Grazie Mille!

These two rarities were posted at www.chuckberry.com/forum by an Italian fan.  Wow!

dear dad- chuck berry
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This one is pretty hillarious!

Chuck Berry - Almost Grown
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I Have Never Seen Him Play

"Brown Eyed Handsome Man!"  Nice to hear it.  Then "Sweet Little Sixteen," "Rock Me Baby," and "Carol"  All this New Years Eve at B. B. King's, with Daryl Davis on keyboards.

Miracle on 42nd Street

"Memphis," "Beer Drinking Woman" and "Around and Around."  Then someone had to ask for the number one hit.  Thank you to the youtube detective!

Crazy Legs and Ringing Like a Bell at 83!

Having fun and feeding off great musicians at B. B. King's.  Dang!

Okay, So You've Heard Reelin' and Rockin' Ten Thousand Times

We can hope that soon you'll be able to own pretty much every legitimate Chuck Berry recording in pretty packages from Hippo-Select (a company that deserves thanks and praise).  And then of course, the new stuff! 

So where do you go then?

I'm not a collector.  I like the music itself, not the stuff.  So my advice, if you haven't already done so, is to back away from "My Ding-a-Ling," and even "Reelin' and Rockin'" and "School Day," and head for a tour of the original sources.

Chuck Berry has alwaaaaays said there's nothing new under the sun, (for a bit of bliss, listen to THIS!),  and he's always credited his own teachers.

The first, of course, is Louis Jordan and Jordan's guitarist Carl Hogan.  If you retain ANY DOUBT about where the "Chuck Berry" intro comes from, just listen to a few seconds of this.  And stay tuned for the rhythm guitar work, too.



Chuck Berry's contribution was to take that intro, add more strings and more power, and deliver it up with a bunch of classic songs.

Then there's T-Bone Walker.  If Carl Hogan provided the first part of the Johnny B. Goode intro, T-Bone provided the second part-- the famous slur.  T-Bone also gave Chuck Berry those beautiful sliding ninth chords (check below at about 2:25) a whole lot of string bending, and the splits.

This version of "Storny Monday" doesn't have a great example of the slur, but it's so doggone beautiful that I can't help pasting it here. 



Chuck Berry also credits Elmore James as an influence-- and during his career he's probably used the "Elmore James" lick almost as often as Carl Hogan's.  But remember-- James got it from Robert Johnson, who probably took it from Charlie Patton-- so that's just the way it works. 

Evidently no one ever had the decency to take a movie of Elmore James, but close your eyes and you'll see him.



Then there's Muddy.  There might not be any Chuck Berry hits without Muddy directing him to Leonard Chess.  And there wouldn't have been a "No Money Down" without this one being put down first.



For singing and style, Chuck would have liked to be Nat King Cole.  (Wouldn't we all?)



Chuck always credits the Dorsey brothers for early lessons in boogie woogie.  I posted a clip of Chuck's sometime pianist Daryl Davis explaining that TD and JD stole their boogie from a piano player named Pinetop.  Check back just prior to New Years for that clip.  (I'll have to watch it again, too, to get the name.  Not Perkins, anyway.)



Chuck Berry often mentions Illinois Jaquette a lot.  And he loved this song.



Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton and Charlie Christian recorded it first.  You'll hear Christian come in at about one minute and recognize a lot of the Chuck Berry feel there-- but check out the clarinet starting at 2:30 and you'll hear some future Chuck Berry guitar licks!  Amazing.



And we could go on and on.  But PART of the genius of Chuck Berry was to take all these disparate influences and make them into something new and completely original.  Technically he wasn't the guitarist that T-Bone was, or the singer that Nat or Muddy were-- but he was an original-- someone who took all these bits and pieces and turned them into something new and wonderful. 

The proof?

Worth Repeating! Fred Below, Chess Drummer Extraordinaire

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!)

Amazing!

Someone showed me something cool.  A clipped up interview of Chuck Berry.  It's out there, but how to find it?  Consider it a pot of gold.

