More from Italy

Doug sent me a nice one of the first three songs-- you get to see the introduction and the excitement of the Italian fans.  My favorite here-- "Wee Wee Hours," at the end.

Rollin' Over in Italia

Can't watch this with the limping wireless I've got at this hotel, but I'll try to post it!  (Do>mani, le notizie del concerto di Daryl Davis a Porto Townsend.) (Grazie Doug!)

Daryl Davis in Port Townsend

Today I'm off to see frequent Chuck Berry collaborator Daryl Davis perform at the Blues in the Clubs at the Centrum Blues festival in Port Townsend, Washington.  More about it HERE and HERE.

Oggi!

Here's a LINK to make me even more jealous!

Long Live Chuck Berry!

Maybe it’s just me—but as a Chuck Berry fan I’ve always had a complicated relationship with Elvis Presley.

I like some of his music a lot. And he’s an interesting character. I wonder what he was like. Like the rest of the world I like looking at him, hearing him, watching him dance.

At least in the old days. Once he donned white capes and glitter I was less interested. And I definitely wasn’t interested in any of the color movies. (“Jailhouse Rock” is another story. When I’m told he choreographed the inmate dance scene I can’t help but take interest. It’s good stuff. And I’ve seen a few minutes of the story and liked that, too.)

Who wouldn’t like hearing “That’s All Right,” “Heartbreak hotel,” “Hound Dog,” Blue Suede Shoes,” or “even “Burnin’ Love?”

But I found Chuck Berry in the early 1970’s—either 1970 or 1971. I first saw him on stage backed by a local Sacramento band. He was in jeans and an orange shirt. He had a red guitar. He seemed sad. He played blues. And he played rock and roll.

In those days Elvis had a hit with “Burnin’ Love,” and I remember attending a movie of his live Vegas performances that I actually enjoyed despite the costumes. That movie’s recent re-release on DVD prompts this article.

A Brazilian who is a fan of both Chuck Berry and Elvis wrote something on the Chuck Berry website wondering why the song “Johnny B. Goode” had been stricken from the film on re-release. Just seeing those names together—Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry—cause another re-release from deep inside me: a re-release of the vague resentment I’ve always felt about the so-called “King” of rock and roll.

According to Elvis.com the title is undisputed. (Ask Little Richard if that’s true. I have a great Little Richard record from the 1970s where he sings that he’s the King of Rock and Roll. As I recall, the song begins with a Chuck Berry guitar intro!)

Elvis’s hardcore fans include people I can’t ignore, like John Lennon and Bob Dylan.

(Then again, no less an authority than Jerry Lee Lewis’s mother told Jerry Lee that Chuck Berry was the true King of rock and roll. If she told that to Jerry Lee, she would surely have taught Bobby and John the same thing.)

And I don’t dispute the “King” of rock and roll stuff.  In the 1980s I wrote an article about Chuck Berry for a local rock and roll magazine, The Rocket, where I said:

“Let Elvis be King. Let him have the pomp and circumstance. Chuck Berry, the lean man with the conked hair and cherry red guitar, is much more than a figurehead—he’s our father. Single-handed he gave us rock guitar’s vocabulary. Single handed he made intelligent, witty lyrics a tradition in rock ‘n’ roll. His songs are alive today as they ever were. Keith Richards keeps stealing his licks, and Sweet Little Sixteen, in bell bottoms when I was her age, is back in tight dresses and lipstick again.”

But the “King” stuff always hurt, anyway. Sam Phillips, who is as much of a father of rock and roll as anybody, purportedly said “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.” He found Elvis—and RCA made a billion dollars.

And that’s all right—that’s all right! Because Chuck did the same thing as Elvis. Or maybe Leonard Chess did the same thing as Sam Phillips. He found a black singer who had a bit of the white sound.

Elvis and Carl Perkins were Country singers who sang Blues and R & B. Chuck Berry was an R & B singer who dabbled in Blues and Country. That melding of forms is where the best stuff nearly always happens: Sharon Jones singing Woody Guthrie; Sly Stone yodeling Jimmie Rodgers; Little Richard doing a Hank Williams song; Chuck Berry mimicking Benny Goodman’s clarinet on a guitar; Otis Redding singing the “Tennessee Waltz.”

And in the case of Elvis and Chuck, it created the foundations of rock and roll.

But calling Elvis “King?” It always bugged me.

For one thing, by the time he got the moniker he was no longer playing much rock and roll. He was singing ballads and catching under-panties.

Chuck Berry never, ever stopped playing rock and roll. He’s still doing it now—and getting more punk all the time!

Then there was the question of talent. Elvis is probably the better singer, and both knew how to dance on stage and entertain a crowd. But I always remember that vaguely insincere question Chuck Berry poses to Little Richard and Bo Diddley during the interviews for “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll.” It was something like: “Could Elvis really play that guitar?”

Chuck Berry knew the answer to that one, but he asked it with a feigned naivete.

On stage Elvis strummed a prop. Chuck Berry invented a language.

He’d deny it. He’d tell you something like (made up quote) “No, I took bits of Carl Hogan and T-Bone Walker and Charlie Christian and mixed it up thus and so. Nothing new under the sun.”

But by mixing, and twisting and bending and doubling and reinventing and adding bits of this and that he created something absolutely new under the sun, and then did it while dancing and duck-walking. (He’d credit the splits and behind the back playing to T-Bone, who’d probably say it was all Charlie Patton’s fault!)

And then there are the songs. I don’t think there’s any rock and roll star (Johnny Rivers certainly tried) who’s gone farther on other people’s material than Elvis Presley. He even recorded a half a dozen or so Chuck Berry songs.

But Chuck Berry wrote his own.

