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:

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.

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.)

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.

45 Years Later, Today, And What A Show! (Missed Opportunity)

Here’s Rolling Stone editor Jan Wenner:

"Look, there was a very special moment in the 1950s with Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. It just all happened at once. It was incredible. Then in the 1960s, the Beatles and the Stones, emerging from England at the same time as America's greatest writer of any kind, Bob Dylan . . . are those moments going to happen again? Those are hard to predict, but a generation later came U2 and Bruce Springsteen. They do keep coming."

Being no scholar of hip hop I can’t say exactly when one of those moments happened in Brooklyn or Queens a few decades ago, but add it to the list if you know. We do know that the tiny town of Clarksdale, Mississippi and other cotton towns in the Delta exploded with music 20 or 30 years before rock and roll burst out. And then there are the other bursts—Detroit and Memphis in the mid-1960s, San Francisco later that decade, and even wet, dark, rainy cold Seattle in the late 1980s or early 1990s. (I was here but only hearing African music at the time.)

Anyway, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame begins its 25th Anniversary celebrations tonight with couple of concerts involving people like Bruce Springsteen, U2, Paul Simon, Aretha Franklin. Read about it here and here. 

I wish Chuck Berry was there to participate-- a bookend to T.A.M.I.  I have this funny but completely unsubstantiated feeling (saw an ad once with his name in lights) that he was invited but demanded a fee and therefore won't be on the bill.  Sort of like they say happened at Monterey Pop. 

Ah well-- he does it his way, and it's worked so far. (Some of the people who criticize his insistence on being paid for his work are the same people who demand, say, 100 times as much before appearing at stadium to perform; not to mention lavish spreads in the dressing room, helicopters, chartered planes, etc.  Give me and the man a break!)

But I'd like to see him honored the way he ought to be honored.  This could have been (should have been) it.  And who knows-- maybe it'll happen anyway!

45 Years Ago Today (The T.A.M.I. Show!)

And what a show! Bo Diddley! Marvin Gaye! The Rolling Stones! Smokey Robinson! James Brown collapsing on stage and wrapped by attendants in an ermine stole-- only to cast it off and begin again! (The Rolling Stones, mere newbies at the time, the mere latest thing, chose to follow James Brown! Baaaaad idea! But give Mick credit for learning some Brown dance moves back stage before going on.) And of course, OUR MAN-- or about half to a third of him, shot bizarrly from up close and below in a misguided effort to feature the go go girls instead of the Go Johnny Go man-- but he got a bunch of songs in, fast, and was part of something that was pretty incredible. Here's a tidbit that I found on youtube.



You can buy a tape of the show on line, with an older Chuck Berry narrating-- but it lacks the James Brown with cape routine that I swear (in my dementia) I watched on television years ago with Stevo and Danny. That's like showing Woodstock without Jimi, Hamlet without a soliloquy, or any of those Rock 'n' Roll Revivals without Chuck Berry to close the show with a bang.

Bruce Springsteen Rolling Over Mr. Beethoven in St. Louis

“We always get requests for a Chuck Berry song when we come to St. Louis,” said Bruce Springsteen, at his recent concert there.  A fan held up a sign requesting “Roll Over Beethoven.” Turns out that the fan had the lyrics written out on the flip side of the sign.  Read about it here.  (And see a great picture of the two of them here.


If you're a fan, you've already seen this.  But it's sweet.

She Believes (In the Public Option!)

Chuck Berry has an interesting family-- Daughter Ingrid, who sings with him; son Charles, who plays guitar for him; Daughter Isalee, who gave her name to his publishing company, and Melody, a health care executive who is featured in this article.  I'm happy to say that she supports a public option!  Go head on, Melody!

Heroes: Elmore James (I Believe!)

I've long lamented the lack of a film or video of Elmore James.  American television and Hollywood evidently didn't have enough vision for something so raw, and maybe he didn't make the European tours that got some of our other heroes recorded on film or video.  But here's a hell of a version of "Rolling and Tumbling."  Look here for a version of the same song by Muddy Waters.  (Bob Dylan's was taken away from or by youtube.)  Here's some history (from the National Park Service!  Hail! Hail!)

Heroes: Son House

If the devil didn't teach Robert Johnson, it was this man (and it's a straight shot from Johnson to Chuck).  He taught Muddy, too.  In fact, there's a great paragraph in the Muddy Waters biography "Can't Be Satisfied" where Muddy Waters spots a band member imitating the aged limp of Son House.  Waters puts a stop to it immediately and tells the band to give some respect to a man who was there before all of them.

We've got to do the same.  If you don't know him, here's a place to start.

He even looks a little like Chuck Berry in the shot up there.

Heroes (The Wonder of Youtube)

Youtube is a miracle-- a time machine, and a chance to see people and things I only dreamed about when I was a kid. 

