Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Brown Eyed Handsome Man
People always leave out the best verse-- "Arrested on charges of unemployment!"
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Best of the Biggest: Howlin' Wolf
Sometimes you buy bargain records that are complete horsepucky. I remember picking up a “Jimi Hendrix” record for a dollar or so from a supermarket rack. The notes were by some French guy who wrote that “Jimi laughed ecstatically when he heard what we had created.” I’m sure he laughed, all right. (If he’d seen my face when I heard it he would have laughed harder.)
But sometimes you get what they say you’re going to get.
“Best of the Biggest” was a musical education in the blues and R & B. It had two songs each by Ray Charles, B. B. King, Elmore James, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, and Bobby Bland. And these weren’t filler. One of B. B. King’s selections was “Rock Me Baby.” John Lee Hooker was represented by “Boogie Chillen.” Bobby Bland had “Drifting from Town to Town.”
Elmore James—well, they kind of sort of cheated by giving us “Dust My Blues” instead of “Dust My Broom.” It must have been an effort to avoid copyright problems-- but it was the same dang song.
And anyway, 12 songs, 66 cents. That’s 3 cents a piece!
So I felt I had a bargain there even after I peeled off the label and found that I had been cheated by 22 cents. (You can figure it in today’s dollar by knowing that in 1971, assuming I could drive, I could have bought a gallon of discount gas for 25 cents. Or, maybe, one McDonald’s cheeseburger.)
Anyway, I still love that album. At the time it was an education. I knew B. B. and Ray Charles, but I didn’t know any of the rest of them—so it represented my very first exposure to Elmore James, John Lee Hooker, Bobby Bland, and my favorite at the time, Howlin’ Wolf.
As I say, I didn’t know Howlin’ Wolf. I was a kid from the suburbs. The sticks, at that point. But he was there, waiting for me, at Rasco Tempo.
I did know Wolfman Jack—the late night DJ we could hear playing old songs on long trips. You had to be further out in the sticks to hear him broadcast on 50,000 watt clear channel radio stations from far away that felt like visitations from outer space. Wolfman Jack would later become mainstream famous—a television celebrity—but at the time he was a ragged, pinched, nasal voice of mystery on late night radio.
He was Howlin’ Wolf’s voice, simplified, without the music or the soul or the power. He took Howlin' Wolf's voice, or tried to.
He didn't get it, of course. But Wolfman Jack probably played a lot of Howlin' Wolf in his day.
Recently I read “Moanin’ at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin’ Wolf,” by James Segrest and Mark Hoffman. It’s a great book with a great cover shot of Wolf’s face, close up, dragging on a cigarette and about to grab it with his pointer and thumb. Here's a website for the authors: http://www.howlinwolf.com/
Flipping through the photographs inside the book I learned, with a bit of melancholy, that one of Howlin’ Wolf’s last performances was a mile or so from where I’m sitting, at Sick’s Stadium, a minor league (and for one year, major league) stadium that I only saw once or twice when first visited Seattle (and which was then razed to build a concrete box that is now a home improvement store). The show happened a couple of years before I moved to Seattle, so I couldn’t have been there-- but it seems so close.
The song I used to love on “Best of the Biggest” was called “Riding in the Moonlight,” a seriously crazy and wonderful blues romp where Howlin’ Wolf asks his baby to “ride with daddy tonight.” ("Oh baby! I'm'o give you an auto-mobile!") I have played it thousands of times over the decades. Wolf sounds almost like he’s growling through an old fashioned megaphone, with drums echoing from a trash can. The guitar is close to shredding the speakers. The harmonica is wailing with a kind of crazy zazoo band feel. It’s a record that introduced me to everything Taj Mahal was trying to do in his great first album. It’s a record that has me riding along with Wolf and his baby, a participant/observer, wind in my hair, shivers up my spine, neon lights flashing in the darkness, a little worried about the girl, but knowing she’s in it voluntarily with a grin on her face.
I played this song for someone a month or so ago, after he told me he liked Howlin’ Wolf. I think it worried him.
