Yesterday, after a lazy day, we got a preview of Wednesday's agenda, when we drove to dinner in very roundabout way. People who've been to St. Louis know that Blueberry Hill and The Pageant are on Delmar, a street of restaurants, small shops, and theaters just north of huge Forest Park (the "Central Park of the Mid-West"). Just north of Delmar is The Ville-- the African American neighborhood where Chuck Berry grew up, began performing, and became a star. We're going to tour some of the monuments of Chuck Berry land in a couple of days, but we took a detour on the way to dinner and found a couple of them by accident! The first was his old office-- a place I'd read about in his Autobiography, but knew visually from Peter Kaleta's myspace page. For those of you who don't know Peter, (I've never met him, but I know him), he's from Sweden but knows American music intimately. And he researches. And he documents. So when he came to the U.S. he knew exactly where to go to find the recording studios, and houses, the bars, the clubs, and the luminaries themselves. (There is a photo of him towering over Fats Domino, who looks about the size of a domino when standing next to Peter.) Anyway, from Peter's photo I knew three things: I knew the office was painted purple and yellow, and I knew it was on the eastern end of Dr. Martin Luther King (Avenue? Drive? Sorry-- don't know). So as we drove accross Martin Luther King, heading east, I kept my eyes open.
And there it was!
Photo by Peter Kaleta
Why should we care? Because he recorded "Memphis, Tennessee" there-- all by himself! (I've recently had some experience with home recording that makes this accomplishment seem even more improbably impossible!)
We had to do a U-Turn so that my brother could take a look, and after that we headed north a bit through the neighborhood.
If you're from the west coast of the U.S., like I am, some of these midwestern cities can be pretty hard to look at. As the U.S. industrial base disappears (replaced by low wage service jobs at Wendy's, Church's, and Wall-Mart) formerly proud cities have gone through incredibly tough times. Back in the early to mid-1990s I travelled frequently to Detroit and saw huge neighborhoods wiped out, with nothing but empty lots, half burned buildings, and the occasional house or small business sitting alone. A lot of The Ville looks just like that now. There are beautiful, big, brick houses falling in on themselves. Forests are returning where homes used to be. Here and there are places people live. I'm told it can be violent. It looks like it's a place where you can "enjoy" country living and big city fear all in one place.
But it wasn't always like that. I don't have his book with me, but as I recall Chuck Berry described a pretty good life in The Ville, with middle class and even upper middle class families living constructive, decent lives despite Jim Crow and all that brought.
They had jobs in the U.S. back then-- real ones, building cars, building buildings, building bridges-- stuff like that. Now the buildings are falling in on themselves, the bridges are rusting, and the jobs are all related to bad food and imported products from China.
But even in The Ville there are pockets. We got to one of those-- a place where there seemed to be some hope, and I saw a sign for "Cottage" (Street? Avenue? don't know.) I knew that was a street we'd be looking for in a day or two-- a street where there was a Chuck Berry home and also--and we turned a corner, and there it was-- Sumner High School.
Photo by Peter Kaleta
This picture is the street he ran down to. How can you beat that? This is a school that has produced an incredible number of famous figures. There's an article about it somewhere on this site-- use the search tool. Not long ago Chuck Berry surprised people there by showing up at a rally to save the school. (When you don't have good jobs, you don't have tax revenue, kids don't have hope, and schools go down hill. God help us!) He even played a song on a borrowed guitar.
It's an interesting place. Detroit has an East Coast feel to me; this place, driving along the central part of Dr. Martin Luther King, has touches of Clarksdale, too. Maybe someday it'll be back in lights. I hope so.
(Vote! And remember whose party Chuck Berry is trying to bring to town!)
In a lot of ways these little pictures work better than the flash. My camera just wasn't working with the natural light. I need someone to click the right menu option for me. Maybe I'll stop by a camera shop!
If I were a real writer and observer I’d know more about the room and I’d remember more about what I said and what he said. But I’m just a fan, and I was following Jim Marsala into a room where my lifelong hero was resting after a powerhouse show on the eve of his 84th birthday, so I was on automatic pilot, and nearly deaf, dumb and blind.
But here’s what I remember: I remember an 83 year old icon practically jumping from his comfortable chair to enthusiastically and graciously shake the hand of the 937,681st perfect stranger who has come to him for an audience.
