Chapter 15 - Hard Workin' at the Mill, Why He Matters Part V

Nowadays Chuck Berry plays with the words of “Johnny B. Goode,” singing “Maybe someday your name will be back in lights,” as if the marquee had gone dark. It never has, though. Because I first encountered him at a poorly promoted I used to think Berry’s situation could be found in the song “Sergeant Pepper,” going in and out of style, guaranteed to raise a smile. But I was wrong. Chuck Berry never went out of style. The music is too authentic and too good. The performances, though sometimes lambasted, were too strong. He’s got it in spades, but style has nothing to do with it.

The records didn’t always sell. Even during the so-called “golden decade” he had fewer giant hits than you might imagine. “School Days” peaked at Number 23 on the pop charts. “Roll Over Beethoven” got to 29. “Promised Land” was Number 41. “Little Queenie” was a lowly 80. (Of course, the pop charts, like the old so-called “Major Leagues,” were overrated. Berry’s songs did considerably better on the R & B charts, where he did have number one hits. Think Negro Leagues. Think Satchel Page, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron. Think Chuck, Muddy, Wolf, B.B., and Little Richard. It’s pretty clear, in baseball and in music, that there was more than one “major” league.)

But where most songs that peak at number 80 are quickly forgotten, Chuck Berry’s aged well. They got bigger and better with time. They entered the charts as minor to moderate hits and became major cultural landmarks.

He had three clear bursts of record sales— 1955-1960, 1964-1965, and 1972— and it probably would have been an uninterrupted selling spree from 1955 to 1965 if he hadn’t been stopped by an outlaw legal establishment. The Missouri State Highway Patrol and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals tried to put a world of hurt on him. They locked him up at the height of his success. But they couldn’t actually stop him. He came out of prison with “Nadine,” “No Particular Place to Go,” and “Promised Land.” And he must have been practicing in that stony mansion, because almost as soon as he got out he recorded one of his best ever live shows. (The 10 song set—with backup by a group of Motown studio musicians— is a good reason to buy the boxed set “Chuck Berry: You Never Can Tell: His Complete Chess Recordings 1960-1966.”)

In between record sales he was out doing concerts, keeping his name in lights. That 60 year record of professional performances, from 1952 until present, is one of his most outstanding legacies. The man worked, and still does. He has gone out night after night, just him and his guitar, to clubs, stadiums, bars, barns, fairs, fraternities, colleges, casinos, theaters, gyms, television studios, movie studios, festivals—wherever they booked him. He demanded cash, an amplifier, and a band, and he supplied the rest—in big towns, small towns, in auditoriums all over the world. (He showed the same work ethic in prison, where he studied typing and business law, and wrote a book.)

He does a great job describing the earliest years in his Autobiography—first the bars and clubs of St. Louis, then a few solo shows, then the bus tours, and finally, the lonely and sometimes dangerous one-nighters as a solo act.

In 1964, a year after getting released from prison, he made two tours of Europe, focusing on England, where his influence was huge. Groups like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and many others recorded his songs and talked up his music. They took a lot, to be sure. They built careers off his music. But they also gave back. Their recordings earned him royalties and helped grow his reputation.

But mostly it was his own work, day after day, year after year.

In October 1964 he was part of The T.A.M.I. Show, a live concert that included Marvin Gaye, James Brown and the Rolling Stones. It came out on film in 1965. (Berry’s performances in The T.A.M.I. Show are short and sweet—but the cameras cut him off at the waist to focus on the go-go dancers behind him.)

In 1965 he showed up on teen shows Shindig and Hullabaloo, (Stevo probably saw him), and seemed to spend a lot of time on the European continent. This resulted in a couple of extended television appearances, including an extraordinary show at the Salle des Fetes in Paris that includes some of the wildest Chuck Berry performances ever recorded.

In 1966 he left Chess Records and signed a five album deal with Mercury. He didn’t produce any hits during the next three years, but he recorded at least one good album, “Live at the Fillmore” and a nearly good one called “Chuck Berry in Memphis,” which he cut at Willie Mitchell’s Royal Studios. The Mercury contract was a good deal for Berry—something like $30,000 per record— but even though he recorded some good songs (“Back to Memphis” is a Chuck Berry classic) the Mercury records didn’t have the sound that came from the Chess studios and for the most part just don’t match the quality of the records Berry cut at Chess. (Part of the deal was to reproduce his biggest hits for Mercury. He did a competent job, but the recordings have little of the spirit or fire of the originals.)

Ketchup, mustard, relish, onions...

In 1967, things took a new turn. Berry was courted by San Francisco’s Bill Graham and became a staple headliner at Winterland and the Fillmore. The pay was bad—at least initially— but the venue introduced Berry to an important audience—boomers born a bit too late for the original hits, but who probably heard “Nadine” and “No Particular Place to Go” as teeny boppers. This is a big wave that runs from my brother Stevo, who introduced me to Chuck Berry, all the way to me. And Berry worked it, dazzling the crowds, demanding better pay from Graham, (but always staying at the same cheap, transients’ hotel), doing it his way, frustrating reporters but delighting surprised fans. Before long he was big again, playing landmark events like the Rock and Roll Revivals in New York and Toronto. He returned more to the blues, played long, drawn out numbers, and his guitar playing, though perhaps less fiery than in 1955, became more refined.

And he kept making records—some of the first I was able to buy, including 1970s “Back Home” and “San Francisco Dues,” recorded in 1971 with Robert Baldori’s Michigan rock band, The Woolies.