And they were rock and roll poetry.

So if there were justice, (there never has been!), the whole “King” thing wouldn’t even be an issue—or at any rate, Chuck would be on top of Elvis in the line of succession.

But rock and roll isn’t a monarchy. It’s the most democratic music I know, created in basements and garages, often by incompetents. You don’t need to be able to sing, play or even entertain—although all of that certainly helps.

Anyway, I think I once heard Chuck Berry address the issue of rock and roll royalty, and he did it just right. He said if he wasn’t the King, he was probably the prime minister.

I like that.

And just to make amends:

Deliver us to the Days of Old

It's amazing how fragile the record can be. Robert Johnson exists for us primarily because someone recorded and kept a handful of wonderful songs. I've been able to find film of some of the musicians who influenced Chuck Berry on youtube-- T-Bone Walker, for sure; Illinois Jaquet; Louis Jordan. But I haven't had much success finding Elmore James. The best you get on youtube seems to be a still photo or film of a spinning disk.

Luckily Elmore James' music was recorded more often than Johnson's-- but if my (meager) search skills are evidence, no one seems to have made a movie of him or put him on television. I guess it was a question of crossover appeal-- something he didn't have until he was gone. Muddy Waters lived long enough to be "discovered" by the white majority of music fans in the 60s. Same for Lightning Hopkins, and Mississippi John Hurt, and a host of others. jaquet and Louis Jordan made it into the movies. But Robert Johnson and Elmore James were gone before the camera crews arrived.

Of course, there's another way to look at it. Elmore James took Johnson's music north and plugged it in. Chuck Berry saw and heard James and used the same riffs for at least a dozen songs.

So the record may be fragile-- but the music is strong, and keeps going, delivering us from the days of old, and delivering us ancient wisdom and magic at the same time.

Here's Chuck, channeling Johnson and James, with the song "Bio." Hail! Hail!

Do it in St. Louis

Maybellene and Maybe Not

Maybe

Maybellene Revisited

You

Can't

Catch

Me

Wop Bop a loo Bob a Wop Bam Boom! Weird and Wonderful Television From Italy

Got a Chance-- Had to Take It! (A Super Fan Connects With Chuck Berry)

The guy in the blue shirt look pretty satisfied with life, doesn't he? 

Well-- ever dream you could meet Chuck Berry?  Maybe have dinner with him?  Or just a chat?

Ever fantasize that you could play guitar with Chuck Berry?   Not on stage-- just for fun?  A little bit of blues?


Carmelo Genovese, an Italian author, journalist and musician has done all those things-- and has pictures to prove it.  He sent some photos to me after reading something on this website-- and I had to learn more about them.  Carmelo also sent an article he wrote describing Chuck Berry's performance at a private party at London's 100 Club.  The best part: a rare, surprise appearance by Mr. Berry at the soundcheck, not unlike the one Daryl Davis described at B. B. King's . 

In this interview he tells about a whole bunch of shows; about meeting Mr. Berry the first time through the driver's window of his rental car; about getting a volunteer position on one of Berry's European tours and about racing across Milan in a Lancia (Berry), a Ford Escort (Genovese), and an SUV (road raged Italian Flattop).  He tells about how he got a last minute bear hug from his hero at the end of a long day; and he tells about taking the chance playing the blues with Chuck Berry backstage.  Dang!  Bravo, Carmelo!

But we started at the very beginning.

What is it about Chuck Berry’s music that got you “hooked?”

When I was a child I was always captivated by the boogie which I heard sometimes on tv. In fact I didn’t know yet it was named “boogie” but I surely recognized that walking bass and I loved it. In 1977, while in France for my summer holidays, I listened to my cousin Talì who played guitar and sang Johnny Halliday and Eddie Mitchell songs. So the first time I consciously listened to Chuck’s music was through the French versions of “Johnny B. Goode,” “Bye Bye Johnny,” “Carol” and “Promised Land.” When he saw how fascinated I was with rock and roll - I started to play guitar that summer just because I wanted to learn the intro of Johnny B. Goode - he gave me a 45 (the wonderful Arthur Smith’s “Guitar Boogie”) and a Chuck Berry double album (“La Terre Promise”) which, when I went back to Sanremo, became my greatest treasures. Almost all my friends were into progressive music – they were crazy for Genesis, Yes, ELP, Camel, Caravan - but I couldn’t stand those long long suites. The first record I bought was Jimi Hendrix’s Axis: Bold As Love (but I wasn’t prepared yet for it, so it remained on the shelf for a couple of years…) and Elvis’ Sun Sessions, which gave me the other main part of the rock and roll equation.

How many times have you met the man? Where? How?

In fact I’ve always been lucky: the first time I met Chuck was the first time that I went to see him live. It was the end of August, 1983, at Il Covo di Nord-Est-- a well known nightclub in Santa Margherita Ligure, near Genoa. I went there with my great friend Paolo “Beba” Bellucci and we had the chance to see Chuck when he arrived at the Club: he was parking a long green BMW 730 and we stood firmly at the side of his door with a notepad in hand for the autograph. He looked at us and with a sardonic smile he closed the dark window glass, remaining inside the car for few long seconds. We were thrilled and nervous. When he came out of the car he was kind and signed us an autograph. Later we had the chance to meet him at the bar and he was very kind. I told him I knew all his songs by heart and he asked me with a smile to show him how true this it was: I started to sing “Johnny B. Goode” (man, I must have been so boring…) and after the first verse he shook my hand vigorously with a big smile.