I also remember in his book a few paragraphs about encountering fans like me. He said the one sort of greeting he didn’t like was from the sort of fan who began by reminding him that he’d shaken hands twenty or thirty years ago and blah-de-blah-de-blah.
So of course that’s what I did.
I told him that I shook his hand when I was 15, and that I first saw him perform when I was 14, and that it had changed my life.
I was there for two or three minutes. I said what I wanted to say in a voice that wavered once or twice. It was a pretty emotional experience for me. I’m not sure he could hear everything I said (I suspect his ears were ringing like a bell after an hour of performing) and it doesn’t matter. I wish I could remember more of the two or three minutes myself.
(There was a story I need to remember. When I told him I’d first seen him at 14, he told me that he’d done some work at the age of 14 in the lot that The Pageant was built on. “Right below this building!” Maybe it’s in the early chapters of his book. But my brain was too full to absorb everything that was happening.)
But what I remember was that generosity-- that gift that keeps returning as I write this blog: this time the generosity of an icon, an historic figure, one of the great artists of our time or any time; a man who told Tchaikovsky the news at his third or fourth recording session and lived up to it; who invented rock and roll as we know it; who taught the Beatles and the Stones and Dylan; who wrote the poetry of “Bye Bye Johnny,” “Nadine,” and “Memphis;” a man who is probably the most influential musician America has ever produced, and (along with B. B. King), one of the world’s two most influential guitarists; a man who toured the country heating his own food on a hot plate to avoid the back door of a restaurant, and who helped break down Jim Crow by playing music like "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" to kids and watching the rope that separated them fall to the ground for at least a little while.
A man old enough to be this old man’s father, who’d just played a knockout show; who was probably enjoying the quiet for a moment, thinking how far he'd travelled from the days he worked in a field buried beneath the stage he'd just performed on to thunderous cheers:
That man stood and greeted the 937,681st perfect stranger as if he mattered.
That’s what I remember, and that’s what I’ll never forget.
It's gonna take me a little while to find them. What do you say when you see something that wonderful? All I can say this minute is thanks, to Chuck Berry, to Charles, to Ingrid, to Jimmy, to Bob, to Keith, to Charles III, and to Joe Edwards. Check back in a little bit, and I'll have more.
Technical difficulties and a bad photographer are causing problems. Doug and Peter, we need you here. Anyway, you won't be able to give away the secret, because I can't download it. But here are a few dark pictures from the sound check. Gotta go!
Somehow or another, we managed to arrive in the Delmar Loop just in time for sound check at The Pageant-- and Bob Lohr was nice enough to track us down and let us in! I posted an article the other day saying that The Pageant was one of the best music venues in the country. I think that article was telling the truth! It is a beautiful place, and the sound check sounded very, very good. Can't wait to tell you more-- but hey, you'll have to check back. We're gonna eat and run BACK for the show!
(This is a repeat of my first post from back in March. I expect to see this marker again sometime this week. Time to remember my first visit.)
In the spring and summer of 1978 I drove an ailing Fiat 128 across the country from Seattle to the East Coast and back. On the way home-- in hot summer-- I stopped in the small town of Wentzville, Missouri, and asked how to find Berry Park.
“The Promised Land!”
Many years prior I had read about it in Ramparts magazine. A writer-- Michael Lydon-- had gone there for a promised interview. He was sent packing. According to the article, the owner of the park, the great Chuck Berry, had met him for a moment, changed his mind about doing an interview, told him “Standing in the sun ain’t my shot,” refunded the guy’s money, and left.
I knew that article because I was insane. A “Mad Lad.” I was obsessed with Chuck Berry. I had first seen him on television, without much interest, and then live, in an empty hall, and then on records that I played again and again, a revelation every time.
I spent hours at the library searching through magazines and books for anything that I could find about the man. This was before the internet. I’d search old Billboards by hand. My eyes are still quick to spot a five letter word starting with “Ch”-- especially if it's in proximity to another five letter word that begins with "B."
When I drove to Wentzville I was hoping to find the quasi-commercial establishment described in Ramparts, where I recalled some mention of a hot dog and Coke. I was hoping for a “House of Blue Lights,” with “friers,” with “broilers,” with hamburgers sizzling “on an open grill,” and where, perhaps, (if I had the money,) I could get a “T-bone steak a la carty.”
I was hoping to see Chuck Berry walk past, tall and lanky in purple pants and a green paisley sports coat, silver bolo tie, white belt and white leather shoes.
