Charles Edward Anderson Berry of St Louis, Missouri…
Listen/Download – Chuck Berry – Back Too Memphis MP3
Greetings all.
I come to you today with a previously unscheduled communique on the occasion of the 90th (holy shit…) birthday of the mighty Chuck Berry.
It is tempting to say – considering what the initial response would be from most people who actually remember who Chuck Berry is – that Mr B has managed to outlive his greatness.
There is little disputing the fact that Chuck Berry hasn’t made a significant recording for more than 40 years. His last chart hit was in 1972, and ironically (considering what many people remember him for today) it was ‘My Ding-a-ling’ (it hurts to type that).
Chuck’s ding-a-ling having been the source of much of his troubles….
That said, it would be downright tragic if those of us that knew better, weren’t continuously engaged in reminding people how monumental and long-lasting Chuck Berry’s musical/cultural footprint was prior to 1972, and raising hell about how that mark has been minimized by an ugly combination of race, cultural appropriation, the simple passage of time (and the death of the American attention span) and decades of gross misunderstandings of rock’n’roll.
Chuck Berry was a goddamn genius.
His numerous peccadilloes aside (and frankly, aside from the demonstrably pervy stuff – and if that’s a sticking point Rock and Roll Penitentiary is going to be a very crowded place…Jimmy Page…COUGH) it would be very difficult for anyone without tin ears to make even a cursory survey of his oeuvre and not come out on the other side hail hail-ing Chuck Berry.
From the intial shot across the bow, ‘Maybelline’ in 1955, Chuck stomped into, and right through America’s consciousness (at least the consciousness of the emerging youth culture and Black America – he rode the R&B charts as aggressively as the Pop charts) laying a granite-strong musical foundation, without which little else of rock consequence would have been built in the rest of the 50s and all through the 60s.
Of course, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, and in a more elemental way (maybe they were in the quarry cutting out the granite in the first place) giants like John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed, were right there beside him, but Chuck is – at least in my opinion – the most important of all in a purely musical sense.
Though it seems like a painfully obvious thing to say now, Berry was black. He was physically black, which in the 1950s and early 1960s was clearly a huge pain in the ass for the person wearing the skin, especially if he managed to intrude upon the artificial quietude of White America, and it got old Chuck into all kinds of extra trouble he probably would have been spared had he been, say, as white as an Elvis or Jerry Lee, two other rockers with a taste for teenage girls.
The glaring hole in his chart history indicates the period (1960-1963) when Chuck Berry went to prison for violating the Mann Act. The story of how he ended up in prison is a complicated one, and undoubtedly the kind of thing that people before him and after him (mostly, but not exclusively white) walked away from. That Berry didn’t walk, but sat on ice for what should have been three of the most productive years at the peak of his career, and climbed right back onto the charts in 1964 with some of the best stuff he ever did is a testament to his greatness (and also to what might have been).
All of the great early figures of rock were synthesizers, of blues, gospel, jump blues/R&B, and most of them were explosive stylists in both sound and presentation, but Chuck Berry’s stew – even though it appeared seamless to the naked ear – was a much weirder, finer thing altogether.
Berry’s music blended R&B (as well as pure blues, and even jazz) with a huge dose of country (if he was a car he’d be running down rockabilly singers right and left) and it was all assembled with a songwriting talent as big as just about anyone who people take seriously as a songwriter, including everyone from Tin Pan Alley, Broadway or anywhere else.
He was an absolutely brilliant lyricist in a time when anything that appealed to teenagers was immediately dismissed by critics, and was a powerful enough performer, and record-maker (sometimes mutually exclusive pastimes) to drill those lyrics, many of them purely poetic, deep into the brains of a generation of Americans in a way that made them seem like they’d always been there, like the green grass and the blue sky.
It isn’t often that a popular musical figure has an impact like that, but Chuck Berry did.
Bo Diddley and Little Richard were elemental, as was Chuck Berry, but his contributions were further reaching, making their way into the DNA of culture and stringing themselves up on the double helix like a set of Christmas lights.
He was a 30 year old man preaching (and converting) legions of teenagers by speaking to them in their own language and making them dance, which as far as pearl-clutching Middle America was concerned was pure corruption. Cultural miscegenation.
And they were right.
Too bad.
So sad.
Sometimes things have to die for a reason and McCarthyite American needed stake driven through its ugly heart, and Chuck was – along with a bunch of others- right there, hammering away.
If you don’t already, see if you can get your hands on the compilation ‘Chuck Berry – The Anthology’, released in 2000 by Chess/MCA.
Though old Chuck has been anthologized, rehashed and repackaged dozens of times over the years, this 2-CD set (which you can still get in iTunes) is as fine a distillation of his catalog as you’re likely to find.
Clocking in at just over two hours (even if you omit the 4:18 of ‘My Ding-A-Ling’) it manages to present a solid picture of why I said everything I just said about Berry, as well as why he was an idol at his peak, why the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Pretty Things (among many others) worshiped at his altar, and why you should ignore every stupid thing Chuck Berry has done in his life (or has had done to him) and listen to his music.
Because the music is what’s important here, and it is VERY IMPORTANT.
And for those of you who think all Chuck Berry songs sound the same, you are wrong, because Chuck Berry’s songs don’t sound the same any more than Mozart does, and the only way you’re going to figure it out is to stop treating it all like wallpaper and use your ears like a vault instead of a kitchen junk drawer.
It’s all there.
So go get it – or head to a decent record store, or to Amazon, or anywhere they stock fine Chuck Berry music – and set aside two hours to listen to it. And when you’re done (unless you’re already hip and have been shaking your head in assent the whole time you were reading this) see if you don’t think differently about him.
I think you will.
The song I bring you today isn’t on that comp, because it comes from the chart desert that stretched from the end of 1964 to the arrival of ‘My Ding-A-Ling’ in 1972.
That period, when Chuck was recording for Mercury and Chess alternates between treading water and making some of the most interesting and neglected music of his career.
It would be a lie to say that these years were as significant as 1955-1964, but to hear Chuck whipping a little soul into the mix, and keeping his eyes on the prize, hands on the wheel before colliding with (and climbing onto) the Nostalgia Express is a thing of beauty.
Today’s selection, ‘Back To Memphis’ was recorded in Memphis (on the album, titled, unsurprisingly, ‘Chuck Berry In Memphis) with the American Studios band, and produced by Roy Dea and Boo Frazier.
‘Back To Memphis’ has something unusual in Chuck Berry records, that being a big, fat bottom, with the bass and drums pushing the record along like a kick in the ass, with the horn section and Chuck’s guitar at the wheel. It is a dance floor killer, and a reminder that Berry was a force to be reckoned with.
Unfortunately, nobody was listening here in the US, though ‘Back To Memphis’ was a Top 40 hit on the pirate station Radio London, in the UK (1966’s ‘Club Nitty Gritty’ had also been a hit on the pirates, charting on Radio London, and Radio City, both).
So go home tonight and play some Chuck Berry. Open the windows, turn the speakers toward the street and crank it up until your neighbors start dancing, or hammering on your front door, in which case turn it up more.
Happy Birthday Chuck.
Keep the faith
Larry
*Thank you, Jim Bartlett
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