CHUCK BERRY
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1955–2017 |
Early rock’n’roll |
Brown Eyed Handsome Man
(1956) |
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Album
released: May 1957 |
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Tracks: 1) School Day (Ring Ring Goes The Bell); 2) Deep
Feeling; 3) Too Much Monkey Business; 4) Wee Wee Hours; 5) Roly Poly; 6) No
Money Down; 7) Brown Eyed Handsome Man; 8)
Berry Pickin’; 9) Together (We Will Always Be); 10) Havana
Moon; 11) Down Bound Train; 12)
Drifting Heart; 13*) You Can’t Catch Me; 14*) I’ve Changed. |
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REVIEW If
you look up «singles artist» in the dictionary, Chuck Berry should be
grinning right straight in your face — more than any other artist from the
1950s, perhaps, is the man associated with the jukebox rather than the
phonograph. Consequently, reviewing his output through his LPs on the Chess
label feels exceedingly weird, largely because the sequencing throws
chronology out the window and may easily concatenate tracks separated from
each other by three or four years — not so big a deal, perhaps, as it would
be in the 1960s, but still disorienting.
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By the time Chess had decided that their most
rambunctious artist deserved his own LP, Chuck had already spent almost two
years on the label and had seven singles, most of them Top 10 R&B hits,
under his belt. The biggest ones (‘Maybellene’, which put him on the radar;
‘Thirty Days’, an homage to Hank Williams; and ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, an
homage to the heroes of classical music whom Chuck politely asked out the
door) are not included here, presumably because they had only recently been
included on Rock, Rock, Rock!, the
soundtrack to a famous early rock’n’roll musical and Chess Records’ very
first LP, on which Chuck Berry shared the bill with the Moonglows and the
Flamingos, decent R&B ensembles in their own right but quickly eclipsed
by the genius of Mr. Berry. Other than that, After School Session does a fairly decent job of collecting all
the other A- and B-sides from 1955 to early 1957, and throws a couple of
previously unreleased instrumental tracks to complete the picture. The title of the LP is a fairly obvious reference to
Chuck’s latest single at the time, which is also the first track here —
‘School Day (Ring! Ring! Goes The Bell)’ — but it is actually more symbolic
than that. Leonard Chess and his people very quickly understood that, by
signing Chuck to their label, they were tapping into a completely new target
group: where Chess Records’ usual music, the slow, dark, heavy Chicago blues
of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, largely appealed to black and/or «mature»
white audiences, Berry’s faster, lighter, and generally funnier music with
its casually mundane topics would first and foremost appeal to bored
teenagers, looking for a ray of hope. So it is hardly surprising that the
first song on Chuck’s first LP is the
straightforward schoolroom anthem of 1957; in fact, it is the very first song
in a long series of school-bashing anthems which goes all the way to
‘School’s Out’ and ‘Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2’ — except that, unlike
Alice Cooper and Roger Waters, Chuck Berry is a friendly and humorous guy,
and instead of spewing active hatred, he poeticizes passive boredom, the only
salvation from which is, of course, the juke joint. In a way, ‘School Day’, though certainly not the
most famous Chuck Berry song (too slow!), might be the quintessential Chuck
Berry song — and not just because it is so anthemic (no coincidence that
"hail, hail, rock’n’roll!" was adopted for the title of the famous
concert film), but because there are few other songs in the man’s catalog
matching the total and absolute adoration for his guitar displayed in this
performance. I mean, Chuck loved
his guitar —L-O-V-E-d it to the heights of absurdity, more so than any other
guitar hero in the 1950s and possibly more than anybody else until Hendrix
came along and kicked that love into an even more modern age. The very first
ringing riff in ‘School Day’, of course, imitates the school bell — but that
is just the beginning of the story, because the rest of it consists of a
long, engaging, immersive dialog between Chuck Berry, the singer, and his
faithful instrument. Chuck may be one of the earlier Riffmeisters, but just
like the best Riffmeisters of the 1960s, such as Keith Richards and Pete
Townshend, he is too easily bored to pin down an entire performance to just
one repetitive riff. Instead, his guitar here follows all the minor nuances
and inclinations of his voice: "Up in the morning and out to
school!" (upbeat, rousing, get-up-and-shine high-pitched riff),
"the teacher is teaching the Golden Rule" (gruff, stern,
low-pitched riff — teachers are no fun), "American history, practical
math" (nagging, sneering, nasal twang riff — yadda yadda yadda),
"you studying hard and hoping to pass" (repeat nagging, sneering
riff, but now it’s mocking you, the
wretched protagonist), and so on. But the coolest thing about the song is how it
actually goes from a symbolic condemnation of the American school system,
with the repetitive one-note riffs mocking the monotonous boredom of the
classroom, to a laudatory hymn on the liberating power of rock music —
without changing the melody even once. Somewhere along the way, "Ring!