In my heart of hearts I was hoping he’d recognize me as a long lost, genetically inferior child; or that he’d adopt me; or that, at the very least, he’d invite me into his studio to play guitar with me, elicit my advice about future recordings, and maybe show me how to do a few of the licks I was having trouble with.
Or, at worst, refund my money and show me the door.
But when I got to Wentzville no one was very sure what Berry Park was or where to find it. I remember at a gas station near the interstate one attendant consulted another.
"The rock singer's place?"
He pointed vaguely. "Down that road a couple miles, I think."
“Down the Road a Piece,” he might have said.
This probably wouldn’t happen now, but it was 1978, several years after Berry’s last hit record, and a few years before he’d become a national landmark despite—well it doesn’t matter.
After a couple more stops for directions (I remember a little general store with warm Coke and bags of feed and a man who drawled “The negro singer?” before pointing the way) I found it, across the road from a gun club.
There was a chain link fence and granite marker (a tombstone) with the words:
Berry Park
By the Family, For the People.
I was hoping I was one of the people, but the park didn't look very commercial. No Coca Cola in the offing. No friers. No broilers. No juke joint.
I remember a long, straight blacktop drive, and flat land, a house painted brick red, and further left, some low buildings.
But I was there, and some irrational part of me was still hoping I could hang out a while, meet Mr. Berry or at least see him.
So I pulled my old Fiat into the driveway and motorvated slowly maybe half the distance to the house before thinking: "This is not a commercial establishment."
That's when, as they say in Maybellene, “Motor got hot and wouldn’t do no more.”
It was, as I said, a Fiat; an old one; tired from a long journey; and it was at least 95 degrees and 90 percent humidity.
I turned the key again and again, panicking, beginning to drip sweat, battery fading, dignity disappearing, when finally a woman came out of the house.
"What do you want?" she asked, not too nicely.
I was quite lame.
"Is he here?"
"He's not," she said. I probably stood there looking dumb.
"You need to leave," she said. I tried starting the car again but that wasn't going to happen-- so I so I put my shoulder to the B-pillar and pushed it back out the driveway. I parked it (fittingly) next to the tombstone out front. I’m not sure how long I was out there, but only long enough to let the motor cool down. Then off to a KOA in the flat grasslands of Missouri where I set up my pup tent on the hot grass and slept off my shame.
Chuck Berry is my idol. I told him so when I was 14 or 15 and got to shake his hand. (When I was 53 I changed it to "hero." The man renders me dumb, both ways.)
I was a late comer to the music. I wasn’t even born when he first saw Maybelenne in the Coupe de Ville. My Chuck Berry was middle aged (40 something, going on 30 something), a guitar virtuoso and showman who traveled alone, making do with pickup musicians, still making good records and always making people laugh and dance.
His draw is mysterious. It’s like he dipped deeply into the Missouri and pulled up what makes America good and interesting. There’s blues. There’s country. There’s a bit of jazz. There’s experience. There’s black, white, Hispanic. There’s stubbornness and trouble. There's humour. There's youth. There’s family.
This blog is about Chuck Berry. Not his life story, which he has told and others have documented. This is just about one fan's appreciation.
I understand this writers' regret. AND I understand his frequent use of the word "dang!" And I understand the haunting question: What WAS I doing that night?? What? What? What? Wolfgang-- if it's not on the list, this is a good one to add: http://www.lfpress.com/blogs/brandnewblog/2010/10/13/15676041.html. (P.S.: vaguely confused by the simultaneous use of "London" and a dollar sign I did some sleuthing and learned that this London is London, Ontario, Canada.)
Bob Dylan, Kanye West, Kings of Leon, Lenny Kravitz, Green Day, P. Diddy, the White Stripes, Nelly, Wilco, T.I., Mo’Nique, the Black Crowes, OutKast, Erykah Badu, Sonic Youth and Willie Nelson have all played The Pageant. Chuck Berry opened it. And this Saturday, he'll celebrate his “Watching Chuck Berry, Charles Berry Jr. and Charles Berry III playing is always great and heartwarming,” says pageant owner Joe Edwards in this article from stltoday.
Hope it happens again. If it does (and the article says it might,) I'll tell you all about it.
On Saturday I'll be catching a 6 o'clock in the morning plane to St. Louis-- or to some hub on the way. My wife-- ever supportive-- is driving me to the airport. (She has rehearsals and can't go.) That evening I'll see the first of TWO Chuck Berry shows in less than a week, the first at The Pageant, and the next one at Blueberry Hill.