What thrills me now, reading the biography, is knowing for the first time that it was the first song he recorded as a demo; with Sam Phillips; that he recorded it again with Phillips just a few weeks later; and that the version on “Best of the Biggest” was recorded for the Bihari brothers a few months after that. He recorded it three times in a year! That’s how good it was.
My copy cost me 3 cents, when Wolf was still alive.
The Bihari brothers paid Wolf $25 for it.
And he played one of his last shows, sick as can be, about a mile from here, after treatment up the hill at the old veterans’ hospital.
The world is a mystery as deep as Wolf himself.
Here's a version of 'Dust My Broom" from a man who used to travel with Robert Johnson AND Elmore James.
Down Bound Train
You know, he ignores too many of his own songs! Here's a Brittish "skiffle" version.
You Can't catch me
My wife just gave me this terrible movie! (Another song that gets ignored in live shows.)
Don't Get Me No Consolation
Chuck Berry never gave this one the live attention it deserves-- a good little country song. So we'll use this guy's version.
I Sit Alone and Think of you...
After a chorus of "Beer Drinking Woman" he gets into "Wee Wee Hours." This might not be the best version, but het gets serious about it just before the match trick.
This flip side of Maybellene
Personally I like this version, posted by French Super Fan Red Chuck (a guitarist himself). Hope it works. My computer's having some trouble with it.
This flip side of Maybellene
Personally I like this version, posted by French Super Fan Red Chuck (a guitarist himself). Hope it works. My computer's having some trouble with it.
A Very Good Place to Start
It occurred to me just now that it might be fun to put 'em up in order. And this 1973 version of Maybellene, during the height of Chuck Berry's post London Sessions revival, is just about perfect. It's got everything. First, watch Chuck play "stump the band" on national teenage primetime television. There's no backup at all for at least ten seconds. The bass player looks to the piano player. No one plays. They're trying to guess the key. Then you hear some tinkling keys and the bass player starts relaxing. I'm not sure even the drummer starts for the first several bars.
Then you get a great duckwalk, a great (and pretty authentic) solo, and even the extra verse.
I remember this as the glory days. My hero (I had discovered him just a few years prior) had made yet another comback. He was the big thing. Of course, he still is.
Then you get a great duckwalk, a great (and pretty authentic) solo, and even the extra verse.
I remember this as the glory days. My hero (I had discovered him just a few years prior) had made yet another comback. He was the big thing. Of course, he still is.
The Promised Land
The Promised Land hits enough southern locales-- Norfolk, Virginia; Raleigh in North Carolina, Rockhill, South Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia just to get started—that it should probably be required reading in high school geography. In his autobiography Berry says he wrote the song in prison. “I remember having extreme difficulty while writing “Promised Land” in trying to secure a road atlas of the United States to verify the routing of the Po’ Boy from Norfolk, Virginia to Los Angeles.”
Maybe the song should be heard in history class, too. When he gets close to Montgomery, Alabama, there’s something like a bus boycott-- struggle and a breakdown, anyway. (Things are always breaking down in Chuck Berry songs-- something that makes them so real.)
Had motor trouble
That turned into a struggle
Half way across Alabam’
And that ‘hound broke down
And left us all stranded
In downtown Birmingham
It might mean nothing that Berry was released from prison a month after the white terrorist bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church in September 1963, a landmark event in the civil rights struggle, or that the song was recorded a few months later— but check the glint in his eye in this clip, which is so true to the record that I’m betting it was recorded soon after the record came out.
Maybe the song should be heard in history class, too. When he gets close to Montgomery, Alabama, there’s something like a bus boycott-- struggle and a breakdown, anyway. (Things are always breaking down in Chuck Berry songs-- something that makes them so real.)
Had motor trouble
That turned into a struggle
Half way across Alabam’
And that ‘hound broke down
And left us all stranded
In downtown Birmingham
It might mean nothing that Berry was released from prison a month after the white terrorist bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church in September 1963, a landmark event in the civil rights struggle, or that the song was recorded a few months later— but check the glint in his eye in this clip, which is so true to the record that I’m betting it was recorded soon after the record came out.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Nadine, Maybellene and Tulane: Ain't Man Enough For You!
I tried to name my daughter Tulane.