With one nugget.

Two, actually.

There is a beautiful remark about B. B. King.  I have to paraphrase (as always); When asked about B. B., Chuck says that he's never seen B. B. get angry or yell.  He says that it must mean B.B.'s got a happy life.  And he compares B.B.'s gentle personality to his friend Johnnie Johnson.

And that, I guess, is the bigger nugget-- the way he talks about Johnnie: "My best friend.  He still is and he always will be." 

Not that it surprises me.  You could see it in his eyes anytime they were together.  Despite Johnnie's funny line ("I don't know him any better than you do-- I've just known him longer") these two were obviously BFFs, personally and musically.

Anyway-- it's good stuff.  Probably should be easier to find!

2010

In the first three days of 2010 there have been visits to this site from Latvia, France, Italy, Turkey, Brazil, Sweden, the U.K., Canada, Australia, Germany, Michigan, Iowa and St. Louis.  Which says something about the legacy of Chuck Berry.

It sounds like early 2010 will bring a new boxed set from Hip-O Select.  This time: the stuff from the late 1960s and the 1970s.  I'll be happy to have "Back Home" on CD.

Someone's pushing for the Mercury stuff, too.  I hope it happens.  Just amp the bass up and make it sound better!

We can hope that the British tour is back on in March.  Lots of tickets sold.

I have high hopes for a release of new material from Mr. Berry.  Two of his friends and band members have mentioned it in "interviews" on this site--- and hell, it's been mentioned forever.  I hope it comes soon.  I hope he plays the material at concerts.

Depending on my schedule and his, and my luck with Ticketmaster, I might try to get to Blueberry Hill again.  If I do it, I'll pick a warmer time.  Maybe I'll drive!  Some sort of round the continent tour beckons.

I guess websites never die, but I'll soon stop posting here in any regular way.  I've had my say about Chuck Berry-- at least for now.  What I love about him and his legacy is the way new subjects just kept appearing.  I wish I could have done more with the postings about the "sidemen."  That is something someone could do a book about.  Anyway-- I'm sure I'll add something now and then when there is something worth adding.  (A CD of new material, for example!)  But more than anything, this site was about me-- about how my discovery of Chuck Berry's music, and then the blues, and then jazz, changed things for me.  Some of it was an obsession bordering on illness, but mostly it was a healthy dose of something real-- truly good American music played raw and live and as well as it can be played.

Can't Help It, But I Love it (Volume Three)

Then there’s the cultural impact.

During random outbursts of embarrassing news, bouts of crankiness, or tired renditions of “My Ding-a-Ling,” I become a little defensive about my Chuck Berry problem. But ultimately I am consoled that my obsession has got legs and staying power. He really is good. His legend and influence grows. He’s our Michelangelo-- our Dante.

Last night I challenged my wife to name someone with more cultural impact. She said “Shakespeare.”

OK, she got me, first time.

“But he’s the only one!” I said.

I am quick to acknowledge other musical geniuses—greater ones: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Muddy Waters. But Chuck Berry’s importance goes beyond the music itself. He changed a culture. He is one of the big daddies of modern history. He didn’t do it alone, but he is at the center of a storm that swept out the old and replaced it with something new and different. He is one of the big daddies of post renaissance history—a guy who could tell Tchaikovsky the news and get away with it.

Back when internet research was something new I typed his name into something called “Lexis.” I got 684 hits.

I hear him every day on the radio—not his own songs, perhaps—but his influence.

He’s an American giant—a world heritage giant.

And you could go see him, tonight. At B.B. King’s.

(That guy is pretty great himself!)

Happy New Year (Featuring Chuck Berry and His Guitar)

HERE's a nice little story about Chuck Berry at B. B. King's in NYC tomorrow night that includes several tiny revelations and quotes and-- an e-mail from CB himself??!!!  (My e-mail address is long but easy, Mr. Berry: goheadon(at)rocketmail.com!) 