He played a great show (there were Jim Marsala, Ingrid Berry and also Billy Peek on guitar) which was later broadcast on national RAI television. Chuck argued with the promoter because it was not stated on the contract about the tv deal, so he probably asked for more money. That night, attending the show, there was the famous Italian journalist Gianni Minà and the singer songwriter Edoardo Bennato (who played and loved rock and roll ; here's a link) and who, at the time, was one of the best selling artists in Italy. He asked Chuck to sing “Nadine” and, after the show, I heard him telling his friends about it and he was so happy Chuck had sang it.

Then I saw him several more times - Rome (a great show in 1987 with Johnnie Johnson), Pistoia Blues (an unforgettable show with Buddy Guy & Junior Wells and Albert King on the same bill), Juan Les Pins, Salon En Provence – before meeting him again.

You’ve lived the dream! How on earth did you get into Chuck Berry’s dressing room and play guitar with him?!?! Tell us about the experience, and how it came to be.

It was February 1997, Chuck was due to come to Italy for a couple of shows (Milan and Campione d’Italia – which is a small town at the border with Switzerland) and I was lucky and smart enough to find me the chance to help the tour manager. The previous year I had become a pen-friend with Jean Pierre Ravelli (a real long-time friend of Chuck) and when I met Chuck at the Milano-Linate airport I told him about the “Ravelli Connection”: he suddenly treated me as the only one to trust in the promoter’s crew.

I spent two days with him and it was an incredible experience. At first, when the tour manager told him “we are expected to be at the sound check at 4.30 pm” he replied “this is not written in the contract.” After a few minutes he said that the car they provided him (a grey Lancia K) was not the Mercedes he expected to find and that he wanted that specific car “as stated in the contract.” (In Milano it’s difficult to find a Mercedes to rent because they usually only rent them with a driver). When he saw that it obviously was a difficult task, he asked if there was another airport in Milan (the Milano-Malpensa airport was 40 miles from there) and asked to go there to search for the car.

The tour manager was nervous because he still hoped to go for the sound check. Going to Malpensa airport and then back to central Milano to the hotel was really fun. I couldn’t believe it: I was driving with my Ford Escort and Chuck was following me driving the Lancia! During the trip he argued with a guy who was driving a big SUV and flashing his lights because he wanted to pass the Lancia: at one point Chuck gave him the impression to approach to the right leaving him the way on the fast lane but, suddenly, he cut across on the left blocking him from passing. The guy went mad and started hooting and screaming. Chuck accelerated and overtook me with the guy almost pushing him a foot from his bumper.

We were driving at more than 100 mph. I was very worried but, at the same time, so excited: it was like finding myself inside “Maybellene” or “You Can’t Catch Me.”

When we arrived at the hotel I met Jean Pierre Ravelli and his lovely wife who where just arrived from Paris. That night the first show was at the Palalido with the band Cherrie Pye as backup band. They were not “swing” enough (they played a robust 70’s rock-blues) and the show was really bad. After the end, Chuck understood people felt cheated, so he came back on stage for an encore and sat at the piano. He started to play but the sound man had already cut off the power…Chuck stayed at the piano for a long minute waiting but nothing happened so he gave up while people were booing to the organization.

We went back to the hotel and then met the following afternoon to go to Campione d’Italia casino (where he had to play). The previous drummer had been “fired” and there was another one. I brought my old Silvertone gutar and, while Chuck was relaxing in the casino with Jean Pierre I did the soundcheck with the band playing Chuck’s song. Before the show me and my wife Elena had dinner in the dressing room with them. It was incredible: we stayed for about a couple of hours together, talking about many things. Chuck was really kind and asked us where we were from and many other things. I proudly showed him my guitar (a semi-acoustic Silvertone 1446L) I had just bought in Austin the previous year and told him it had a real good sound for rock and roll and that I had a good deal paying it just 450 dollars. He looked at me with a smile and told me “probably at the time they sold them for 99 dollars…”

After the dinner he called the young promoter in the dressing room and for around 10 minutes had a dispute over a few “business details” of their deal. It was very instructive to witness the way he was treating the deal.

When the promoter went away Chuck took his guitar and started to play the chords to “Downbound Train” (Elena while having dinner told him that she loved that song) then he played the whole “Havana Moon” singing it with Jean Pierre. Then he started to play a blues and I told myself “Carmelo this is a chance you won’t have again in your life”, so without asking permission or saying one single word I grabbed my guitar and started to play rhythm letting the music do the talking. I was worried, and he didn’t even look at me, but when I started to play along with him he sang “C.C. Rider” playing some solos. After this one it was time for a fast boogie. I was playing the way he plays that rhythm and all of sudden he theatrically stopped playing, looked at me and with a big smile, and said loudly “Do you want a job!!!”

I was in rock and roll heaven!

He started to play rhythm and told me to play solos, which I surely did at the best of my knowledge. My smile went from one ear to the other… The whole “session” lasted around 15 minutes but all of sudden someone knocked on the door and said “Mr. Berry you should be on stage in 5 minutes”. So there he went with his guitar…

The show was better than the night before and the back up band did the best they could do to keep things going. Around 2 a.m. we were at the hotel, we shook hands and he went into the elevator to go to his room. But there was room for another surprise: when I said "goodbye," another time, waving my hand, he came out of the elevator, said “we say 'goodbye' the Russian way” (before coming to Milan he had just played in Moscow), and gave me a strong hug. I was really deeply touched and told him “Take care Chuck”. He replied “take care…man.” He didn’t recall my name but, at this point, this had really no meaning for me. The next day I wrote 16 pages, full of details and impression, which I carefully keep as a treasure of life.

After this time I met him again in Nice (1998 - La Grand Parade du Jazz), Montecarlo (2002 - at the Sporting), Bellinzona (2003 - Piazza in Blues), Milano (2005 - Teatro Smeraldo) and London (2008 - 100 Club). Every time we had the chance to go and say hello in the dressing room and one time we took a couple of really nice pictures.