Ring! Goes the bell" becomes "Hail! Hail! Rock and roll", and
the exact same riffs that, just a minute ago, were used to vent your negative
feelings, take on a powerful, celebratory nature. It’s like a goddamn optical
illusion — you know that, of course, your brain is driven by Chuck’s words
which convey extra meaning to his notes, but it still feels weirdly
unexplainable. "The feeling is there, body and soul" indeed. As you move on to the man’s other brilliant singles,
such as ‘Too Much Monkey Business’, one more thing that catches the eye is
the excellency of Chuck’s backing band. Although he never made it big as a
proper electric blues artist, he did
record at Chess, where the resident bass player, for instance, was the great
Willie Dixon, and when you hear the big man slap that big bass, one thing you
totally get is that we ain’t in Nashville any more — most of Chuck’s classic
hits have a tougher, grittier «bottom» sound than that of the white boys’
rockabilly bands. And while the song is usually remembered for its lyrics —
an innovative, beatnik-ish approach to phrase crafting as well as an early
milestone in the history of rap — for me the song really gets cooking during
the instrumental break, with Chuck’s machine-gun licks blasting over Dixon’s
wobbly echo chamber and Johnnie Johnson’s smooth, but inobtrusive piano
playing in the background. The B-side to ‘Too Much Monkey Business’ was even
better, though. ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’ has two things in its favor — (a)
it arguably has the single juiciest guitar sound in Chuck Berry history, a
perfect combination of slightly crackling distortion with a bit of extra
treble presaging the legendary «woman tone» and (b) it features Chuck’s
poetry at its most inventive and symbolic (forgive the man for misspelling
Milo Venus as Marlo Venus, it
actually makes the song a bit more quizzical). The feeling is clearly
narcissistic — I bet Chuck was quite counting on attracting the ladies with
the tune — but it is narcissistic in a most charming and friendly way, loaded
with a powerful optimistic charge right from the opening notes. The man may
have been quite well-known for having a bad temper, but one place where he never let it show was on his
recordings: each single Chuck Berry song is always life-affirming, even when
he enters critical mode (‘Too Much Monkey Business’ just has him shrug off
all the innumerable life's problems like so much water off a dog’s back). Actually, come to think of it, this record does
feature at least one exception, which is exactly why Chuck’s LPs, or at least
some of his lesser known tracks, are worth studying. ‘Down Bound Train’, one
of the first known rock songs to open with a fade-in and close with a
fade-out, is a fast, terse, one-note rockabilly stomper threatening alcohol
abusers with fire and brimstone, and its proto-punkish melodic structure and
moody atmosphere make it a unique standout. If Nick Cave ever joins a Chuck Berry
tribute somewhere, this is definitely the song for him to cover — Chuck
himself does not quite have the imposing voice to properly convey all the
terror of the lyrical imagery. No idea why he had chosen such a morose
subject for the B-side to ‘No Money Down’, which was in itself a rather
forgettable effort to turn ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ / ‘I’m A Man’ / ‘Mannish
Boy’ etc. into a car-themed piece of slow rock’n’roll. But even if not all the songs here work on an
equally impressive level, I would still ask not to ignore Chuck’s
instrumentals. On ‘Deep Feeling’, he uses a simple and minimalistic, but
efficient slide-playing technique which somehow manages to infuse a bit of
rock’n’roll sharpness into this seemingly inoffensive Hawaiian lullaby,
cleverly playing with sharp tones, dissonance, and distortion to sting you in