I've said at least three times that I was off to see my "last" Chuck Berry show. The first time was at the Seattle Paramount in the late 1980s. The next time at Seattle's EMP in the late 1990s. Then, again, at Blueberry Hill in 2009. Now I'm breaking the once a decade last Chuck Berry show pattern by seeing him TWICE in 2010, with no prediction that it's my last show. After all, if I live to be 100, and he lives forever, I could have another five or ten chances.
Anyway, stay tuned. I'm going to learn how to use my funky little camera in the dark, and I'm going to take a laptop, and I'm gonna take you along on a five night trip to old St. Lou.
If you're a Chuck Berry fan you've doubtless found the website http://www.chuckberry.de/. It's full of information, links, news stories, photos and tour information about Chuck Berry and about a lot of other musicians. I've never met the author of the site, Wolfgang Guhl, but I've e-mailed him, and I've been happy that he's responded to my e-mails by adding several dates to his list of Chuck Berry shows, including shows in Sacramento, Lake Tahoe, and Puyallup, Washington. And now I'm even happier-- because Wolfgang did this wonderful GoHeadOnexclusive :) "Interview!" It's another good one. Enjoy!
(Below: Wolfgang with Jerry Lee Lewis' bandleader Kenneth Lovelace in Paris, 2004.)
Where do you live and what do you do there?
I am now 27 years old, live in Munich, Germany and work as an accountant. I finished my vocational training as a “Management Assistant in Wholesale and Foreign Trade” in 2006 and am now working on my Bachelor degrees in Educational Science and Psychology beside my job.
Do you remember when you first got interested in Chuck Berry and his music? What was it that got you?
That’s very difficult to say. I remember loving music already as a real small child. I remember checking out my parents’ Vinyl collection. They collected mostly LPs by the likes of The Rolling Stones, and I liked to listen to it. In a way this was Chuck Berry’s music. As soon as I was able to read I checked out the writers’ credits and noticed that many songs were written by a certain “Chuck Berry.”
I wanted to know who this man was. Even at the time I thought it was unbelievable that one man would write such an amount of fantastic songs. I did not understand the lyrics at the time, but the beat, the beat got me. I remember being in the Netherlands on holidays with my parents and us going on a shopping trip. I told them it was about time I got a CD by this mysterious “Chuck Berry”, so we went to a record shop. There were literally tons of albums by The Rolling Stones and Elvis Presley, those guys, who played these “Berry songs” but a Chuck Berry album was incredibly hard to find. But eventually we succeeded in getting one. It was a “Best Of”-Album featuring, as the title implies, mainly his greatest hits. The cover picture seemed to show a white man. I am serious they changed the color of his skin for the front cover, which made me assume that Chuck Berry was indeed white. We are talking about a CD here, which was bought in the Netherlands around 1992.
You would not expect racism in such a tolerant place at that time in history. But it goes to show that racism is ever-present even though it is probably not as present as it used to be.
Needless to say I loved the music on the CD.
Next thing I remember was seeing “Hail! Hail! Rock’n’Roll” a little later on German television. I remember doing all kind of favors to my parents and in return they promised that I would be allowed to watch some Chuck Berry on television. From the first minute I saw this movie I was spellbound. This was the first time I realized he was a black man, but it never mattered to me at all. To me you are either good or bad at something. Not black or white.
Anyway, his charisma seemed to pour out of the television screen and he appeared to have a ball on stage like no other musician I ever saw before or since. His obvious love to the music and incredible showmanship was that got me and still gets me. The silly arguments with Keith Richards, which many like to discuss over and over even today, did not interest me at all. I watched for the music and that’s what this move in essence is all about: MUSIC.
Have you seen him live? How often? Tell us about some of your favorite live performances.
I have travelled to 73 Chuck Berry live shows all Europe from 1997 to 2008. I do not know of anyone, who has travelled to more Chuck Berry concerts than me (except for certain band members). And most of the time I paid for ticket and travel arrangements. It was a massive amount of money, but as Bruce Springsteen states “We learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school.” I can only second that. Now imagine how much you learn from seeing 73 full concerts! Most of his shows were wonderful, very few were the absolute opposite. The special thing about seeing Chuck Berry live is that this man’s soul seems to flow directly through his fingers to the guitar and out of his mouth. He always performs what he feels like, which makes every show unique. Even though the questions asks after “favorite live performances” I would like to give you two positive and one negative example(s), as Chuck Berry represents both sides, which make him the legend he is and every show an exciting experience.