In Milano (it was my birthday) I also spent all evening backstage and after the show I had dinner at the hotel with him and the band (CBII, Ingrid, James). What can I say? There are no words to describe how it has been to find myself living this experiences after 20 years in which I had played and listened to his music almost daily. I know I have been a really lucky guy and I will never thank Jean Pierre Ravelli enough for the way he helped me to fulfill this dream.

I see you went to Wentzville and Berry Park—tell us about that trip.

In 1996 I finally went to the USA. A coast to coast trip from L.A. and San Francisco to Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Missouri, and then to Philadelphia and New York. Elena and I went to Wentzville but there are no particular anecdotes to tell. We tried to go in, thinking that it was possible to visit, but they told people were not allowed to go in. We just took a picture in front of Berry Park.

How on earth did you get that pair of pants?!?!

In 1997 we went in Paris and Jean Pierre Ravelli invited us for dinner in his home. We had a wonderful time and he showed us a lot of pictures and memorabilia. It was fun to have that picture with the Toronto rock and roll festival pants!

Do you plan to make the trip to Senigallia to see him perform this summer?

I obviously would like it but I don’t know yet if I will be able to go.

Tell us about your book. Is it still in print?

At the end of the 90’s I started to write for some magazines and at one point they asked me to write a book about Chuck. I also have written books about New Orleans and Louisiana music, Elvis Presley, and the birth of rock and roll (LINK). They are out of print but you could still find them in various shops. Writing for Jam Magazine (http://www.jamonline.it/pages/) I also had the chance to interview Jerry Lee Lewis (phone call while he was in his Nesbit Ranch in Mississippi) and it was a really thrilling experience. Now I write a few articles and I have a lot of fun with my band (The Boogie Ramblers): we play a lot of Chuck Berry songs, you know….

And so they do... And be sure to hang on to the end to hear Carmelo absolutely nail the guitar solo!

Here's a Link to bits of the St. Louis Free Show

http://www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-dnc-convention-political-play-072910,0,6587197.story

Did He Get the Five Year Guarantee?

Well Mister I want a yellow convertible
Four door de Ville
With a continental spare
And wire chrome wheels
//  //
I want railroad airhorns
And a Military Spot

“No Money Down”

Chuck Berry's car, circa 1979.  It wasn't Yellow.

Nelly and Chuck

At the All Star Game, thanks to a friend in Iowa...  Tonight, St. Louis?

G' Obama Go! Go! (Today!)

Actually, don't click there.  You can find the live link and maybe score a ticket HERE!

Golden Gloves Chuck Berry to Honor Champ

Chuck Berry tells some pretty funny stories about his amateur boxing career in his Autobiography, and he still packed enough punch 30 years later to give Keith Richards a sore jaw.  Even Jerry Lee Lewis admits to getting whupped by the true king.  And on August 1, Berry and fellow St. Louis star Jackie Joyner-Kersee will show up at city hall to honor St. Louis world champion boxer Devon Alexander.  You can read about it here-- and if you're sweltering in St. Louis in early August, you can go.  (But check out Thursday's free concert first!).  Read about the city hall visit HERE.  Check out the free concert HERE.  Or go straight to the source (and get free tickets) at http://www.stl2012.org/.

A Glimpse Inside

In his autobiography Chuck Berry wrote about his months in a federal prison for tax evasion back in 1979, and mentioned some shows that he did there for the inmates-- one with just him and his guitar, one for visiting children, and another with fellow inmates as a backup band. Not long ago a friend in Sweden pointed out that there were snapshots of concerts at Lompoc on myspace. I contacted the photographer and got permission to post some of his photographs. I think they offer a glimpse into the quieter Chuck Berry-- a man generous enough to entertain and listen to his fellow inmates. He gets lots of crap about being a hard guy to get along with. He also must be one of the most approachable and available rock and roll stars of all time.

These pictures look like they were taken near his release, with the faithful Jimmy Marsala on bass.

Marry, Get a Home, Settle Down, Write a Book!

The best way to learn about Chuck Berry is to listen to his music. Most of what he wants to give us (sell us?) is right there.

But if you want to go beyond the music, to the roots, or the gossip, there are an amazing number of really good books about the man.

Not so when I was a kid. I didn’t even have the internet. I poured through old Billboard and Melody Maker magazines, and read whatever I could find in magazines like Rolling Stone and Ramparts.

As a kid I remember finding one reference to a book called “Brown Eyed Handsome Man.” Not the scholarly book of the same name by Bruce Pegg—this was a paperback, out of print in the early 1970s. I remember writing to a book dealer specializing in out of print books that I found in the back pages of The New Yorker Magazine. The dealer must have choked on a first edition of Thoreau when he read my wrinkled little request. He never responded.

But then one day it happened…

Chuck Berry published his Autobiography.

This was an event. The book was reviewed everywhere. It got good reviews, too, from places like The New York Times (where it was ultimately chosen as a “notable book” of 1987).

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/18/books/the-spirit-of-a-rocker.html

The used book dealer must have rolled in his grave.

If you haven’t read it, you should—sort of a “tell some” (as opposed to a “tell all”) that begins: “This book is entirely written, phrase by phrase, by yours truly, Chuck Berry.”

He wrote much of it while in prison on tax charges, with help from his longtime assistant Francine (a good looking blond, not quite wife if I understand it, who shared a home and got the man to settle down and write it.)

Berry admits the book reflects his state of sexual denial by focusing more than a little on various love interests. But it’s a very good read, too, that also covers family history, youth, various penitentiaries and more than 30 years of music—all as honestly as seems possible, with plenty of word play and flair.