the face in your hammock every few seconds or so. On ‘Berry Pickin’, he
carries out a key-changing experiment, alternating the tune between a happy
Latin jingle and a driving piece of rock’n’roll — not sure if it actually
«works», but at least it is not generic. And ‘Roly Poly’ is just a cool
three-minute jam where you get to enjoy all of Chuck’s — and Johnnie
Johnson’s, for that matter — trademark licks in one go. All of these great-to-nice moments easily wipe out
the negative effects from a few pieces of obsolete filler, e.g. ‘Havana
Moon’, one of Chuck’s less convincing genre experiments — not because he
sucks at impersonating Caribbean accents (he does, though), but because
impersonating a Caribbean accent seems to be the song’s only point, as it is
essentially a very repetitive joke tune about an unlucky Cuban guy failing to
make it with an American girl. Also, ‘Wee Wee Hours’ is a good example of why
Leonard Chess actually pushed Chuck away from recording stereotypical slow
12-bar blues — Dixon and Johnson are always a gas to listen to, but Chuck
Berry as a deep blues howler just does not cut the mustard. Of course, maybe
he just had too many teeth for that kind of business — I couldn’t say for
certain that Sonny Boy Williamson had a better singing voice, but Sonny Boy could pull off that kind of schtick
convincingly and Chuck... well, not after ‘Brown-Eyed Handsome Man’ he
couldn’t. Still, After
School Session shows that the place
is often every bit as important as the time:
I can’t help but wonder if Chuck’s talents would be just as appreciated, or
if Chuck, rather than just about anyone else, could have become the major, the quintessential rock’n’roll idol for an entire generation of
British kids overseas, if he had exercised his songwriting talents somewhere
other than Chicago. Even if the cheery nature of his songs, on the surface,
seems the farthest thing away from the solemnity and gloominess of Chicago’s
blues greats, the music still bears that seal, and in the end it is the
volatile combination of seemingly incompatible ingredients that does the
trick. In the world of 1950s rock’n’rollers where about half of the guys had
their roots in the country sounds of Nashville, and the other half in the
jump blues and R&B sounds of popular African-American entertainment,
Chuck pretty much stood alone with his influences and environment — and as
far as I am concerned, those were the best
possible influences and environment. Which is why, you know, there’s Chuck
Berry, and then there’s everyone else, as good as they are. Period. |
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Album
released: March 1958 |
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Tracks: 1) Sweet
Little Sixteen; 2) Blue Feeling; 3) La
Jaunda; 4) Rockin’ At The Philharmonic; 5) Oh Baby Doll; 6) Guitar
Boogie; 7) Reelin’ And Rockin’; 8) Ingo; 9) Rock And Roll Music; 10) How
You’ve Changed; 11) Low Feeling; 12) It Don’t Take But A Few Minutes. |
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In
between May 1957 and March 1958, the period which separates Chuck’s first LP
from his second one, Mr. Berry put out three singles. The first one was ‘Oh
Baby Doll’, and it was a bit inauspicious: way too melodically close to
‘Maybellene’ for comfort, which was not good because people did not really
expect Chuck to repeat himself — indeed, next to ‘Maybellene’ itself and such
major hits as ‘School Day’ the single pretty much flopped. The speed of the
track is great, and Johnnie Johnson’s sprinkling piano rolls are fantastic,
and Willie Dixon slaps that bass like no tomorrow, and it is fun to hear
Chuck pronounce things like "alma mater"... but still, the song
failed to become a truly golden classic for obvious reasons: Mr. Rock’n’Roll
could do better than rehash his melodies from three years ago. |
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Mr.