Can't Help It, But I Love It (Volume Two)

There’s the pure, simple, very powerful charisma. He’s got loads of it. You’ve got to stare. You’ve got to laugh.

One of Keith Richards’ best observations in “Hail! Hail!” was that his personal presence sometimes got him past bad pickup bands, bad moods, bad tuning, and no rehearsal.

I’ve seen it happen. At the EMP in Seattle back in 2001 there was nothing wrong with the band, but Chuck Berry arrived in grumpy humor. He started the show by pulling all the plugs from the sound system and watching sternly as a young man struggled to get everything hooked up again. Then he kicked a guitarist off the stage. “Drum, bass and piano,” he told him. For 20 minutes or so his performance was cranky and lackluster—best during the blues number “Wee Wee Hours” (during which he nonetheless complained about the piano’s inability to do what he wanted with the song.) Every once in a while he made the band stop playing and did songs by himself—“Ding-a-Ling” and “South of the Border.” It was interesting in a clinical psychology sort of way.

But at a certain point professional responsibility must have kicked in and he got us going, a master puppeteer, pulling our strings and making us laugh and dance and clap for more. It was pure skill at that point—a showman’s knowledge of how to heat things up.  (Pretty good guitar playing, too!) 

Back in the early to mid-1970s he used a thousand tricks, mugging, joking, making faces as he strummed his guitar—but back then it was primarily the music. I was usually lucky to see him with good bands, and he was happy. At a couple of shows he played for hours, turning each song into a six or seven or ten minute jam.

When I saw him last year at Blueberry Hill it was the same, but different. The show was stripped down to a dozen or so songs, all short, but there wasn’t a phony bone in it. It was Chuck Berry surrounded by love, on stage and off. His son calls it “Chuck Berry in your own basement.” He definitely used his skills. He pulled out shtick he was doing in 1963 (a letter from home). He laughed with Bob Lohr on piano, mugged with Keith Robinson on drums, and sidled up to his son Charles and his backbone Marsala. He was happy. And by the end a dozen 22 year old girls were on stage vying for his attention.

Which is, of course, another part of it. He is a brown eyed handsome man, for sure.

The girls and women keep jumping on stage even when he’s 83-- and the guys are all jealous.

Ah well!

He Went to Make a Motion Picture... (B. B. King's did, anyway)

B. B. King is doing for Chuck Berry what needs to be done for Chuck Berry: they recorded these September shows with multiple cameras.  I hope they do it again New Years.  Most of the recent Chuck Berry concerts are recorded with shaky flip recorders-- it's nice to see some of these.  And he's obviously having lots of fun hearing John Colianni go crazy.  Thanks BBL!

Hear Them All!

Click here to hear "Back to Memphis." For me this website LaLa is a revelation.

What I've Learned Already From Morton Reff

A few weeks ago I wrote that it would be nice to reissue the Mercury stuff with better sound engineering.  And then I began flipping through Morton Reff's book and learned that it happened back in the late 1980s.  (Actually, in a way I sort ofknew this, since I have a CD of Live at the Fillmore that sounds considerably better than my old vinyl version.)  So my current task?  Find "Chuck Berry in Memphis" on CD to see how it sounds.  (I've been online already.  The task doesn't look easy!  Wish me luck!)

Here's an old post about my favorite song from that collection: http://goheadon.blogspot.com/2009/09/you-can-walk-down-beale-street-honey.html

Lucky Me!

Merry Christmas to me!  My wife (a few months after she she met me she gave me an autographed picture of Chuck Berry;, last year she gave me a ticket to Blueberry Hill!) sent to distant lands for Morton Reff's Complete and Unbelievable Dictionary of Chuck Berry!  My! My! My!  Already, minutes in to skimming, I am piecing together my life story.  I've mentioned here that the second time I saw Chuck Berry I was awakened late at night by interesting sounds and found my brothers Stevo and Danny watching Chuck Berry on the Dick Cavett show.  I open Reff's wonderbook to page 566.  Dick Cavett, December 1970, and he was playing: "Tulane!" 