Fifteen years later TWO more books came out— within a matter of weeks. The first I stumbled upon was the rather scholarly “Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry,” by Bruce Pegg. Then, a few weeks later: “Chuck Berry: The Biography,” by John Collis. Frankly, it was more than I could handle, and since I was in a “latent” phase of Chuck Berryitis, I picked through both, reading what I found interesting and ignoring the stuff I thought I already knew. Then, years later, after reading a remark from Flattop on chuckberry.com, I read them both, pretty much cover to cover.

They make good bookends. Both tell the same story, at pretty much the same time, and both end with trips to see the aging Berry at Blueberry Hill (thumbs up from both authors).

And both authors are obviously fans—though Pegg seems to take a more careful and forgiving approach. Collis is a bit more jaded, and certainly more casual. He's probably the more entertaining writer, where Pegg is the better journalist and historian.

Here’s a review of both, with quotes from the authors, from one of Chuck Berry’s hometown newspapers.

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2003-05-14/music/honey-is-that-you/

And then there’s “Long Distance Information: Chuck Berry’s Recorded Legacy,” by Fred Rothwell, my most recent acquisition, though published a year before the twin biographies.

I’m still at the picking stage, but I love this book.

For one thing, it focuses on the music. I have little interest in Chuck Berry’s steamy stuff, and I’m disappointed by some of the seemier stuff that has haunted his later years; but the music, live and on record—ahhhh!

Rothwell organizes his book by “sessions,” including the real ones at Chess and Mercury, a number of videos and films, and even bootleg recordings of concerts around the world. He identifies as many of the session musicians as possible, gives dates, tells a few stories, offers a few quotes, and describes what he hears. Although he’s clearly a fan, he’s also willing to pan the bad songs—often firmly, but usually in a pretty gentle and funny way. Plus, he writes prose like Chuck Berry, with lines like: “If the prose gets up your nose, maybe you can relax with the facts.”

Dang! He sounds a heck of a lot like his hero.

While all three authors write about the songs, I like Rothwell’s criticism best. He seems to like a lot of the same songs I like, giving nods to later work like “Tulane,” “Have Mercy Judge,” and “Flying Home” (all from “Back Home”), “Oh, Louisiana” (“San Francisco Dues”) and “Woodpecker” (“Bio.”) On the other hand he pans a television performance with Bo Diddley from the early 1970s that I remember with something close to awe-- especially when Bo and Chuck were together, dancing and chugging away on their guitars in a frenzy of Chess Records nirvanah. (Of course, I saw it just once, as a kid, lying on the floor of a crowded room 30 something years ago, and Rothwell saw it as an adult.) (Still, if you know where I can find a copy, TELL ME!)

All three authors, Pegg, Collis and Rothwell, are British. You’d think someone would have taken a shot Back in the U.S.A., but we sit mesmerized by the sizzle of hamburgers.

(You can read more about all of these books on the website of Dietmar Rudolph.) (German!)

http://www.crlf.de/ChuckBerry/bibliography.html

The True Story of Dr. Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Mr. Wolf: An Interview with Author/Musician Mark Hoffman

If you read this blog you know that for a month or so I was Howling for Mr. Howlin' Wolf.  For decades I knew him mostly from a couple of compilations that were in my thin selection of music.  One I bought for 66 cents, marked up from 44-- with two each by Wolf, B.B. King, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, Bobby Bland and Elmore James.  (Three cents a song, retail!  How much did those artists get?)  Then, a few years ago, I saw Cadillac records, and loved the portrayal of Howlin' Wolf in that movie; and not long after, I supplemented my meager Wolf collection with a "greatest hits" album from Chess.  A little after that I played "Killin' Floor" a couple of times with members of a semi pro blues band who generously allowed me to add my noise to their music.  (We either killed the song, or didn't, depending on your level of slang.)  I also read the story in John Collis' book about Chuck Berry where Berry arrived at a show without a guitar and grabbed Wolf's.  (That's guts!)  The story ended with Chuck Berry on stage apologizing to Wolf.  (That's Wolf!.) 

And then, one day I walked into the new Elliott Bay Bookstore and found a slightly tattered copy of the book "Moanin' at Midnight" by James Segrest and Mark Hoffman. 

I couldn't buy it that day because I'd just been given books about B.B. King and Thelonious Monk, and I was still working on a monster of a book about Willie Mays.  I'm a slow reader.  I didn't want to add to the pile of guilt on my Readin' Floor.

And besides-- the copy I first saw was a little dog-eared.  Other blues fans had spent a bit too much time with it in the store.

But a few weeks later, I couldn't help myself.  I went back.  There were two fresh new copies.  I bought one.

And I loved it.  And I couldn't help noticing that one of the authors, Mark Hoffman, was a ferry ride away on Bainbridge Island.  Too shy to hop a boat, I sent an e-mail-- and here is the generous result.

You started out playing music with Robert Cray! (Or maybe Cray started playing music with you!) Tell us about that. And how soon did you start getting into the blues.

Yes, I knew Bob Cray a bit in high school when I lived in Lakewood, south of Tacoma. He was a friend of a couple of younger guys in the band I was in, and he used to come over on occasion and jam with us. He was a really good singer and guitarist even then, though not the best guitarist I knew at the time. A kid in another band I played in was even better. (He’s since gone on to greatness as a salesman, he said with a sad shrug.) The first few times I heard Bob play, I was impressed mostly by his voice, which is so often a gift from God or Genes, whichever you believe in.