Didn’t work—although years later she adopted it as her name for at least a few hours.
I thought about Maybellene, but it seemed a little hard core.
What I love about Chuck Berry’s women is how unapologetically freewheeling and independent they all are—always just disappearing over the hill, over the counter or into a downtown cab.
Take Tulane.
Johnny jumped the counter
But he stumbled and fell
Tulane made it over
Johnny fell to the yell
Go head on, Tulane
He can’t catch up to you
Go Tulane!
He ain’t man enough for you!
Tulane seemed like a good role model for my daughter—a girl who can jump the counter and outrun the law. (Not that I wanted her to have any such troubles. My other thought at the time was Jackie, for the Jackie Joyner Kersey I’d just seen jumping hurdles and running faster than I could imagine. But she wound up as Jade, from a book someone had brought to the hospital about a girl in San Francisco.)
When Johnny winds up in prison, he’s singing the blues fondly.
Lord have mercy on my little Tulane
She’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.
Compare that to Chuck’s youthful progeny Mick and John, who wrote “Under My Thumb” and “Run for your Life,” or Joe, who’s marching unstoppably down the street with a gun. It took years for John Lennon to start over.
Nadine and Maybellene were always disappearing in Cadillacs. Did he care? Yes, sure—it made chase them harder. He gunned the motor, prayed for rain, and caught Maybellene at the top of the hill. And it made him shop for a Cadillac of his own—a yellow convertible four door De Ville.
Even Sweet Little Sixteen has a life of her own—manipulating mom and dad, running to and fro for autographs, wearing lipstick and tight dresses (or, in later years, miniskirts, hot pants, or tight jeans), driving the cats wild. Little Queenie, looking like a model on the cover of a magazine, gets him thinking. Carol motivates him to learn to dance.
Even little Marie is out of reach.
Nadine has some of the most vivid poetry.
It was written in prison sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Incarceration can probably give a man a vivid imagination. When Chuck Berry was in prison for tax problems in the late 1970s he wrote his autobiography and admits that “It may be obvious that the book displays certain longings…”.
Nadine is like a vision from the prison window—tall, tantalizing, a wayward summer breeze, but always just out of reach. No Cadillac of his own, he sees her from the city bus.
…when she turned and doubled back
And started walking toward a coffee colored Cadilac
I was pushin’ through the crowd trying to get to where she’s at
I was campaign shoutin’ like a southern diplomat
Nadine! Honey is that you?
Can’t you see her now?
Lord have mercy!
Didn’t work—although years later she adopted it as her name for at least a few hours.
I thought about Maybellene, but it seemed a little hard core.
What I love about Chuck Berry’s women is how unapologetically freewheeling and independent they all are—always just disappearing over the hill, over the counter or into a downtown cab.
Take Tulane.
Johnny jumped the counter
But he stumbled and fell
Tulane made it over
Johnny fell to the yell
Go head on, Tulane
He can’t catch up to you
Go Tulane!
He ain’t man enough for you!
Tulane seemed like a good role model for my daughter—a girl who can jump the counter and outrun the law. (Not that I wanted her to have any such troubles. My other thought at the time was Jackie, for the Jackie Joyner Kersey I’d just seen jumping hurdles and running faster than I could imagine. But she wound up as Jade, from a book someone had brought to the hospital about a girl in San Francisco.)
When Johnny winds up in prison, he’s singing the blues fondly.
Lord have mercy on my little Tulane
She’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.
Compare that to Chuck’s youthful progeny Mick and John, who wrote “Under My Thumb” and “Run for your Life,” or Joe, who’s marching unstoppably down the street with a gun. It took years for John Lennon to start over.
Nadine and Maybellene were always disappearing in Cadillacs. Did he care? Yes, sure—it made chase them harder. He gunned the motor, prayed for rain, and caught Maybellene at the top of the hill. And it made him shop for a Cadillac of his own—a yellow convertible four door De Ville.
Even Sweet Little Sixteen has a life of her own—manipulating mom and dad, running to and fro for autographs, wearing lipstick and tight dresses (or, in later years, miniskirts, hot pants, or tight jeans), driving the cats wild. Little Queenie, looking like a model on the cover of a magazine, gets him thinking. Carol motivates him to learn to dance.