Thank you Mr. Reff for your obsessions.  Thank you Rebecca for the book and turntable.  (Delilah's got nothing on you!)

Tell Tchaikowsky the News

I remember one Christmas about 15 years ago when every store in Seattle was playing The Nutcracker.  It's nice music till they gag you with it.  Right now every time I hit the malls I hear Chuck Berry and "Run, Rudolph, Run!".  That's better- but if they overdue it, it'll have me running, too.

(Don't tell the stores about "Ding-a-Ling")

I'm Getting Old

It was forty years ago today—(which has the makings of a good song all by itself—something about a musician who goes in and out of style, but always manages to raise at least a couple of smiles during a short set)—anyway, forty years ago, December 22, 1969, when Chuck Berry recorded two of my favorite Chuck Berry songs—“Tulane,” and “Have Mercy Judge.”


The songs are bookends, of course—“Tulane” being the fast moving rocker, and “Have Mercy Judge” the consequence—one of Chuck Berry’s best original blues.

Both songs appeared on the album “Back Home,” which, of course, I love. It’s got extra sentimental value for me because it was my second Chuck Berry album, after the collection of hits called “Golden Decade.” But it’s a great album anyway—at least by Chuck Berry “album” standards. (How much better can you do that a record with three great songs, two or three very good ones, and none that are downright bad?) And then you top it off with a cohesive sound? Unheard of!

It was quite a lineup, with Lafayette Leake (of “Johnny B. Goode” fame) back on piano, Phil Upchurch on bass, Bob Baldori on harmonica, and Chuck Berry at the top of his game on guitar.

According to the list in the back of Berry’s own Autobiography the crew recorded everything from the album “Back Home” at the same session—which seems impossible. Fred Rothwell has the second set happening several months later in springtime. Based on little evidence I’m siding with Berry and thinking that the whole record was done in a couple of days at about the same time—and most likely in December given that one of the songs is a lonesome bluesy number called “Christmas.” But I say this primarily because the music and instrumentation sounds pretty uniform, all of it tied together by a lively bass, great piano, and Baldori’s harmonica.

I love the record, which has moments as alive as anything Chuck Berry recorded. My favorite song might be the instrumental “Flying Home,” Berry’s third attempt at the Goodman/Christian/Hampton classic, reworked with a new melody and a rock and roll feel. It’s the real “Concerto in B. Goode,” as far as I’m concerned—a little symphony of excitement with cascading piano runs, great harmonica, and all the bubbling energy you feel on the tarmac when you’re returning home after a long absence.

“Have Mercy Judge” and “Tulane” should be staples of Chuck Berry’s live shows. “Tulane” is as good as any of his early rockers, with a great story of another strong woman in the “Maybeline” and “Nadine” line, and “Have Mercy Judge” stands with “Wee Wee Hours” as one of his very his best blues numbers. And why not? This is stuff he’d lived-- a hero, “held by the state patrol,” waiting to be tried by “the same judge I had before,” expecting no mercy himself, but asking for it for his little Tulane who’s “too alive to try to live alone.”

Tell her to live, and I’ll understand it
And even love her more when I come back home

Berry has too much to say on “Have Mercy Judge” to be restricted to the AAB pattern that so many blues songs follow.

Lord have mercy, I’m in a world of trouble
I’m being held by the state patrol.
I am charged with traffic
Of the forbidden
And I almost finished doing my parole.
Now, I'm on my way back downtown
Somebody help me, have mercy on my soul.

This is a blues that Chuck Berry sings in his own voice—and his best voice, actually shouting the lines and sounding like a real blues singer. And no wonder. Chuck Berry was held by the state patrol once. He’d been in a world of trouble more than once. He’d been charged with traffic of the forbidden in the form of a teenage Navajo girl he’d brought to work at his St. Louis club. And before they could make that stick he was arrested for charges of dating a French girl.