Munich 1998
The best show I have ever seen Chuck Berry put on was in Munich, Germany 1998. I remember him seeing him for the first time the year before in Essen, Germany (with Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard on the same bill). I was so excited about this Essen show I cannot tell. Back then there was no internet and I had no idea the man was still performing. I was a kid and thought 70 which he was at the time was incredibly old. I remember opening the concert magazine “Live in Concert” and it showed an ad of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard performing together. I could not believe it. Tears were streaming down my face (& still do today when I think of it). The legendary Chuck Berry was still performing and on top of that Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard were there, too. The show was titled “Legends of Rock ’n’ Roll” and it was Rock ’n’ Roll Heaven. In Essen, Jerry Lee and Richard put on much stronger shows than Chuck, who was having an off-night (which did not bother me; I was thrilled to see him and my body was shaking due to nervosity).
Then I thought of Chuck as an old man, who just could not do any better, and I expected a similar show the next year in my hometown Munich when he, Jerry Lee and Richard would return. How wrong my assumption was to be.
In Munich, Chuck closed and put on a show like I have never seen again. His guitar was strong, so was the voice. He duckwalked across the stage several times. The intensity of the show was completely out of this world. People in the huge arena were dancing on their seats, many were crying tears of joy.
(Editors note: Can't find video of the 1998 Munich show, but nine years later-- we find Chuck Berry playing bass in Munich until his guitar gets fixed. "The show must go on." Never saw that before! (although we all heard it once on "Memphis.")
Another special show I saw was Lille 2005. I was surrounded by many people even younger than my age (I was 21 by now). They expected to see a legend, but old granddad shuffling on the stage. Well, what can I say? He rocked with the energy of a 20-year old. These guys could not believe what they were seeing. About 25 minutes into the show Chuck fell over a monitor behind him, falling to the ground accidentally. He did not move for a while and I feared something serious could have happened to him. Promoters rushed towards him to see what had happened. While they stood around him (he was playing “Memphis”), all of a sudden I could hear his guitar playing the “Memphis” riff. He played it, laying on the floor, eyes closed. Then he got up as if nothing had happened and proceeded exactly where he was forced to stop before:
“Last time I saw Marie she’s waving me good-bye
With hurry home drops on her cheek that trickled from her eye
Marie is only six years old, information please
Try to put me through to her in Memphis Tennesssee.”
Hmm, all of a sudden I feel like not wanting to report about the bad experiences anymore…
You’ve got a website about the man. When did you start it? What’s your goal with it?
I started www.chuckberry.de in 1999. The first ever website was created by a fan from New Zealand in 1997. It kept it going for only about two months though. Jerry Lee Lewis (by Anders Umegard and Thomas Sobczak) and Little Richard (by Timo Reijola) had great fan respectively semi-official sites at the time, which kept fans up-to-date. A Chuck Berry page of that sort was missing until I filled the gap. I was a fan and consequently knew exactly what fans were looking for. The foundations of the website until today (11 years and around 800,000 visitors later…) are as follows:
- providing the web’s most up-to-date Chuck Berry news
- providing the most up-to-date concert information on Chuck Berry and related artists
- providing information on how to get tickets for Chuck Berry shows
- concert reviews
- the web’s largest Chuck Berry Picture Gallery
Another rule is that unlike other sites of that kind I would publish everything about Berry and allow all considered views on the man, whether good or bad.
Have you met him? Tell us about that.
I would not call it “meeting”, but I have travelled on the same train and plane as him and slept in the same hotels while on tour. I remember once getting out of a elevator at a Denmark hotel. There was a huge man standing in front of it and I stepped on his toes. The funny thing was it was HIM, who apologized (even though I stepped on his toes). I slowly began to realize it was Chuck Berry. In general and unlike his stage shows, he appears to be a very quiet man. I also remember sitting right next to him on a couch at a Luxembourg hotel. I have never seen him talking much to people and I suspect very few people have ever met him if you know what I mean even though he hardly ever use bodyguards and is rather easy to approach.
You seem to follow a lot of other artists—who are some of your favorites?
I have an open ear and heart to everyone, who plays the in a similar spirited way as Chuck Berry, whether this includes his contemporaries like Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Bo Diddley or people who were heavily influenced by him like Bruce Springsteen. Every kind of music that comes from the soul is close to my soul.
