs. I know about his royalties and he had every right to make all he could performing.

He has or had a strange sound and tech rider, in it he asked for a fender bassman for his guitar I made the stupid mistake of thinking surely that was a mistake and provided him with a fender twin.

That was unacceptable to him. While I was trying to work this out with him and get him on stage you might remember the hall was packed and there were another 700 or 800 hundred people outside (police estimate) trying to break the doors down.

I never called the police to either the Legion Hall or The Fun House, but that night I did.

After the night was over I sat down and decided that maybe after more than 10 years at the Legion and almost three at the Fun House maybe it was time to hang that part of my life up.

There is a lot more to this story but that was my last promotion at Lake Tahoe. I’m still a Berry fan and I don't blame him in any way.

[J.B.]

Fender is a guitar company. The Fender Bassman is an old powerhouse of an amplifier built for bass but often used by guitarists that Chuck Berry probably did favor at one time. The Twin Reverb is a smaller Fender Amp with a cleaner sound. Chuck Berry fans know all about the business of the amplifier. Chuck Berry has a sound. It’s the simple sound of a good guitar played loud through a good amplifier. So Chuck Berry’s contract always specifies exactly which amplifier the promoter is to provide. For several decades now it’s been the Fender Dual Showman.

In the book Brown Eyed Handsome Man author Bruce Pegg explains that Berry “developed a system of fines for unscrupulous promoters who failed to live up to their side of the contract.” Pegg quotes two regular Chuck Berry sidemen who describe how Chuck dealt with promoters who provided the wrong amp. The first, Robert Baldori, is a Michigan attorney and musician. He has performed with Berry countless times, including two albums and dozens of live shows. In Brown Eyed Handsome Man, Baldori describes a gig in Indianapolis:

“[O]ne of the amps isn’t there. Well, you can make do, but the promoter has breached the contract, and Chuck says, ‘You’ve breached the contract, I want another $2000, ‘cause I’m going to have to go up there.’ Well, the guy on the other end of the deal says, ‘You’re screwing with me here, you’re ripping me off;’ he goes and gets the cash, Chuck takes it and goes on. And the other guy walks away telling people, ‘Chuck Berry’s temperamental, hard to work with, and he fucked me on this deal,’ and Chuck just looks at him and says, ‘I’m not screwing with you.’ And he’s not!”

The amp is a pretty simple requirement. Berry expects it to be honored.

J.B. admitted in his internet post that he’d breached the contract—what he called the “strange tech rider.” And I liked that J.B. still respected Chuck Berry despite the dispute. I filed his name away, thinking that if I ever got to Las Vegas I’d look him up and see if he could find those files he talked about.

But I didn’t have to go to Vegas. A year or so after our internet conversation a story appeared in the online edition of the South Lake Tahoe paper celebrating the return of J.B. to one of the Lake Tahoe casinos, and a good chunk of the article was about the Chuck Berry show at the Funhouse. The article said the show occurred on July 4, 1971, and called it “the day the music died in South Lake Tahoe” because, it caused J.B. to stop producing shows and dances.

“I put 50 percent of the money up and he knew he was coming into a facility that would only hold less than 2,000 people,” J.B. is quoted as saying. “They put guys at the door with counters, so there was no way around that. Like a lot of things, he didn’t pay any attention to the contract. He signed it and took the money. Then when he shows up he comes back to the office with one other guy. He said to me as I was counting out the cash, ‘What about the percentage?’ ”

The rest of this is taken straight from the newspaper.

[J.B.] reminded him of the limited Fun House capacity and the contract he had signed.

“He didn’t like that,” [J.B.] said. “He wanted extra money. I said. ‘Look, I’ll pay you for this now.’ He took the money and when he went to sign the check to give me a receipt for it, he shoved it back to me and said, ‘I didn’t see no receipt,’ and he turns to his friend and says, ‘I have an idea this is going to be a real short night.’

“It hit me wrong,” [J.B.] said. “It ticked me off. I always look at it from the artist’s standpoint but that was just ridiculous to me.”

To make matters worse, the truculent Berry, who was to be backed by [J.B.]’s band, said he wouldn’t plug his guitar into the Fender twin amp he was provided.

[J.B.] had had enough. If the speaker was good enough for Jerry Garcia, he thought, it was good enough for Berry.

“I had security there that were football players,” [J.B.] said. “They were with the 49ers who were here for high-altitude training. I hired them for summer to keep peace in my hall. I said, ‘Walk Mr. Berry to the stage and don’t let him off until he’s done what he’s agreed to do.’ ”

So, forty years after the fact I learn why Chuck Berry was sitting by the side of the stage talking to the big guy. The big guy was a San Francisco 49er. One false move and the “Father of Rock and Roll” was going to be tackled.

To get some perspective, let’s imagine we want some work done on our kitchen. The contractor signs a bid but adds a “strange rider” that says it's my job to provide a functional table saw. When he arrives there's no table saw. The contractor gets grumpy and says "This might be a short day." So I call in my large buddies to keep the contractor there until the job is finished.

That is what might be called that false imprisonment—a crime and a tort. Generally speaking, you can't hold someone against their will. And Chuck Berry never breached the contract. He made a crack about a short show. It was the promoter who breached the contract by providing the wrong equipment.

My favorite bit of reporting is when the reporter calls Chuck Berry “truculent” and writes that if the speaker was good enough for Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead, it was good enough for Berry. What’s ignored is that the “truculent Mr. Berry” spent 20 years developing a guitar sound that Garcia, may he rest in peace, honored and sometimes imitated. Not many groups have covered more Chuck Berry songs than the Grateful Dead.

At any rate, the “truculent” one stayed and played two of the best I've seen him do, backed by J.B.'s very good band. It wasn't a short night.

J.B. says he was “ticked off.”

Ah well. Lucky for him, and lucky for me, the “truculent Mr. Berry” endured the humiliation of being held hostage by a local promoter, honored his part of a dishonored contract, and kept on rocking— for another 40 years and counting.


(For more of this story, go to the "Pages" section on the right, where an entire book is being published!  Or find the first chapter by clicking here!  Free!)

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