Blues is a journey that's different for every person.  Mine started with Chuck Berry and B. B. King, who took me first to T-Bone Walker, and then further into the blues racks to find my first few dozen records.  As a kid I "discovered" Elmore James, Robert Johnson, Lightnin' Hopkins, and many of the usual suspects.  It was a good time to become a blues fan.  I remember one record that I bought new for 44 cents with two songs each by James, Howlin' Wolf, Ray Charles, B. B. King, John Lee Hooker, and Bobby Bland.   How's that for a bargain?

It's actually just about as good-- or bad-- a bargain today.  I just read B. B. King's autobiography.  He talked about how his early records were in the 99 cent bin.  It didn't thrill him.  There wasn't much profit in it.  It must not thrill anyone these days, either, at least if they're living-- but right now, for better or for worse, I've been concentrating on the records of departed saints, buying more old music that's new to me, and often finding it, new and used, at rock bottom prices.  There are a lot of particularly good collections from Chess-- Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, etc., and I've been finding great old acoustic stuff as well.  I drive girls to soccer practice and we bounce along to stuff neither of us have ever heard, with mandolins and guitars or maybe electrified harmonicas and a deadly slide (and Leaonard Chess pounding away on the bass drum!)

I forget how I first "found" Mississippi John Hurt.  (I "found" him about 80 years after his mom did, and 40 or 50 years after Okeh Records).  I think I probably just liked his face smiling out of the blues bin, and read the liner notes, and bought the record.  It was recorded when he was old, after he'd been rediscovered.  A little history here.  He has such a gentle sound-- part of the miracle of what we call blues.

A few weeks ago I found a collection of Hurt's oldest recordings, made in 1928, by Okeh.  What amazed me is that he sounds just the same in the twenties and the sixties.

For a few days I'm going to search out some of my old heroes.  I start, randomly, with Mississippi John Hurt, whose appearance on youtube I bumped into almost by accident.  Here he is with Pete Seeger, and a woman I can't identify. 



Like our man, he's got his own website, too. You can check it out here.

149 Shows and Counting! The Duck Room at Blueberry Hill

Three days before his 83rd birthday Chuck Berry did his 149th monthly show at Blueberry Hill. These BBH shows are a legacy that will be remembered.  I was lucky enough to see one of these wonderful shows, thanks to my dear wife, who bought the ticket I'd been threatening to get for years.  (Read about my visit here )  Here's a recent article about the 149th show.  http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/10/15/chuck-berry-rocks-his-149th-monthly-show-at-st-louis-restaurant-blueberry-hill/  Picture by Doug.

Happy Birthday Dear Charles, Happy Birthday To You

I hope you live forever-- and that I live to be 100!  (Your music's gonna for sure.)

Enough Monkey Business For Me! (I Think I Need This!)

A record you can send me for MY birthday!  I learned about it here:  http://cousin-mike.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html

Too Much Monkey Business – 30 Great Artists

01 - Chuck Berry - Too Much Monkey Business
02 - Elvis Presley - Too Much Monkey Business
03 - Sleepy LaBeef - Too Much Monkey Business
04 - Freddie Cannon - Too Much Monkey Business
05 - Beatles - Too Much Monkey Business
06 - Yardbirds - Too Much Monkey Business
07 - Hollies - Too Much Monkey Business
08 - Kinks - Too Much Monkey Business
09 - Javelins (with Ian Gillan) - Too Much Monkey Business
10 - Wayne Fontana - Too Much Monkey Business
11 - Dion - Too Much Monkey Business
12 - Rattles - Too Much Monkey Business
13 - Applejacks - Too Much Monkey Business
14 - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Too Much Monkey Business
15 - Liverbirds - Too Much Monkey Business
16 - Manzi-S - Too Much Monkey Business (japanese)
17 - Casey Jones - Too Much Monkey Business
18 - Mark LaForme - Too Much Monkey Business
19 - John Wetton & Richard Palmer James - Too Much Monkey Business
20 - Steve Forbert - Too Much Monkey Business
21 - Luca Olivieri - Too Much Monkey Business
22 - Anne Feeney - Too Much Monkey Business
23 - Rocky Sharpe - Too Much Monkey Business
24 - Routers - Too Much Monkey Business
25 - Tom Rush - Too Much Monkey Business
26 - Eddie Hinton - Too Much Monkey Business
27 - Warriors - Too Much Monkey Business
29 - Shakers - Too Much Monkey Business
30 - Calvin James Johnson - Too Much Monkey Business

This version by The Hollies is pretty unecessary until a surprise towards the end that's actually pretty funny.

Sonny Boy Williamson

Chess Records, from 1950 to 1960, was a miracle.  (It really does look like a scene from court, here; and the audience looks like a bunch of prosecutors!)

Got Their Mojo Working (Back When Television Was a Vision)

Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson (II), Willie Dixon playing it cool.  Help with the others appreciated.  (Otis Spann on Piano?  Jimmy Rogers?  Help me!)  (Note that help arrived in the form of an "anonymous" tip from a trustworthy source.  See the comment below.  And thank you Fred!)