Rock’n’Roll probably agreed with this, and just a few months later put out
‘Rock And Roll Music’. Now the trick of ‘Rock And Roll Music’, the way I see
it, is that the song itself is not so much rock-and-roll, really, as it is sheer pop with a bit of rock’n’roll trimming. It is certainly pop in
spirit, much more of a celebration than a rebellion; but it is also pop in
form, ditching the trilinear blues stanza and replacing it with a vocal
melody that sounds almost European (Spanish? Italian?) in origin... actually,
I have not the least idea of how Chuck came up with that melody: the man’s
mind did work in quite mysterious ways when he was on the level. In any case,
it is interesting to note that the song would later be famously covered by
the Beatles and still later infamously by the Beach Boys, but not by the
Rolling Stones or the Animals or whoever else would do Chuck Berry covers in
droves — for the true gritty aficionados of undiluted rhythm and blues, this
alleged ode to rock’n’roll must have seemed a bit fruity. But while it does
feel weird to me trying to imagine how the song would have sounded like if
covered by the Stones, it does not sound one bit weird when performed by
Chuck — because Chuck was, after all, first and foremost a good-vibe
entertainer, trying to get his listeners to smile and have fun rather than
rip their chairs out of the floor or beat up security staff. He
did, however, initiate a long-standing tradition of somewhat excessively
pompous, self-conscious anthems to the sacral powers of rock’n’roll,
completely devoid of any signs of rebelliousness or shock value — ‘Rock And
Roll Music’ is a direct spiritual ancestor of KISS’ ‘Rock And Roll All
Night’, Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock And Roll’, and even the Who’s somewhat
sarcastic, but still pretty good-natured ‘Long Live Rock’. Yet Chuck’s song
is still better than all those others combined, if only because it was
clearly not designed with the idea of a million strong lifting it up in a
stadium: not a pseudo-spiritual battle cry for the masses, but a fairly
personal declaration of one man’s preference for rock and roll music over any
other genre. If it comes across as anthemic, it is more by accident than on
pretentious purpose. On
the other hand, it is hard to get
rid of the feeling that Chuck was gradually growing quite full of himself —
if only because ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’, the follow-up to ‘Rock And Roll
Music’, was just as poppy, celebratory, and anthemic as its direct
predecessor. "They’re really rockin’ in Boston, in Pittsburgh P.A., deep
in the heart of Texas and ’round the Frisco Bay" is, after all, as rallying
as could possibly be — and putting an imaginary teenage girl on top of that
universal movement was essentially Chuck’s subtle trick to endear himself
with the ladies, but the song was essentially another one of those "hail
hail rock’n’roll" moments that presented the new music as a freshly
organized empire, and its performer as the Supreme Emperor of his delirious
realm. Not that there was anything wrong with that, of course, as long as the
chorus kept on building up and up and up... and down like that, or as long as Chuck put that new stop-and-start
trick to such seductive use. And yet again, it is funny how, of all the bands
to cover the song, it was not some dangerous rhythm & blues combo, but
the frickin’ Beach Boys who produced the most memorable rendition — though
their reckless decision to steal away the song (as ‘Surfin’ USA’) rather than
properly credit it actually cost them in the long run. Once
‘Rock And Roll Music’ and ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ firmly restored Chuck to the
top positions on the charts (he would never again rise quite that high), it
looked like it was time for another LP — which, understandably, included all
three of his latest singles. Unfortunately, the overall results this time
around were not nearly as satisfactory as with After School Session. Although this album, too, tries diligently
to present Chuck as a diverse and experimental songwriter and performer, the
non-hit singles are largely disappointing — at the very least, there are
certainly no neglected gems like ‘Down Bound Train’ to be found. Arguably the
only other classic number is ‘Reelin’ And Rockin’, the B-side to ‘Sweet
Little Sixteen’ which probably needs no introduction — it is simply the
funniest kickass number Chuck ever wrote, and it would become even funnier
and more kick-ass when he extended it with tons of improvised smutty verses
during live shows. But
other than that, at least half a
dozen of these particular «Berrys» aren’t all that delightful. First and
foremost, five of them are purely instrumental, and while it is generally fun