Even little Marie is out of reach.
Nadine has some of the most vivid poetry.
It was written in prison sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Incarceration can probably give a man a vivid imagination. When Chuck Berry was in prison for tax problems in the late 1970s he wrote his autobiography and admits that “It may be obvious that the book displays certain longings…”.
Nadine is like a vision from the prison window—tall, tantalizing, a wayward summer breeze, but always just out of reach. No Cadillac of his own, he sees her from the city bus.
…when she turned and doubled back
And started walking toward a coffee colored Cadilac
I was pushin’ through the crowd trying to get to where she’s at
I was campaign shoutin’ like a southern diplomat
Nadine! Honey is that you?
Can’t you see her now?
Lord have mercy!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
A Funeral in Lome, Togo
I once lived in Togo, West Africa and remember going to (and hearing) many all night "funerals." During one of those funerals, which was taking place next door to my house, I had a dream that Bo Diddley had shown up in town and was playing. No wonder: Togolese funerals are in part festive affairs, with all night drumming and dancing. The drums thunder. The voices chant and cheer. And in the background of some of those songs, you hear the cowbells playing the familiar Bo Diddley beat. It's not a sound that sprang from nowhere. It was passed, through generations, to Bo.
You don't hear that particular beat in these funeral shots from the captial city of Lome, Togo-- but you'll get an idea where rock and roll came from!
You don't hear that particular beat in these funeral shots from the captial city of Lome, Togo-- but you'll get an idea where rock and roll came from!
Who do you love? (Hey, Bo Diddley!)
(He's a Man! Man enough to have a woman on guitar!)
I saw Chuck and Bo together and separately lots of times-- and twice I saw them together on stage, but only on film and tv. The film was "Let The Good Times Roll"-- a great one from the 1970s that is evidently locked up by copyright problems. Too bad. A clip is below. My favorite part is when the the band stops. You hear Chuck doing one of his famous riffs and Bo throwing in his trademark rhythm skills. Perfect! The two also played togather in a spectacular television performance around the time that Chuck's London Sessions was a big hit.
(I mentioned my brother Stevo in an earlier post. Stevo once spent a few minutes with Bo Diddley. There was a concert at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium in the late 60s. Stevo couldn't get in. Maybe he didn't have the money. He did, however, have a bottle of wine, and sat for a while outside a stage door drinking his wine and carrying on for the crowd. Out steps Bo Diddley. He sat with Stevo for a while and talked-- about what we'll never know. But Stevo said he was very cool.
Stevo was a good match for Bo. One of Bo's last new albums showed him with a Harley. An old album showed him with a scooter. Stevo once led a group of Hells Angels through Sacramento on a borrowed mo-ped. Stevo and Bo had similar builds. And both had charisma. Once another brother was walking up to the Memorial Auditorium one night and found a huge crowd chanting "Stevo, Stevo, Stevo." Stevo stood and bowed, but said he was indisposed and couldn't do more. Your guess is as good as mine as to what they were expecting.)
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Rollin' Till the Break of Dawn
A decent looking new repackaging of 25 old songs, with a 20 page book, all for about $15. Not bad!Monday, July 12, 2010
A Fan (of this fan)
When I talk about Chuck Berry's "influence," I'm not just talking about his influence on Keith Richards, or Jimi Hendrix, or Eric Clapton, or John Lennon. I'm also talking about his influence on us, his every day fans. And his not so every day fans, like Peter Kaleta. Back by popular demand: an old post about an incredible fan.
Peter Kaleta, of Sweden, is a visual historian. He researches. He goes. He records and documents—beautifully.
His backyard is enough. (Must be a helluva backyard!) On his myspace site you’ll find pictures of wildflowers, deer, snow, slugs, hummingbirds-- even a clothespin. (These two are by his talented 12 year old daughter!)