When I and another guy in my band went off to college, the younger guys in the band reformed it with Bob and another guy named Rocky who sang, played harp, and was a charismatic front man—shades of Curtis Salgado. Bob was kind of shy at that point, and he would often turn his back on the audience when he played. He used to bring a friend with him sometimes to our jam sessions: Bobby Murray, who now plays guitar for Etta James, and was even back then quite a guitarist. They used to come over with Richard Cousins, who’s played bass in Bob’s band off and on for 30 years and played with lots of other great musicians. So it was quite a scene for a bunch of high school kids.

One time when I was in my first year of college, we reunited the band to do a jam session at a dorm at the University of Washington. That was the first time I was really knocked out by Bob’s guitar playing. I hadn’t listened to him closely enough before, so it seemed he’d grown in one year from just a competent guitarist to a flashy one. We did Hendrix’s “Manic Depression,” and Bob played it note for note and blew everyone away. At that point in his career, he played lot of Hendrix stuff, though he doesn’t play in that over-the-top style at all now.

I started getting into the blues in high school. A couple of the guys in my band were listening to a lot of Magic Sam, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters, and they turned me on to that stuff. I can’t say I was knocked out by Chicago blues at first. I preferred to listen to that genre’s undergrowth: Cream, Hendrix, the Doors, the Stones, the Beatles, the Animals, and the rest. But when I was in my early 30s, I started listening to a lot of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, and that led me back to Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Skip James, Son House, Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, Arthur Blake, Willie McTell, Gary Davis, Memphis Minnie, and all those 1930s artists, who were simply astounding musicians.

This is too big a question, but why not?   What is it about the blues? What is it that gets to you in particular?

For me it’s about the raw emotion in the blues. I have a degree in English Literature, and I’ve read a lot of English poetry from Beowulf on. The greatest blues lyrics are as well-crafted and moving as any lyric poetry by Shakespeare, Keats, or Yeats. And of course those great blues lyrics are all delivered through music, which makes them even more powerful. The best blues songs are like country music: three chords and the truth. Of course, country music is heavily indebted to the blues and vice versa; country music came from European-Americans singing African-influenced music, and blues came from African-Americans singing European-influenced music. That’s the power and delight of American music—those hybrid influences. Before the advent of modern segmented music marketing, they didn’t put country and blues records in different bins or play them at different times on the radio, so you’d hear everything. Every good musician I know listens to everybody anyway.

So what gets to me about the blues is the emotion, delivered through poetic lines that link together with the solid inevitability of a Greek tragedy. Listen to a great blues song and you’re tangled in the big conundrums of life: love and death and everything important in between. Some people call blues “death music,” because it is all about Thanatos and Eros.

I also like the rhythmic aspects of the blues, which come mostly from its African influence. I love the power that a lot of blues songs have to make you want to shake your ass and scream out the lyrics and play air guitar simultaneously. I’m not too old to do that, thank God, and I hope I never am.

Music is rhythm, melody, harmony, tempo, timbre, and dynamics. European folk music has powerful rhythms, but in European classical music, the rhythm, timbre, and dynamics became much less important than the melody, harmony, and tempo. Blues and country and bluegrass and rock ‘n’ roll brought the dance rhythms back and made them important. No wonder Chuck Berry sang, “Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news!”

A lot of blues songs make me laugh because they’re very funny in an earthy or absurd way. I was listening to a blues song today that made me laugh out loud: Wolf’s “Do the Do” from the “London Sessions” album. Sample lyrics:

34 bust, 20 in the waist—everything right in place.

A cool disposition. You’ll love her, too

When you see her do the do. Do the do. Do the do.

For my money, song lyrics don’t get more absurd and funny than that!

Howlin’ Wolf surprised me. When I first heard his records I heard the raw power of it. But when I read and heard more about his life, I was struck by the civility and refinement: his marriage, his professionalism, his insistence on paying benefits to his musicians way back in the 1950s. Can you expand or comment?

Wolf was really different onstage and off. Onstage, he would do anything to win over a crowd, including glowering, clowning, and acting strange. He was mercurial as hell, so you just couldn’t stop watching him because he was always up to something onstage. Music was his life and his art, but it was also a business for him, a way to make a decent living. They call it show business, two words, and Wolf knew there was no show without the business. And despite his reputation—mostly caused by his glowering and wild man act onstage and his wariness and reserve around people he didn’t know—he was a gentlemanly, caring, and sweet man. He was very fatherly towards younger musicians and younger people in general. We heard variations on that from at least 30 of the people we interviewed for the book: “Wolf was like a father to me…He took me under his wing and taught me how to survive in the music business…He used to give me life lessons.”

Wolf was a hard-headed businessman because he had to be. It was the only way to survive in the cesspool that was the music business back in the 1950s and 1960s. Musicians like Wolf were rarely literate and numerate and didn’t have access to entertainment lawyers or accountants or anyone else who would watch out for their interests. So Wolf and practically everyone else got ripped off every time they signed a contract. Wolf was street-smart enough to know that he was getting ripped off, too. In 1974, he’d finally had enough, and he sued ARC Music, the song publishing business run by the Chess brothers and Benny Goodman’s brother. After Wolf died, his wife started getting bigger royalty checks from ARC Music. But he was getting royalties even before then; I saw the ledgers, and he was making thousands of dollars a year from the few songs that he wrote. But ARC Music was making a lot more, and Wolf wanted part of it. Funny thing is, and we didn’t write about this in the book, Wolf copyrighted “Sitting on Top of the World” as his own song, though it was written by Walter Vinson of the Mississippi Sheiks. His widow successfully sued Wolf to get the copyright back! I regret that we didn’t put that in the book. I don’t think Wolf quite understood the concept of “original composition.” I don’t think many of the old blues guys did, because they all recycled lyrics all the time.