I go to court tomorrow morning
And I got the same judge I had before
Lord, I know he won't have no mercy on me
'Cause he told me not to come back no more
He'll send me away to some stoney mansion
In a lonely room and lock the door

The story of his trials are well documented in his own book and in “Brown Eyed Handsome man. He faced a nightmare of a judge in his first trial. He’d gone to stoney mansions of one sort of another twice by the time he wrote this one.

The final lines are wonderful in themselves, going back to the girl who’d jumped the counter in the first song.

Have mercy on my little Tulane
She's too alive to try to live alone
And I know her needs
And although she loves me
She's gonna try to make it
While the poor boy's gone
Somebody should tell her to live
And I'll understand it
And even love her more
When I come back home

This is a song worth reviving.  Put it in your act, Mr. Berry!

The whole record is good, though-- the whole thing held together by Baldori’s harmonica—a sound that turns this collection of songs into an album. The other sound that makes this record special was supplied by Phil Upchurch, who played a bass that drives “Tulane” and makes several of the songs interesting. I’m guessing (without evidence) it wasn’t a good experience for Upchurch, however. On his website ( ) you’ll find an amazing list of the people he played with over the years, but no mention of Mr. Berry. Maybe it’s just payback for the fact that the musicians on this record aren’t identified. (Things would finally change with Berry’s next record, “San Francisco Dues.”)

B.B.

Back to Mercury

According to Chuck Berry’s notes he recorded 16 songs on this date 42 years ago—which seems ambitious but unlikely. Fred Rothwell pares it down to just two—“I Can’t Believe” and “Soul Rockin’”—and puts another eight of them (including one of my Mercury favorites, “Ma Dear Ma Dear”) a few months later at the same San Francisco studio.

I got all of these after the fact in a jumbled two-fer that included songs from Chuck Berry in Memphis and Live at the Fillmore. I bought it used in 1972 or 1973 and played it a few hundred times on an old turntable that I had fished out of a dumpster a few years before that. It occurred to me recently that this history—a used record played on record player that was somebody else’s garbage—might explain my oft-repeated claim that Mercury records sound “tinny.” (My only other Mercury records are another jumble that includes the Memphis songs and the remakes, and “Concerto in B. Goode.”) But I don’t think it’s strictly a matter of being misled by circumstance. I think they sound bad—like the guitars, drums, organ and vocals are being squeezed through a transistor radio, and the bass is pretty much gone.

Otherwise, they are better than I remember. Not, for the most part, up to the standards of the first couple of dozen songs, but, but pretty much up to the standards of the rest of the career, with real gems (and maybe a little coal) scattered through the semi-precious stuff.

What I tend to like best are the horns, which come up front on several of the Mercury records and give a new feel to the music. (Horns were always there, but you could hardly tell sometimes at Chess, where it was all bass, guitar and piano.)

I’ve said it before—they should put this Mercury stuff out again after a thorough re-engineering. Move those horns back just a tad. Pump of the bass. Turn down the treble. The stint at Mercury wouldn’t seem so wasteful then. There’s good music on these disks. You just can’t hear it.

A Good Little Documentary

Maybe Some Day (Chuck Berry Art)

I have always seen references to a bronze statue of Chuck Berry here in Seattle.  I finally found an image, however, dim.  If this is it, it looks like artists are having trouble getting that image.  (To me, the face on this one this one looks like Jimmy Carter.)   Here's where I read about it.  (Since the website seems to be built for something other than comfort, I'll paste the verbiage here: "Darryl beat the odds, the clock, and his day job to finish his lifesize statue of Chuck Berry for the corporate office of a music business here in Seattle. It's beautiful work. A balance of roughness and precision, like Berry's playing itself, fuzzy but the detail is there--buttons on shirt, guitar toggle, and strings that make a delightful sound when you strum 'em, 350 lbs of bronze balanced on the soles of a moment duckwalking between release and tension.") To be fair, I'll have to search out the real thing.  The artist is evidently the same person who made the statue of Jimi Hendrix on Broadway in Seattle.