to hear Chuck jam with his pals, most of these jams are forgettable and
really sound like dress rehearsal versions for vocal classics. ‘Guitar
Boogie’, for instance, is pretty much ‘Reelin’ And Rockin’ without the words;
‘Blue Feeling’ is the slow blues of ‘Wee Wee Hours’ with Johnnie Johnson
playing a much larger role than Chuck himself; and only ‘Rockin’ At The
Philharmonic’ stands out as a relatively self-sufficient jam, but still not
nearly as memorable as ‘Deep Feeling’ or ‘Berry Pickin’ from the previous
album. The weirdest thing of all is ‘Low Feeling’, which is actually nothing
but a slowed down version of ‘Blue Feeling’ (!), for some reason placed on
the same album with the untampered tape — as if the word «filler» needed a
definition update. To
make matters worse, One Dozen Berrys
is also home to one of the silliest, if not to say stupidest, tracks in
Chuck’s early repertoire — ‘La Juanda’ (often misspelled as ‘La Jaunda’,
including the track listing on the original album). It follows in the steps
of ‘Havana Moon’, reflecting Chuck’s strange passion for bad foreign accents,
and this time gives us a spoof of Mexican balladry, which Chuck for some
reason delivers with a pseudo-Spanish accent despite admitting that
"hablo solo en Ingles y no comprendo Español". It is not
particularly catchy, and absolutely inauthentic, and, most importantly, not
at all funny. See, Chuck Berry does have a fine sense of humor, but honestly,
he never was no Gene Ween, and that humor largely failed him when he tried to
get into some particularly distant character. Well... sometimes he does, then
again I think he don’t. Or something like that. Two
more vocal numbers do not manage to patch things up too well. The slow, moody
blues of ‘How You’ve Changed’ feels underrehearsed and underproduced (the
song would later be picked up and polished to dark and creepy perfection by
the Animals); and the fast country-rock of ‘It Don’t Take But A Few Minutes’
sounds like something Chuck could have improvised in said few minutes with a
bunch of friends on his front porch (though it’s at least entertaining). In
the end, it all seems very hastily
thrown together — and indeed I do believe that most of these album-only
tracks were recorded during a two-day session in December 1957, most likely
with no proper songwriting process involved at all. Maybe there is a certain
amount of goofy charm in the spontaneous, off-the-wall nature of the whole
thing, but, personally, I am not a big fan of the mish-mash approach where
spontaneous throwaways are mixed with well-polished gems of genius songcraft
— it would have been much better to save that stuff for a special
fan-oriented release called One Dozen
Raspberries. Three or four classics aside, the rest is certainly not
worth any sort of special hunt. |
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Album
released: July 1959 |
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Tracks: 1) Almost Grown; 2) Carol; 3) Maybellene;
4) Sweet Little Rock & Roller; 5) Anthony
Boy; 6) Johnny B. Goode; 7) Little Queenie; 8) Jo Jo Gunne; 9) Roll Over Beethoven; 10) Around And Around; 11) Hey Pedro; 12) Blues For Hawaiians. |
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Chess
Records had chosen the strategy of summarizing Chuck Berry’s output in LP
form on a yearly basis — but as the summer of 1959 rolled along and there
still was not enough completely new material to fill up two entire sides,
they decided that they had no choice but to go back to the past and complete
the record with just about anything that had so far eluded LP representation,
even if it meant starting out with Chuck’s very first single from way back in
1955. The result was Berry Is On Top,
a much more pompous pun than One Dozen
Berrys and a much more chaotic agglomeration of tracks — but also,
unquestionably, the most consistent and filler-free release of the original
«classic trilogy». At least half of the songs on here were instant classics,
quickly adopted by many giants of the British Invasion and familiar even to
the most casual customers of rock’n’roll music — I mean, when you have
‘Johnny B. Goode’, ‘Little Queenie’, and
‘Roll Over Beethoven’ sitting on the same record, what’s left but to just
give up? In mid-1959, Chuck Berry was
on top, and if not for this irresistible attraction to underage Apache
waitresses — all part of God’s plan to destroy rock’n’roll music, of course —
who knows how much longer the man would have remained there. |
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To
knock the hype down just a little bit, let us first toss out the clunkers —
no Chuck Berry album is completely
filler-free, though even the man’s misses at the time have an intriguing
aspect to them. First on the list is ‘Hey Pedro’, the original B-side to