Wolf had a pretty happy last marriage with Lillie Burnett. He’d been married once before, unhappily, and had had many relationships with other women, including one with another woman named Lillie, but Little #2 was probably his happiest relationship. She was educated and stable, and he was finally making good money and able to buy a house and settle down, so it was the happiest time of his life, I think. After his wild Delta years, he had to settle down! By the late 1950s, he’d survived several knifings and shootings, a near lynching, and a nervous breakdown, so he wanted and needed that marital stability.

One funny story I heard about his marriage: Peter Amft, the photographer who took the cover shot for our book went over to Wolf’s house to meet him for the shoot in 1970, the year that Wolf had his first heart attack. Lillie Burnett met Peter at the door and turned to Wolf and said, “That photographer is here, Wolf. I want you to be nice to him now, OK?” “Yes, Lillie.” “Don’t give him a bad time.” “No, Lillie.” Wolf and Peter went down into Wolf’s lair in the basement, where he practiced and wrote songs. But it was full of nice antique furniture that was covered with doilies and lace. Peter said it looked like Little Red Riding Hood’s house, not the Big Bad Wolf’s! And Lillie kept calling down to Wolf, “Are you being nice to that boy?” “Yes, Lillie!” Peter started shooting and was trying to get Wolf to look angry and mean, but Wolf only gave him angelic looks. Then Wolf lit a cigarette and whispered, “Don’t tell Lillie because I’m not supposed to be smoking.” So Peter waited until Wolf had the cigarette in his mouth and had turned away, from him, and when he turned back around, Peter stuck the camera right in his face and snapped the shot! The Big Bad Wolf just didn’t want the little woman to know that he was smoking! That’s how Peter got the shot that we used on the cover of our book: Wolf glowering and pulling a cigarette out of his mouth.

Did you ever see him perform? And what would you give to travel back to 1950s or 1960s Chicago?

I never saw Wolf perform, alas. I was playing in a blues band here in Seattle in 1975, and Wolf did one of his last shows here, but for some reason, I never heard about it. I’d give anything to be able to go back in time and see him at that show. He was in bad shape by then, but it would’ve been worth it anyway. Knowing what I know now, I would’ve asked him about Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson and those guys, and then asked him what happened to him in the Army that caused him to have a nervous breakdown. And I would’ve asked him about his girlfriend Lillie (not his wife Lillie) whom he lived with during the last days of World War II down in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, just east of Nashville. He got thrown out of the Army because he had a nervous breakdown. She’d just left her husband two years before for Wolf, despite the fact that she was very religious. And when Wolf left her, she had a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized in the state asylum! Her own mother signed the commitment papers. We discovered a lot of amazing stories like that about Wolf and the people in his early life.

This is a Chuck Berry site. Did you know that Wolf and Elmore James were the first two people Chuck saw perform when he went to Chicago to sell Maybellene?

I had no idea. I never did interview Chuck for the book. I tried to, but I couldn’t get his manager to return my calls. I heard that Wolf and Chuck didn’t get along, but I would’ve liked to have heard that from Chuck. I did interview Johnnie Johnson for the book. He was sitting next to me at a club in Chicago, and I wasn’t sure it was him, but I finally introduced myself, and sure enough, it was him. What a nice man, and what an amazing pianist.

Even though they are so different, I couldn’t help being struck by similarities between the two men: professionalism, self-improvement, and an incredible sense of dignity. Can you add to that?

You nailed it. They both were consummate professionals who were into self-improvement and stood up for themselves and wouldn’t take a lot of shit from anyone. They did that in a time when black men were expected to bow their heads and shuck and jive. They both got in trouble with the law over white women, too. Chuck’s bullshit Mann Act violation is well known. Wolf almost got lynched from singing a song to a white woman who invited him onto her porch. I suspect she was attracted to Wolf, but her husband came home and caught Wolf singing to her. The next week, he swore x he saw Wolf prowling around their house, and he called the sheriff. Fortunately, Wolf had an alibi—he was playing music at the time. The sheriff kept Wolf in jail overnight and then let him go.

Wolf also killed a man over a women. She’d gone home with Wolf after a show, but her boyfriend found out about it and beat her up. Wolf found out about it and confronted the guy on the guy’s front porch. The guy pulled a knife on Wolf, but unfortunately for the guy, Wolf was carrying a cotton hoe. He hit the guy over the head with it and took the top of his head clean off, killing him instantly. Wolf hid out from a posse and got away. He wasn’t proud of killing that guy, either. Years later, he wrote “Killing Floor,” which was partly about that incident, and maybe an attempt to exorcise that ghost from his past.

Tell a bit about your research for the book “Moanin’ at Midnight.” You seem to have gone everywhere and met everyone.

I and my co-author, James Segrest, interviewed about 250 people for the book, including more than 100 people who played music with him, plus a lot of people from his early years. I interviewed some of his childhood friends and his first girlfriend, whom I met on my first research trip to Mississippi in 1994. James interviewed a lot of people who knew Wolf in the in Mississippi Delta back in the 1930s and 1940s. He’d spend part of every summer working for his friend’s record store in Drew, Mississippi, in the heart of the Delta, and he’d go out on weekends and find people who knew Wolf 80 years ago, which was quite a feat, and pretty much impossible to do now because everyone who knew Wolf well then is dead now.

To me, it was all an adventure. It was like following a mystery story from decades ago. And interviewing some of these people from the Mississippi was like interviewing people who lived in the 14th century in a feudal society. The racism was so awful that even when I interviewed them in the 1990s, some of them were afraid to talk about it. Growing up in a poor agricultural society was hard enough, but when you add the racism, which made it almost impossible for them to get ahead, it was brutal. Most people today have no idea how bad it was; I just got a taste of it second-hand. It was one of the most eye-opening things I’ve ever researched. I suppose talking to people in North Korea or dissidents in Burma today might be the equivalent.