I first “met” Peter on www.chuckberry.com/forum. Peter’s posts on the CB forum are marked by a photograph of Peter standing near the granite gravestone that marks the entrance to Berry Park in Wentzville. I have a soft spot for that marker. I still have an ancient snapshot of the same stone taken the day my Fiat died in Chuck Berry’s driveway—but I was alone that day, with an instamatic, so there’s no me in the picture. But I knew from Peter’s photograph that we shared something—if only the drive from St. Louis to Wentzville and whatever it is that drives a person to do that.
Peter's 38 years old. He lives in Sweden with his wife and daughter.
For Peter, the Chuck Berry thing began with a television show.
“Everything started back in 1981 when I was 11 years old. We had a Swedish TV program called “Rock Rullen” hosted by the Swedish Kings of Rock’n’Roll Jerry Williams and Svante Grundberg. They showed people how everything started in the 50’s using clips with Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and more. We didn’t have a video recorder then but it was favorite program and I saw it every week. After that I started to buy records with different 50’s artists, and I soon realized that Chuck not only sang my favorites, he also wrote them and he was most important artist of them all.”
Most of us would be satisfied with a record collection. Or seeing our hero in a few shows. Not Peter. 22 years after first seeing Chuck Berry on Swedish television he and his family head to the United States. For his wife and 12 year old daughter, one of the goals is to see a “killer whale show” somewhere in Texas. But this puts Peter in proximity to all sorts of the USA's best musical locations—Memphis, with Sun Records and Beale Street; Nashville; Clarksdale, Mississippi; and New Orleans.
Now, I recently went to Mississippi. I “researched” it by asking three people—my brother, and the owners of the Shack Up Inn-- what I should do. Most of the advice concerned eating (which suited me fine.) For the rest, I stumbled around, seeing what I saw, missing what I didn't see, and loving it anyway.
But Peter knows where to go and what to see. He plans it in advance! In Memphis he tracks down the Royal Recording Studio where Chuck Berry recorded “Back to Memphis” with the Memphis Horns. He goes to the crossroads in Clarksdale (even I found that!). And in New Orleans he does the most amazing thing of all.
He finds Fats Domino’s new home. He marches past the cars (poses with the Rolls!) and knocks on the door.
And Fats answers!
And poses!
And even sings a song to Peter’s daughter!
“He came out and sang “Hello Josephine” to our daughter and was very friendly to all of us. We took some pictures and drove back to French Quarter where we also met Cosimo Matassa, the former owner of the J & M Studio. Matassa recorded Fats Domino’s first recording in 1949.”
And then, eventually, off to St. Louis, via Route 66.
“We had been to Sea World in Texas and drove from Texas to St Louis on Route 66 with one stop at Days Inn in Oklahoma. When we first came to St. Louis I was in hurry because I wanted to see the concert at Blueberry Hill the same evening we arrived. I had my family with me and my 10 year old Daughter who wanted to see Chuck but it was impossible because of her age. We drove fast to the hotel and I took a taxi by myself to Blueberry Hill. My wife stayed at the hotel with my daughter. It was an evening I never will forget. My dream came true and I felt like Louis Armstrong on the moon!”
(Editor’s note: Peter meant “Neil Armstrong.” But I didn’t ask for clarification. I liked “Louis,” who fits as well or better. Louis— one of Chuck Berry’s rare peers in the world of musical genius-- showed his joy better than Neil, and once sang about the Moon in a way that strikes me as very fitting:
Moon river, wider than a mile
I’m crossing you in style some day
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you’re going, I’m going your way
Two drifters, off to see the world
There’s such a lot of world to see!
We’re after the same rainbow’s end, waitin’ ‘round the bend
My huckleberry friend, moon river, and me.
What song could be more appropriate to describe Peter Kaleta, off to see the world and rainbow's end?)
After the show Peter met his hero. “I met him that evening in August 8, 2007 after the show. I had some photographs with me from the recent Swedish tour that I gave him. He smiled and asked “So this is for me?” then I got my first autograph on a picture I got from a guy at Blueberry Hill same evening. I also met Charles before the show and he was very kind to me.”
Chuck Berry's former homes
his old office
his high school ("down the halls and into the street!")
And lots of other places. His collections of photographs are almost mind bggling. I've only just begun to explore them.