One of my favorite things on your website is the “tour” information for various artists. I found the Elton John concert that I attended in 1971! But what I appreciate most is that you have added dates to the Chuck Berry lists. Where do you find them?
When it comes to dates pre-1995, I get dates from people like yourself from time to time. But most of all Paul MacPhail and Morten Reff have been a boost to my data collecting operations. Check out these people’s books. You are in for a treat. They got massive archives.
More recent dates are collected from virtually every ticket office, agent, promoter in the world. I am checking hundreds of sources daily to supply y’all with the most updated Concert Information on the net. Few people know that for many years I worked for Pollstar, the music business’ biggest magazine, as the only source they would accept outside of the concert industry (agents, promoters, venues, artist representatives). When it comes to tour dates, I know my way around. Ain’t no fooling ‘ya!
Let’s imagine you had an hour to drive and talk to Mr. Berry—what would you want to talk about?
Now this is very unlikely to ever happen, but if I had the chance, I would ask him what his major goals in life were/are and why.
Litigation arhtritis sitting down at some of the longest, worst depositions I've ever attended, with question after question good for about as much as they said war was.
For a couple months now I've been slogging through the most miserable work experience I can remember-- and I see no hope or sign of it letting up. Imagine a bunch of lawyers behaving badly. Imagine them behaving worse. Multiply it by three. (None of this is hard, right?)
The truth is, I've always enjoyed my work well enough. There are horrid moments, horrid days, horrid weeks and some pretty spectacularly horrid people. But I'm often amazed how well it ultimately works, and how well we all ulitmately get along. Even lawyers. (I remember after one long case and trial the lawyers on the other side all hugged us like the guys in an old Budweiser ad even though we'd obviously just kicked the (*&;^ out of them and their case. "We love ya, man," is how it felt. Years later we found out they had been withholding critical documents throughout the trial and the two years prior. They don't love us so much anymore.)
But these are dark times. Day after day I find myself surrounded by small minded, paranoid nitwits with slight minds bent on hiding truth through sleight of some very slow hands.
But soon, I will board a plane, half asleep, and snooze towards St. Louis to be born, again. And again four nights later!
Ah Mr. Berry! It may be your birthday, but it's starting to feel like mine.
I love the movie "Sideways," possibly because it involves a dour, pudgy, middle-aged guy who drinks too much wine then somehow meets a lovely woman-- but also (waking from his derranged revery) because it's funny. And one funny part is when the guy's friend tells a woman they meet that he does voiceovers for car ads. He starts to rattle on in a low, glossy voice about "low, low prices" and she says "You sound like one of those guys!" And he says, "I am one of those guys!"
Well, it turns out they have those guys in Brazil, too!
I guess it has to start with "Wee Wee Hours.” How else? It was the fourth song on my first Chuck Berry record, and the second side he released-- maybe first in his heart at the time. It’s got such a great sound: smokey voice, huge bass, a rippling piano that goes half mad, and steady, wet sounding drums. The guitar is understated, half hidden by the drums, which are right up front with the singing. (They were making this for the big beat generation). The lyrics are simple and great, full of the regret and loss that fill so many of Chuck Berry’s best music. If there was ever a time Chuck Berry got close to the Nat King cool that he longed for, this might have been it. And if he’d never been a rock and roll star, this one might have lived on as a minor blues classic.
After that, for me, it’s “Deep Feeling.” I remember an older friend who heard this one in the mid-1970s on a blues radio show. Transfixed, and then bowled over when he learned it was Chuck Berry. It’s a totally unique sound, somehow stuck between Delta Blues, Roy Rogers, and Dick Dale. It’s slide guitar with a real melody. They say Hubert Sumlin’s on it somewhere (anyway, I think Hubert Sumlin has said that Hubert Sumlin is on it,) evidently playing the rhythm guitar in the background. The piano is ever present. The drums are in the background now.
Berry did a similar number several times, but never in my mind as memorably until the closing scene of “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll!” when the camera floats across a decrepit swimming pool to find CB playing his old steel guitar again. I think the melody there is closer to the version called “Surfin’ Steel,” but it’s a desolate, stark version that matches the mixed feelings you feel towards the end of that movie.
The next one, for me, is “I Got a Booking,” Chuck Berry’s reworking of "Key to the Highway." He's modern and cool. Almost cold.