Did you get to make music with any of the musicians you write about? Tell us about that.

I played guitar a few times with Hubert Sumlin. I spent three days with him one time, and he taught me some licks, like the one to “Smokestack Lightning.” He also played guitar while I did my Wolf impression, which he said was really good—but Hubert is an easy audience!

When I go on youtube I am always amazed at the generosity of Hubert Sumlin. He is everywhere on video teaching people to play those amazing licks. And every lick seems to put a big smile on his face.

Yes, he’s generous that way. He’s a nice guy, and fun to play with. He’s only ungenerous with the truth. We were warned about that by a couple of people when he was started working on the book. Hubert’s a complete gypsy, and like most gypsies, you can’t always trust what he tells you. He sent us on some epic wild goose chases as we tried to verify stories that turned out to be nonsense—what we called “Hubert stories.” For example, he told us that Wolf knew Elvis’s parents really well, and Elvis’s dad, Vernon, took Elvis to see Wolf play when Elvis was a child. It didn’t sound farfetched because Vernon was born in West Point, Mississippi, close to where Wolf was born, and they weren’t far apart in age, and they both worked on farms in Northern Mississippi as young men. I started researching it by contacting people in Tupelo who knew Elvis when he was a kid. I talked to a couple of his childhood friends and neither of them knew anything about it. I talked to a few bluesmen from around the Tupelo area, and they told me that the only bluesman who was old enough to know if it was true had just died. I talked to some other people at the Elvis museum in Tupelo, and they’d never heard the story. I finally wrote to Peter Guralnick, the famous Elvis biographer, and he thought it was nonsense because he’d done incredibly in-depth research but he’d never heard this story—and he was a Howlin’ Wolf expert! (In fact, he was the guy I always was afraid might write the big Howlin’ Wolf biography before we did.) After several weeks of trying to verify this alleged Wolf/Elvis connection, we finally figured it was just another Hubert story. There were others like that!

On the other hand, Hubert told us a couple of stories that we thought were whoppers that turned out to be true. One was that James Cotton was going out with Lillie, Wolf’s last wife, before Wolf met her. That didn’t make sense because Lillie was a lot older than Cotton and supposedly a straight-laced middle-aged widow who didn’t like bluesmen when she met Wolf. So why would she have been going out with a wild man like Cotton who was in his 20s at the time? But we used a reliable third party to verify this story with Cotton, and he verified it! Hubert knew that because Cotton is his oldest living friend.

So that was the problem with Hubert: It was damn near impossible to figure out when he was telling us the truth. As I said, we were warned.

What did you think of the portrayal of Wolf in Cadillac Records?

I thought that Eamonn Walker was spectacular as Wolf. Before I saw that film, I couldn’t imagine anyone playing Wolf onscreen, and now I can’t imagine anyone else but Eamonn Walker playing him. He played Wolf as a kind of menacing guy, but at times he also brought out Wolf’s sweet side, which is not easy to do in the short time he had onscreen. And Walker isn’t a huge guy of 6 feet 4 inches like Wolf was, but you didn’t notice that. Walker played him big. So he did a hell of a job. He used our book for research—there isn’t much else about Wolf available. Jeffrey Wright, who played Muddy, was great, too, and I liked Mos Def as Chuck Berry. Really, everyone in that film was good. The only problem with it was that they tried to put too many characters into a two-hour movie, so they had to fictionalize a lot to have a story line that you could follow, and except for the leads—Muddy and Leonard Chess and Etta James—the whole film had to be done in cinematic shorthand. Eamonn Walker, for example, mostly played the angry, glowering side of Wolf, not the funny side, and Wolf was a very funny guy. I’m sure he would’ve done some clowning if it was in the script, but there was no time for that with all the other characters to follow.

On the other hand, if you knew nothing or very little about Chicago blues, you got a good taste of it from that film and learned what the people who created it were like. The band that did the music for it was outstanding—Steve Jordan and Kim Wilson and all those great players. And as I said, the acting was very good all around. So “Cadillac Records” was well done in those ways. I just wish they’d had a bigger budget and could’ve done a bigger film, and had better promotion. Getting that film made for $10 million was no easy feat, I’m sure. I thought Jeffrey Wright and Eamonn Walker, at least, should’ve been nominated for Academy Awards.

Where can people get your book about Wolf?

Amazon.com or any online retailer, and it’s still in some bookstores. You know—the places where you can actually see and hold the book before you buy it.

Any new books coming out?

I’ve got an idea for one, but I have to research it and see if it’s viable. If it is, it’ll take me a couple of years to finish it.

Any prospects of reviving the high school band?

I wish. I often think that if we’d kept that band together, we could’ve been one of the legendary American bands like Los Lobos or the Band or the Dead. We got together again about 20 years ago for a party, and we sounded great! But realistically, we’ll never play again. I don’t even play drums anymore. I’m a guitarist and singer now, and I dabble a bit in mandolin.

You can find more about the book, and about its authors, or to buy it, click here!

All Over St. Louis!

Chuck Berry will be doing a FREE concert in St. Louis on the 29th to support an effort to bring President Obama and the Democrats to that great (hot!) city for their 2012 Convention.   Read about it HERE.  President Obama:  He Deserves a Medal!

What He Helped Invent

School Day

Deep Feeling

Be patient!  It's great-- they listen to the real ting and try to learn it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsWoWkVwLjU&feature=related

Carmelo Sent Me This One (A Picture's Worth A Thousand Words!)

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/heardmentality/etc/i-was-at-the-hootenanny/

Havana (Funky) Moon

He hardly ever plays ANY of these songs.