Maybe Some Day (Chuck Berry Art)

See it made HERE.

Maybe Some Day (They'll Paint You. And Sculpt You.)

Find it HERE.

If You Love It You Ain't Ever Too Old!

Here's a nice story about the Chuck Berry statue project, feauring bits of live performance (one song I've never heard!), ("But if you love it you ain't ever too old!"), and some shots of Blueberry Hill and Delmar, and commentary by Joe Edwards.  You also get a bit of a better look at the mockup of the statue.  http://www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-chuck-berry-statue-delmar-loop-121609,0,1294776.story.  And get this-- make your tax deductible contribution, and you get an invite to the unveiling! 

Another One

Another good performance at B. B. King's last September-- well edited, exuberant, with errant fingers, but great Rock and Roll.  A few days later he played Blueberry Hill, and properly warmed up, put on a show that seemed to take him 15 years back in terms of guitar virtuosity.  But what interests me about these later day performances on the guitar is the rhythm and the efficiency.  He doesn't play a lot of notes, but he hits them like a talking drum.

That Sound

I’m writing this from a bench at the airport, so forgive any slips. I’m writing from memory of songs and sounds that have carved their ways into my brain and brainstem.

Everybody knows that there is something about the Chess sound that sets it apart. As a teenager I used to say it sounded like it was recorded in a garbage can. That was a bad analogy, although I was on to something. I later learned that some parts were recorded in the tiled bathrooms to get a form of prehistoric reverb. Once electronic reverb was available Chess records were flooded with it. But this didn’t result in a spacey sound. The bass was deep. The piano was sharp. The drums were slamming. And there was an electric bite to Chuck and Muddy’s guitars that I’ve seldom heard elsewhere.

In other words—Chess records sound like live performance.

It helps that they were, essentially, live. Mistakes hardly mattered compared to the energy—and that energy could only result from a single, charged performance with all instruments blasting. (A little overdubbing of lead guitar didn’t erase the energy of the original jam.) (Great picture HERE).

Years later record producers at other labels would leave a few false starts on their albums just to show they were still creating music. But within a few more years pop music became an oil slick of electronic bumps and buzzes. The magic is gone.

But the Chess sound was (is) more than the live nature of the recording. Chuck Berry kept doing that at Mercury—but even the best of the Mercury records don’t have anything close to the texture of the early Chess recordings. The sound at Mercury is tinny, and weak. It probably sounded great in the studio, or at the Fillmore, but it didn’t get through on vinyl.

It may have been as simple as losing Leonard Chess’s peculiar genius. He knew what he wanted, and got it, even if he had to kick out the drummer and slam the bass by himself.

More probably it had a lot to do with losing Malcom Chisolm, an engineer at Chess who kept working on Chuck Berry’s records as late as the “Back Home” album, which sounds more refined than the early records, but just as alive on cuts like “Tulane,” “Have Mercy Judge” and “Flying Home.” I posted Chisolm’s CV elsewhere on this site. Here it is again. (Click Here).  It’s amazing. He sat almost anonymously at the center of cultural history.  (For a look at lots of old studios, click here).

And you have to say—that Chess sound (gone, I think, on "San Francisco Dues,” lived on through parts of “Bio” (the parts recorded with Elephant’s Memory, which, at their best – i.e., “Woodpecker”!-- sound like a live jam happening in the same room where you’re sitting.)