He had no publicist or management to speak of, but the crowds were big. Baldori describes what it was like flying under the radar with Berry in the early 1970s, drawing huge crowds without the monkey business of a manager or publicist.

Baldori and Berry in Ann Arbor, Michigan circa 1982

“We were on the road night after night with Charles playing to sold out houses, and there was hardly a mention of it in the media. Charles didn't have a manager or a marketing department, so the fan base was really a testament to the power of his show and his material. But the power was definitely there, and the shows were electrifying.”

Although I didn’t ever see him with The Woolies, I can attest to it, having seen Berry perform to ecstatic crowds throughout 1971 and 1972.

But then two things happened. First, Berry was invited by John Lennon to appear on the Mike Douglas show. It happened in mid-February 1972, about a year after I first saw him at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. By then I was a “long time” fan of exactly 12 months. I’d seen him live three times, had shaken his hand, had three or four of his albums, and I was thrilled to see a Beatle fawning over my idol.



And then, a few months later, “The London Chuck Berry Sessions”—a mammoth hit that told everyone who was my age exactly who Chuck Berry was. It was a good album, not great, a thudding, British, hard rock version of Chuck Berry, but it gave a glimpse into the power and humor of his live act and the hastily recorded studio side had at least two wonderful performances. “London Berry Blues” is a dictionary of Chuck Berry guitar riffs, with a beginning, a middle, a quiet spot, and a rousing finale—an instrumental with a story line on a record where most of the lyrics lack Chuck Berry’s usual literary touch. (One song’s chorus is an endless repetition of the words “I love you.”) The other notable song—the best on the album—is a powerful rendition of Little Walter’s “Mean Old World” mixed with lyrics from “Last Night.” It is one of Chuck Berry’s most powerful blues performances on record, and the studio musicians rise to the occasion. The other half of the record, recorded live at an arts festival in Lancaster, England, is a pox on his fans because of “Ding-a-Ling,” but a pox with genuine humor that allowed Chuck Berry to earn money long overdue on accounts receivable for less commercially successful masterpieces such as “Promised Land,” “Let it Rock,” “Tulane,” “Oh, Louisiana,” and “Have Mercy Judge.”

Chess cashed in on his superstar status by releasing a slew of old material in two more volumes of “Chuck Berry’s Golden Decade.” Volume Two was sort of the Rolling Stones’ collection, with “Carol,” “Little Queenie,” “I’m talking ‘Bout You” and “Come On.” It was a rougher edged Chuck Berry than I’d gotten to know on the original Golden Decade set—songs with more reverb, and a bit less polish. And there were songs that should have been put on Volume One. “You Never Can Tell” and “No Money Down” were as intricate and poetic as anything on the first volume and could easily have replaced lesser numbers like “Too Pooped to Pop” and “Anthony Boy.” “Promised Land,” with its hints of the civil rights struggle, was as important as anything he ever did, and I’ve often thought “Let it Rock” might be Chuck Berry’s favorite Chuck Berry song— the song that so often gets him going these days, even in his old age.

Volume Three of the Golden Decade gets raunchier still. Some of my favorite songs are ones Chuck Berry didn’t write but might have. “Time Was” has the nostalgia enough to be a Chuck Berry song.

Time was

When we had fun on the schoolyard swing

When we exchanged graduation rings

One lovely yesterday

Chuck Berry also didn’t write “House of Blue Lights,” a boogie-woogie about dancing, food and fun times recorded the same day as “Time Was” and “Carol,” but he made it his own, and then made his own version, “Carol.” Compare the opening lines of “House of Blue Lights” to those of “Carol.”

Come on down and we’ll cut a rug

Dig that jive as it should be dug

A real home coming for all you cats

You keep a walkin’ till you see that welcome mat

Fall in there, lose your lead

At the House, the House of Blue lights

It could be the same place—the biggest difference being the sheer number of syllables that Chuck Berry can squeeze into every stanza.

Climb into my machine so we can cruise on out

I know a swingin’ little joint where we can jump and shout

It's not too far back off the highway, not so long a ride

You park your car out in the open, you can walk inside

A little cutie takes your hat and you can thank her, ma'am

Every time you make the scene you find the joint is jammed

For a while then—three or four years, from 1972 through 1975— he was a huge star again, and everywhere: on shows like “The Midnight Special” and “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.” He even did “Soul Train.” He was featured in the film “Let the Good Times Roll,” along with Little Richard, Fats Domino and Bo Diddley.

In 1973, Chuck put out another good album on Chess called “Bio” which included the only post-1960s song he still plays on a regular basis—the autobiographical blues shuffle that gave the album its name.

For me it was a time of affirmation. The subject of my odd obsession had caught the world’s imagination yet again. And Chuck Berry kept playing, show after show, in halls, auditoriums and festivals, bigger than ever, working it day after day, night after night.

One day while blogging it occurred to me how important this was. He wasn’t a pampered rocker who did a tour every few years. The man did what his fans have to do. He worked, day after day, night after night, year after year, and still does at age 84 and counting. It’s something he hasn’t been given enough credit for. I’ve read now and then that he “mailed in” a performance—but he keeps walking to that post office, buying stamps, licking them, and sending it to us.

If he never went out of style, if the name remained in lights, if he remained significant, if there’s now a bronze statue in his home town, there’s no mystery to it.

He earned it. The man worked, and still does.


(This is part of a book length, personal tale of how my life was rolled over by Chuck Berry.  Feel free to leave comments or your own Chuck Berry story.  You can read the other chapters, starting with the Prologue, to the right in a section called "Pages" or by clicking HERE.)

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