‘Carol’, a limp, repetitive, utterly passion-free Latin vamp over which Chuck
ad-libs some parodic lines in his mock-Cuban accent, already familiar from
‘La Juanda’ — I don’t exactly know what in particular Chuck could have against
Cubans (he didn’t spend that much
time in Florida, did he?), but once again, his sense of humor totally fails
him once he puts aside his rock’n’roll spirits and substitutes them for
parodies of stereotypes. And I wouldn’t even mind an offensive parody of a
stereotype if the music was up to par — but this shit sounds like it was just
quickly tossed off in a couple of minutes when he suddenly realized he’d
booked studio time without writing enough material. Next
on the list are two odd, but ultimately not-too-exciting A-sides on which
Chuck also tried to do something «different». ‘Anthony Boy’ seems to be
picking up the vibe of ‘School Days’ with its all-too-personal tale of an
unlucky schoolboy bullied and humiliated by his wicked girl classmates — but
if ‘School Days’ was a rebellious anthem of rock’n’roll as a means of
liberation from the tyranny of the classroom, then ‘Anthony Boy’ is basically
just a joke song; deceptively opening with the exact same guitar trill as
‘School Days’, it then immediately turns into a goofy boy scout marching
ditty which has Chuck Berry inventing Herman’s Hermits five years before
Herman’s Hermits invented themselves. As a filler B-side, it would have been
comprehensible; as an A-side, it was an embarrassment, and predictably opened
1959 as one of Chuck’s biggest flops — what was he even thinking? Only
marginally better — though for completely different reasons — is ‘Jo Jo
Gunne’, a very strange rocking tune which opens with the usual ‘Roll Over
Beethoven / Johnny B. Goode / Carol’ riff but quickly turns into another
repetitive, echoey, muddy vamp over which Chuck tells us a long, long, LONG
story of the adventures of... wild animals in Africa "in ancient
history, four thousand B.C.". All I remember from the narrative is that
there was a monkey, a lion, and a kangaroo (Chuck’s knowledge of African
zoology certainly leaves a lot to be desired, but then again, maybe he
thought four thousand B.C. was such a long time ago, you couldn’t go wrong
even if you threw in some mammoths and dinosaurs), but otherwise, the
narrative went absolutely nowhere, the humor was non-existent, the brief
in-between verse breaks had the sole purpose of letting Chuck catch a breath,
and the entire song seemed to have one and only one purpose — to make you wonder
if Chuck Berry had really gone crazy or if he was just throwing one of his
pranks on his audiences. (Apparently, it did impress some people — like a few
members of the great psychedelic band Spirit, for instance — enough to have
them form a band named Jo Jo Gunne in the early 1970s, which was probably the
biggest legacy the song left behind). Finally,
the sole LP-only track here, closing off the album, is ‘Blues For Hawaiians’,
an instrumental exploring the same moods and techniques that Chuck had already
demonstrated earlier on the Hawaiian-influenced ‘Deep Feeling’, except this
time he really goes overboard with the «floating» sliding sound. It feels
cool for a few seconds, but quickly gets tedious — Chuck is no virtuoso, and
he cannot achieve the same level of expressivity with his «Hawaiian guitar»
that he can with his rock’n’roll antics, so ultimately it’s just three and a
half minutes of lost time for all of us. But
once we have sacrificed all that stuff to the hungry God of Filler, there are
still eight absolutely indispensable classics left on the platter — songs
that I am really reluctant to comment upon, because what sort of new things
under the sun could be said about ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ or ‘Johnny B. Goode’?
Well, since pretty much all of these are known from multiple cover versions
as well, let me just run a brief comparative analysis to see if any of those
had made the original «expendable» or if there are certain elements about
Chuck’s own versions that still kick the shit out of everybody else. Starting
off in chronological order, we have... ...well,
‘Maybellene’, of course, Chuck’s very first single that put him on the map. Never, as of yet, heard it done better
by anybody — perhaps the original is grossly lo-fi even compared to Chuck’s later
recordings, with the lead guitar sounding as if it were played out of a
tightly zipped suitcase, but the tempo, the jackhammer, proto-Motörhead
percussion, the rapid fire passion in the vocals; all of these elements
create a feel of overdrive which often, though not always, characterizes a
great artist’s first offering, when he knows
it’s now or never, it’s gonna make him or break him, and gives out 200%.