Kaleta explains how he found stuff.
“When [Chuck Berry's] biography came out in 1987, I bought the Swedish edition and started to read. I was 17 years old then and my dream was to see all the places he mentioned in the book. I did a list of places I wanted to see before our trip. We had a rental car with GPS so it was very easy to find everything and the journey began. I had to wait 22 years to do that but I did! We drove to Berry Park the day after the show to take some pictures. Berry Park and Blueberry Hill were the most interesting places for me to see in St Louis. I also wanted to see the Cosmo Club but the building was gone.”
A lot of those places will be gone some day, and most of us probably won't use the GPS to go find them. But we've got Peter's photographs.
Peter Kaleta, of Sweden, is a visual historian. He researches. He goes. He records and documents—beautifully.
His backyard is enough. (Must be a helluva backyard!) On his myspace site you’ll find pictures of wildflowers, deer, snow, slugs, hummingbirds-- even a clothespin. (These two are by his talented 12 year old daughter!)
I first “met” Peter on www.chuckberry.com/forum. Peter’s posts on the CB forum are marked by a photograph of Peter standing near the granite gravestone that marks the entrance to Berry Park in Wentzville. I have a soft spot for that marker. I still have an ancient snapshot of the same stone taken the day my Fiat died in Chuck Berry’s driveway—but I was alone that day, with an instamatic, so there’s no me in the picture. But I knew from Peter’s photograph that we shared something—if only the drive from St. Louis to Wentzville and whatever it is that drives a person to do that.
Peter's 38 years old. He lives in Sweden with his wife and daughter.
For Peter, the Chuck Berry thing began with a television show.
“Everything started back in 1981 when I was 11 years old. We had a Swedish TV program called “Rock Rullen” hosted by the Swedish Kings of Rock’n’Roll Jerry Williams and Svante Grundberg. They showed people how everything started in the 50’s using clips with Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and more. We didn’t have a video recorder then but it was favorite program and I saw it every week. After that I started to buy records with different 50’s artists, and I soon realized that Chuck not only sang my favorites, he also wrote them and he was most important artist of them all.”
Most of us would be satisfied with a record collection. Or seeing our hero in a few shows. Not Peter. 22 years after first seeing Chuck Berry on Swedish television he and his family head to the United States. For his wife and 12 year old daughter, one of the goals is to see a “killer whale show” somewhere in Texas. But this puts Peter in proximity to all sorts of the USA's best musical locations—Memphis, with Sun Records and Beale Street; Nashville; Clarksdale, Mississippi; and New Orleans.
Now, I recently went to Mississippi. I “researched” it by asking three people—my brother, and the owners of the Shack Up Inn-- what I should do. Most of the advice concerned eating (which suited me fine.) For the rest, I stumbled around, seeing what I saw, missing what I didn't see, and loving it anyway.
But Peter knows where to go and what to see. He plans it in advance! In Memphis he tracks down the Royal Recording Studio where Chuck Berry recorded “Back to Memphis” with the Memphis Horns. He goes to the crossroads in Clarksdale (even I found that!). And in New Orleans he does the most amazing thing of all. He finds Fats Domino’s new home. He marches past the cars (poses with the Rolls!) and knocks on the door.
And Fats answers!
And poses!
And even sings a song to Peter’s daughter!
“He came out and sang “Hello Josephine” to our daughter and was very friendly to all of us. We took some pictures and drove back to French Quarter where we also met Cosimo Matassa, the former owner of the J & M Studio. Matassa recorded Fats Domino’s first recording in 1949.”
And then, eventually, off to St. Louis, via Route 66.
“We had been to Sea World in Texas and drove from Texas to St Louis on Route 66 with one stop at Days Inn in Oklahoma. When we first came to St. Louis I was in hurry because I wanted to see the concert at Blueberry Hill the same evening we arrived. I had my family with me and my 10 year old Daughter who wanted to see Chuck but it was impossible because of her age. We drove fast to the hotel and I took a taxi by myself to Blueberry Hill. My wife stayed at the hotel with my daughter. It was an evening I never will forget. My dream came true and I felt like Louis Armstrong on the moon!”