And the sound, in a slightly modernized form, made it to England for “The London Sessions.” Both sets sound live—even the studio session. The drums thud. The guitar has bite. There’s not so much echo as immediacy. You feel like you’re there—and Chuck Berry’s guitar playing, though rougher and meaner than what we hear on “Back Home,” is just as good. As for the live session (now spoiled for me by the lasting legacy of “My Ding-a-Ling,”) it just sounds great. You feel the room and the crowd.  Compare it to another fine live set—“Live at the Fillmore”—that was recorded for Mercury. That one sounds dead and tinny. The music itself is wonderful.  The song selection is grown up and serious. (It's a relief not to her the hits.)  The guitar playing is great. The backup musicians are fine and know the blues. But the whole thing is lost in space. There’s no sense you’re there. It’s like you’re listening through tin cans and string. The audience was probably going mad, but sound like they had all left, or were involved in a sleep-in on the floor of the Fillmore.

I sometimes wonder what could be done with the master tapes from the Mercury years by someone like Malcom Chisolm or some other competent authority. I don’t have enough background or knowledge to know—but I think someone should try. Pump up the bass. Increase the middle. Accentuate some of those great horns. Fatten up the guitar. Put CSI to work on the crowd noise in San Francisco.

Some of those Mercury songs are as good as a lot of the Chess material. “Ma Dear Ma Dear.” “Back To Memphis.” “It Hurts Me Too.”

When they get re-released in a box, they should put out two versions—an historical set, as was, and a set that’s reengineered to exploit what’s likely there on the tape: great music, recorded almost live, by a great artist and some fine musicians.

(The Mercury remakes of the greatest hits? Just dump them. They’re not terrible, but they’re unnecessary.)

More Interviews (Eddie "The Chief" Clearwater)

I'm not really familiar with the music of Eddie "the Chief" Clearwater, but I've often heard him described as a disciple of Chuck Berry.  (I also saw one of his stage costumes hanging at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale).  I haven't found a video that shows him really sounding like Berry, but click here for a nice interview where he talks about Berry's influence.  There's a nice story about the two of them appearing together at a suburban Chicago club and Chuck telling him to play "Johnny B. Goode." 

And here he is at work:



By the way, there are some nice videos of him in the 1970s that I'm not able to embed here.  But you might want to look them up on youtube.  A couple have him playing with Chuck Berry sidemen like Odie Payne.

The Interviews (and a performance!) (Johnnie Johnson)

Johnnie Johnson didn't get interviewed much-- but here's a long, rambling one that you'll enjoy once your eyes adjust to the jarring background.  Check it out here. 

I once got a chance to see Johnson perform at the Seattle art and music festival, Bumpershoot.  That performance had to be after "Hail! Hail!" when Johnnie had become pretty well known in his own right.  Of course, Chuck Berry fans always knew him.

There's talk that he didn't get enough credit for his work on Chuck Berry's big hits.  There's truth to that talk, of course-- though it's really only because no one bothered to put the names of the players on those records.  In another sense, of course, he got a little too much credit.  He was the only Chuck Berry piano player I ever heard of before I started seeing better notes, published recently, that list people like Lafayette Leake and Otis Spann, both of whom played on giant hits.  And, of course, there were many others.

But Johnnie and Chuck obviously had a special something.  You can see it in Chuck's eyes, or in his manner when the two start trading riffs.  (Johnnie's eyes were congenitally sleepy.)

And beyond the music, Johnson is credited with the single best line from the "Hail! Hail!" experience.  When  Chuck Berry war reportedly heard flipping out in the background about "beating that rap," Johnnie is said to have shrugged and told  the all star musicians: "You know him just as well as I do.  I've just known him longer."

Here he is playing at Montreux.

The Interviews (Muddy Waters)

Sometimes it's just nice to hear or read someone else talk.  And it's Muddy Waters!  Check it out here.  More about Muddy here at Gibson's website/ 

And Tax Deductible!

My New Year's resolution is to donate to the cause on January 2, 2010-- because frankly, this year, the deduction doesn't help!  But for the rest of you-- give till it hurts!  NOW!  (Even if it does look a little like Andy Griffith in this shot!)  Here's a link where you can use your credit card or paypal!  Click here to donate! Now! Without Delay!

(Euros, Pesos, Pounds and every other sort of money gladly accepted!)

http://www.chuckberrystatue.com/