Listen to that guitar break — the mad flurry of Berry-licks loosed like
shrapnel on the audience. Not only did nobody
play guitar like this back in 1955, but I don’t think even Chuck himself
played it quite like that again ever after. Who’s gonna kick his ass over
this one? Gerry and the Pacemakers? Don’t make me laugh. ‘Roll
Over Beethoven’ — I think the one «alternate» version we all have in mind is
the Beatles’, with George Harrison taking lead vocals. (Well, there’s also
ELO, of course, but any version of ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ that crosses Chuck
Berry with actual Beethoven has to
be regarded from a «meta» perspective, so we’ll leave that one out). Beatles’
covers of Chuck Berry are not to be laughed off — remember how they so fully
realized the anthemic potential of ‘Rock’n’Roll Music’ — but what they always
tend to do is make the songs sound more serious than they were originally
intended. Here, for instance, they (a) slightly slow down the tempo, so that
you might get a little more inclination to listen and a little less to dance,
(b) give the song a grumbly, distorted, vampy riff which makes it feel busier
and more insistent, if not outright
aggressive, (c) have George deliver the message in an almost
wartime-proclamation tone, without the slightest hint of humor contained in
Chuck’s original delivery. So you could think of the Beatles’ version as ‘Roll
Over Beethoven With A Ball And Chain’, whereas Chuck does that with more of a
feather-tickle touch. I’ll take both and choose one depending on how pissed
off I feel at this particular time of day. ‘Johnny
B. Goode’ — forget it. Not even Marty McFly does a ‘Johnny B. Goode’-enough to
replace the original version. Not a single artist in the world has ever
managed to come up with a way to steal that song from Chuck. It’s been
imitated, mutated, mutilated (Hendrix played some totally crazyass live
versions), but nobody ever made it more exciting than the combination of
Chuck’s guitar, Chuck’s vocals, and Johnnie Johnson’s barrelhouse blues piano
rolls. If not the sole, then the primary reason for Chuck Berry being put on
Earth was to give us ‘Johnny B. Goode’, and nobody can take it away. Not even
worth discussing. ‘Around
And Around’, the B-side to ‘Johnny B. Goode’, is another matter. Of the two
British Invasion bands who laid their grubby hands on the song — the Animals
and the Stones — I unquestionably select the Stones’ version as definitive,
and I think they annihilated Chuck with their performance. Perhaps he just
did not give it enough attention, being so busy with ‘Johnny’ and all, but
the original is a little underdeveloped: the vocals feel slightly tired, the
piano is stuck too deeply into the background, and while the classic guitar
riff is already there, it feels thin and wimpy. The impression is that the
Stones put more soul and belief in
the song than Chuck did himself, making it their definitive early rock’n’roll
anthem — no wonder they used it to open their famous performance on the
T.A.M.I. Show. Great rock’n’roll performance from all parties involved, but
in the event of a need to score, it’s one less for Chuck and one more for the
British boys. The
Stones present an equally serious challenge to ‘Carol’, which they also
tightened up and made far more dangerous and ballistic than the original, but
this is the same case as with ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ — one might argue that
they made it a bit too serious,
taking out the goofy humor of Chuck’s story about a guy who has to learn to
dance in order to keep his girl safe from competitors. The best thing about
the song is the exciting, unpredictable dialog between Chuck and his own lead
guitar — echoing each of his vocal lines with a subtle mood twist — but the
clinch here is that Keith Richards totally got that, and made his guitar engage in an equally
meaningful dialog with Jagger’s delivery. (He would explore that dialog even
further when the Stones would seriously slow the song down on their 1969
American tour, as captured on the Ya-Ya’s
album). Ultimately, it’s a tie. ‘Sweet
Little Rock’n’Roller’ probably has its main competitor in Rod Stewart’s 1974
hit version — though I have always preferred his live performance of the song
with the Faces and guest star Keith Richards which, captured on video, is
like the ultimate embodiment of the garishness, flamboyance, narciccism,
drugged-out nonchalance, reckless abandon and total excitement of the glammy
mid-Seventies. The funny thing is that Rod had to change Chuck’s original
lyric of "she’s nine years old
and sweet as she can be" to "nineteen
years old" — apparently, in 1959 it was still possible to sing the song
as if it were really innocently describing the joy of a little girl
discovering the excitement of rock’n’roll music, but in 1974, the sexual
revolution imposed certain rules of its own. Anyway, I’m torn here, but
ultimately ‘Sweet Little Rock’n’Roller’ feels like something that is best
experienced in an exorbitantly inebriated state of mind, so I’m giving the
nod to Stewart, the Faces, Keith, and whoever else was rocking the glamhouse
down with the song in the most decadent years of the Me decade. It almost
feels as if Chuck was seeing far ahead into the future when he wrote about
"five thousand tongues screamin’ more,