(Editor’s note: Peter meant “Neil Armstrong.” But I didn’t ask for clarification. I liked “Louis,” who fits as well or better. Louis— one of Chuck Berry’s rare peers in the world of musical genius-- showed his joy better than Neil, and once sang about the Moon in a way that strikes me as very fitting:
Moon river, wider than a mile
I’m crossing you in style some day
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you’re going, I’m going your way
Two drifters, off to see the world
There’s such a lot of world to see!
We’re after the same rainbow’s end, waitin’ ‘round the bend
My huckleberry friend, moon river, and me.
What song could be more appropriate to describe Peter Kaleta, off to see the world and rainbow's end?)
After the show Peter met his hero. “I met him that evening in August 8, 2007 after the show. I had some photographs with me from the recent Swedish tour that I gave him. He smiled and asked “So this is for me?” then I got my first autograph on a picture I got from a guy at Blueberry Hill same evening. I also met Charles before the show and he was very kind to me.”
The next day Peter went around photographing various historic sites—
Chuck Berry's former homes
his old office
his high school ("down the halls and into the street!")
And lots of other places. His collections of photographs are almost mind bggling. I've only just begun to explore them.
Kaleta explains how he found stuff.
“When [Chuck Berry's] biography came out in 1987, I bought the Swedish edition and started to read. I was 17 years old then and my dream was to see all the places he mentioned in the book. I did a list of places I wanted to see before our trip. We had a rental car with GPS so it was very easy to find everything and the journey began. I had to wait 22 years to do that but I did! We drove to Berry Park the day after the show to take some pictures. Berry Park and Blueberry Hill were the most interesting places for me to see in St Louis. I also wanted to see the Cosmo Club but the building was gone.”
A lot of those places will be gone some day, and most of us probably won't use the GPS to go find them. But we've got Peter's photographs.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Fathers, Mothers, Sons and Daughters
When I see certain videos and images of Howlin’ Wolf in his khaki work pants and thick rimmed black reading glasses I see my father. My dad was ten years older than Wolf. They came from different worlds but from the same time.And when I see Son House falling to pieces under the influence of tragic amounts of alcohol I see my father, too.
He died when I was fifteen, before I could really know him, and it’s probably not accidental that I found Chuck Berry at about the same time.
In the video excerpt posted below, Howlin’ Wolf first talks about the blues in financial terms. I’m not going to argue about the blues with Howlin’ Wolf-- he wins.
But Wolf’s greatest suffering, from what I've read and heard, was caused by his mother’s steadfast rejection of her own child. She cast him out, and never let him back into her life. She didn’t approve his singing “the Devil’s music.” When he tracked her down in his 60s she pulled a crumbled bill he had slipped into her apron and crushed it under her foot. Her rejection was steadfast even when her son lay dying of kidney disease and called for her. (Did she ever listen to his version of "Going Down Slow?") Luckily, when his mother sent him packing as a child, he was able to find his dad, who was a good one. Wolf walked 75 miles barefoot to find him.
According to Wikipedia one old song goes:
If I mistreat you gal, I sure don't mean you no harm.
I'm a motherless child and I don't know right from wrong.
So much of the blues is about that link, broken or not, between parent and child. So much of what brings us to the blues is about that link.
Wolf’s son rejected him, too; and maybe with reason. Wolf treated Hubert Sumlin like his own child, and they fought and argued and loved each other till the end and beyond. Other musicians in his band over the years say that Wolf acted “like a father,” giving them “fatherly advice.”
The relationships are always so strong. Read anything by Bob Margolin talking about Muddy Waters. Watch how Wolf, Waters and Chuck Berry work and worked with the young musicians who idolized them, working to get it right. It’s no accident that one of Muddy Water’s records was called “Fathers and Sons.” The arguments with Keith Richards are family matters, not possible with a stranger or aquaintance.
Keyboardist Bob Lohr remembers Chuck Berry on stage first introducing his son, Charles; then bassist Jimmy Marsala as “my other son;” and then acknowledging Lohr at the electric piano, saying “You’re my son, too, Robert—more than you know.” The acknowledgment affected Lohr more than Berry probably knows.
