Chuck Berry

Listen/Download – Chuck Berry – Club Nitty Gritty MP3

Greetings all.

The middle of the week is here, and I have some news.

After quite a bit of foot-dragging on my part, the Funky16Corners 2016 Allnighter and Pledge Drive will finally start rolling next Monday, June 6th.

As in years past, you will get a string of new mixes by myself and some of my favorite selectors, posted one every weekday over the course of more than two weeks.

These mixes will be accompanied by a Paypal/Donate button, so that those of you that dig what we do here (blogs, radio show, hundreds of hours of archived mixes) will toss something into the hat towards the operating budget for the next year.

All donors will also receive the new 2016 Funky16Corners badge and bumper sticker to affix to the garment and flat surface of your choice!

So stay tuned for that (lots of good stuff this year).

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The tune I bring you today is one of those gems that was kind of hiding in plain sight.

I shouldn’t have to explain Chuck Berry to any but the youngest of you (and even you should get familiar). Suffice to say, Berry was one of the single most important popular musicians of the second half of the 20th Century, racking up a long string of classic hits, and influencing most of the musicians that came after him, whether through his songwriting, performances, or both.

The bulk of Berry’s hits came between 1955 and 1964, with a brief resurgence at the beginning of the 70s.

Most people – myself included – would relegate him to an earlier period, an assessment pushed along by Berry’s association with the primal years of rock’n’roll and his primary work (for most of the last 40 years) as an ‘oldies’ act.

Despite my love for his best known work, and my deep respect for him, there wasn’t much in his catalog that I thought would be of interest to Funky16Corners readers.

That was until a few years ago, when a friend turned me on to today’s selection, 1966’s ‘Club Nitty Gritty’.

A storming bit of mod soul, ‘Club Nitty Gritty’ is unlike pretty much anything else in the Berry canon, and was – aside from some airplay in Washington, DC and a Top 40 run with the Pirate stations in the UK – largely ignored at the time of release, and forgotten since (aside from some of your hipper DJs).

Though ‘Club Nitty Gritty’ was released on a 45 in 1966 (backed with the even more obscure ‘Laugh and Cry’) which these days is fairly rare and expensive, Chuck and his record company at the time (Mercury) were kind enough to stash the tune away in a another, very strange place.

As you’ll see by the label above (a 1973 pressing), ‘Club Nitty Gritty’ appears on the album ‘Chuck Berry’s Golden Hits’, released in 1967.

When I tell you that I passed by this record at least 100 times in the 40 years that I’ve been buying records, if anything I’d probably be underestimating.

You see, what I (and probably most others) assumed, was that ‘Chuck Berry’s Golden Hits’ was exactly what it looked like, i.e. a collection of his old records.

What it was – in fact – was a 1966/67 rerecording of those songs for Mercury, packaged to look like a collection of 50s/early 60s recordings, with ‘Club Nitty Gritty’ tacked on to the end of it.

If I’d had any idea, I’d have grabbed it a long time ago.

That said, I’m very pleased indeed that I picked it up when I did, since ‘Club Nitty Gritty’ is a banger.

Kicked into gear by Berry’s tough rhythm guitar and some groovy electric piano (Johnny Johnson), Chuck drops in to tell the tale of the night spot in the title, then moves on to calling out a string of dances. It is fast moving enough for the dance floor, and Berry is in rare form. I haven’t been able to find out who produced the track(s) but the sound is very cool, with lots of reverb.

Berry didn’t release much new music in the late 60s, but what did make it onto record is worth checking out, including ‘Back to Memphis’ (1967), ‘Louie to Frisco’ (1968, both for Mercury) and ‘Tulane’ (for Chess, 1970).

I hope you dig the track, and I’ll see you all on Friday.

Keep the faith

Larry

 

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Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived! The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock. They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US). Click here to go to the ordering page.

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.