I got a booking, with the Airline
Packed up and prone to go
I’m gonna leave here by plane darlin’
Because railway is much too slow.
I’m going back to my home town
Where I’m better known
Cause you haven’t done nothin’ darlin’
But ruined a happy home.
The song opens with a blues intro I credit to Berry. Maybe it’s borrowed-- but I haven’t heard it anywhere else. It’s pretty much the same figure that begins some other favorites, like his 1972 version of “Mean Old World.” Like a lot of the "Chuck Berry inn London" record, it's dominated by a wailing harmonica. But it's a hell of a blues song.
Then we go to Mercury, where he rcorded lots of blues. There are lots of interesting, slightly ragged blues on the "Live at the Fillmore" album, but my favorite is “It Hurts me Too.” Must be one of his favorite blues (along with Every Day, and Mean Old World, since he sings them a lot.) The Mercury records all suffer from what I think of as bad sound-- but listening again now, maybe I’m crazy. The Steve Miller band was a great backup, anyway, capable of the swing Chuck Berry needs, and the album is filled with raw, wonderful guitar.
“Have Mercy Judge” might be Chuck Berry’s best original blues song-- and it’s got to be one of the most literary blues ever written. The lyrics tell a wonderful story-- or rather, tell a horror story, wonderfully.
I go to court tomorrow morning
And I got the same judge I had before.
Lord and I know he won’t have no mercy on me
Cause he told me not to come back no more.
He’ll send me ‘way, to some stoney mansion
in a lonely room and lock the door.
Lord have mercy on my little Tulane
She’s too alive to try and live alone.
I know her needs and although she loves me
She’s gonna try and make it, while the poor boy’s gone.
(She can’t do it, no no no)
Somebody tell her to live, and I’ll understand it
And even love her more when I come back home.
This is a song written by the author of Memphis, Tennessee-- someone who knows how to put half a novel into a few verses. It's a song written in hard times. There's no question Chuck Berry knows what he’s talking about in this one. Like maybe he’s gone back, if not to the same judge, to the same courthouse, and that he’s been to the stoney mansion, that he’s lost Tulane. It’s a hell of a song. I think in his Autobiography he says he wrote the song “Tulane” in jail, which seems possible (people doubt it because they assume the novelties are drugs and that drugs are a 1960s phenomonon. But there’s more than one kind of forbidden fruit in this world; and anyway-- drugs have been around a long time.) But I wouldn't be surprised to learn he wrote this one there.
Chuck Berry’s toughest blues is "London Session’s" “Mean Old World.” (Chuck Berry must have liked Little Walter’s music a lot.) It starts with a similar riff to “I Got a Booking” then goes into some wonderful riffing on open E and A chords. The London Sessions album (and the Rocking Horse show taped a few weeks or months later) both show Chuck Berry playing some of his best guitar. The stuff on this song just kills me. Wild runs of triplets that just don’t stop, and the rest of it deceptively simple. There’s some great rock and roll drumming on the song.
Then there’s the one that got away-- my favorite of the moment, "Annie Lou," from the "Have Mercy" collection. It’s just Chuck Berry and a guitar. There’s a bit more static than you’d want-- but what a beautiful record. Fred Rothwell called it an “intimate” blues. That’s it exactly. You feel like you’re in Chuck Berry’s living room on a night when he’s playing something for a friend. I wish it had been released back in the early 1970s when it was recorded. It would have blown minds and shaken preconceptions about who Chuck Berry is.
He once told some magazine or another: “Look I ain’t no big shit." Then he compared himself unfavorably to Muddy Waters.
Nadine, Maybellene, Tulane, Sweet Little Sixteen-- Hey, the lesson is clear: if you want people to pay attention, write about women! Or rather, let the women speak! Never had so many readers until I asked a few questions of Karen, Judy, and Ida May!
to the editor of Rolling Stone in the most recent issue, a couple recognizing that Chuck Berry deserved the cover more than some naked TV stars, and all of which recognized his proper place in the history of our music and culture. Nice to see! And for fans of the Killer-- a short piece on Jerry Lee Lewis and his new record.
Everything just changed! Mercury retrograde is over! (Yes, I "dabble into" astrology!) As it turns out, and thanks to quick, impulsive thinking by my brother Paul, I'll see BOTH St. Louis birthday shows!
I got a booking
With the airline
Packed up and prone to go
I'm gonna leave hear by plane, Mr. Berry
'Cause railway is much too slow!