And I can remember him on stage, rushing left, rushing right, eyes wide, mouth agape, acknowledging a crowd of shaggy young people by hollering “All my children! All my beautiful children!”
Berry seemed to have the strongest possible bond with his mother and father. And today you see it carried onto the stage where he performs with his son, his daughter, and his grandson, and calls the other musicians his children. Wolf was rejected by his own mother but raised two stepdaughters and a guitar genius as if they were his own offspring.
I think a lot of what we look for in this music is something like that bond. This music goes deep. It goes to the very bottom of all things.
Anyway, when I see Wolf scolding his old friend House, I wish the Wolf side of dad had somehow whooped the House side. The Wolf side was so much stronger; but unlike Wolf, I’m not sure he knew that.
That's the Blues Right There
But Howlin' Wolf has hit hardest, for sure.
Part of it is my pwrsonal history-- that "Best of the Biggest" record I bought as a kid with "Ridin' in the Moonlight."
Part of it is inherent interest. He was an interesting man. I saw the book "Moanin' at Midnight," and had to buy it. And as I read it I respected him more and more.
Part of it is finding the deeper roots of so much that I had loved. I was a kid when I found Taj Mahal, and a kid when I found two tracks by Howlin' Wolf-- but I was full grown and fading before I put two and two together to realize how closely they had always been linked.
Tonight I watched the first half of the documentary "The Howlin' Wolf Story." I've seen snatches before. I'd never watched it straight through. (I guess I still haven't.) It's a GREAT movie, with full songs by a great artist.
By great artists.
I've said before that what happened in Clarksdale and its suburb, Chicago, was like what happened in Florence, Italy, 500 years before: an explosion of incredible art and culture. There are home movies by drummer Sam Lay showing Wolf and Sumlin and Sonny Boy II and Otis Spann at Silvio's having a good time. It is like dreamtime-- impossible to believe and incredible to envision.
But the saddest thing-- the most powerful thing--- was Howlin' Wolf telling off Son House.
If you've read the biography of Muddy Waters you'll remember a page where one of Muddy's musicians asks "who's that old man?" And Muddy scolds him. "That's Son House."
I just saw parts of "It Might Get Loud." The White Stripes guitarist holds a Son House record (the only one I own) and talks about how it hit him when he heard it, and how he has been trying to acheive that sound throughout his career.
Howlin' Wolf travelled with Son House in the 1930s, revered him, and considered him a teacher.
But while Wolf played, back in 1964, House, drunk, grabbed his arm and started babbling. And that's when Wolf scolded him. "You had a chance with your life but you ain't done nothin' with it." He tells him "We ain't talkin' about the womens, we talkin' about the life of a human being. See you don't love but one thing, and that's some whiskey, and that's plumb out of it." House keeps babbling, trying to respond, but Wolf starts playing, and his band joins him, and the babbling is lost.
I's an incredibly powerful moment. It answer's B.B.'s question. It's how blue you can get.
(This is an unedited version)
Let it Rock!
A few weeks ago I posted a link to the blog Roll Call (with it's great pictures of Chuck and Bo on tour in Europe in the early 1970s). On that site I found the link to this beauty, with editions of the magazine Let it Rock!! Both appear to be the work of Alain Mallaret (who sure knows how to make a blog look good!)
Friday, July 9, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Sidemen Up Front! Matt Murphey
Matt Murphey played with Chuck Berry on a couple of sessions in mid-1960. Murphey and Odie Payne both played at times with just about all the Chess stars.
Sidemen Up Front! (Odie Payne, in a tiny club)
Odie Payne played drums on a bunch of later 1960s Chuck Berry songs including "Nadine," "Promised Land," and "No Particular Place to Go." Imagine meeting him in a place like this! (I wish I'd been there.) History's all around us.
My brother Stevo was in a bar once listening to some old man talk on and on about his piano playing days. Stevo assumed it was all ^%$#&. Then the guy sat down at a piano.
My brother Stevo was in a bar once listening to some old man talk on and on about his piano playing days. Stevo assumed it was all ^%$#&. Then the guy sat down at a piano.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
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