more! and about fifteen hundred waitin’ outside the door" —
predicting arena-rock way before it happened. Next
to this, ‘Almost Grown’ feels almost hush-hushy, a quiet little tale about a
teenage guy who doesn’t really want to do much — just a perfect little
bourgeois anthem for all those kids who don’t
want to break down windows and knock down doors, but would rather just get their
eyes on a little girl (ironically, the backing vocals keep chanting
"night and day, night and day", which is clearly a stylistic
reference to Ray Charles’ ‘The Night Time Is The Right Time’, which goes to
show that even unpretentious, non-rebellious quiet bourgeois kids can still
have their natural urges like everybody else). But unlike something like
‘Anthony Boy’, the song is quite rock’n’roll in essence, catchy, fun, and
memorable — although I can certainly understand why, unlike the previous six,
it was hardly ever covered by anybody of importance, meaning that Chuck wins
by definition through total lack of competition. Night and day. Finally,
there’s ‘Little Queenie’, possibly the last great classic to come out of
Chuck Berry’s songbook — and one of his most compositionally complex, going
from a sung blues verse to a spoken bridge section before erupting in the
rock’n’roll chorus. Again, it’s a triumphant show of Chuck’s subtle, but
always relevant psychologism as he describes, page by page, all the stages of
inviting an unknown attractive girl to dance — and maybe a little something
extra — and the song is totally made by that quiet, half-spoken bridge
("meanwhile... I was thinkin’... she’s in the mood... no need to break
it...") which finally turns deliberation into decisiveness. This magic
has no equals, although Jerry Lee Lewis, another master of rock’n’roll
suspense (in fact, mood-wise ‘Little Queenie’ shares a lot with ‘Whole Lotta
Shakin’), came pretty close. (So did the Stones on the 1969 tour, though they
also slowed down the song, giving it a wholly different flavor). The almost
desperate guitar breaks at the end of the song are the ultimate kicker — some
of those licks would later end up on the Stones’ cover of ‘Down The Road
Apiece’ — so chalk one more up for Chuck here. The
one single from 1959 that did not manage to make it onto the album was ‘Back
In The U.S.A.’, coupled with ‘Memphis Tennessee’ — repeating the theme of
«bourgeois contentment» with the former and Chuck’s somewhat creepy fascination
with little kids on the latter. Neither of the two is a particular favorite
of mine, but both are classics all the same, and I’d certainly rather have
the Chuck Berry original of ‘Back In The U.S.A.’, with its sincere giddiness
of realization how lucky one is, after all, to live in a first world country, even despite all of its well-known problems,
to Linda Ronstadt’s cover from the sickly hedonistic year of 1978. As for
‘Memphis Tennessee’... everybody covered it and nobody could ever do anything
interesting with it (though I like the little guitar riff that the Animals appended
to the end of each verse on their version), so, again, consider the original
unsurpassed. This
concludes our little game which didn’t really have much of a purpose to it other
than to loyally support the greatness of Berry
Is On Top with loads of text. But if you don’t need a load of text to get
the idea that something can be really great, and prefer instead to go with
something ultra-laconic, then how about this: the rock’n’roll of Chuck Berry
is the thickest foundational pillar of 20th century pop culture, and Berry Is On Top has the densest
concentration of Chuck Berry’s rock’n’roll anywhere other than on an
extensive compilation. What else really
needs to be said?.. |
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Tracks: 1) Bye Bye Johnny; 2) Worried Life
Blues; 3) Down The Road A Piece; 4) Confessin’ The Blues; 5) Too Pooped To
Pop; 6) Mad Lad; 7) I Got To Find My Baby; 8) Betty Jean; 9) Childhood
Sweetheart; 10) Broken Arrow; 11) Driftin’ Blues; 12) Let It Rock. |
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Although
there are a few critics and fans out there who would, without batting an eye,
place Chuck’s fourth LP at the same level of quality as the classic trilogy
(including Bruce Eder writing for the All-Music Guide, whose description of
the record once again reminds me about the curiously different ways of human
brain wiring) — I think it’s fair to say that, on the whole, Rockin’ At The Hops has not gone down
in history as a particularly memorable LP of original Chuck Berry material.
For that matter, not a single
subsequent Chuck Berry LP would go down in history as particularly memorable,
with the possible exception of a brief «comeback» with St. Louis To Liverpool after Chuck’s prison term. |
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The
reason for this decline is occasionally indicated to have been the beginning
of Chuck’s legal persecution — the infamous «Apache Trials» of the early
1960s, which, back at the time, were commonly perceived as doubly motivated
by racism and anti-rock’n’roll sentiment, but today have begun to be
re-evaluated as reflecting Chuck’s predatory relations with young ladies (you
can read all about it in this detailed write-up of the
story of Chuck Berry and Janice Escalanti). All of that, to some degree
or other, is probably true — the racism, the hatred for rock’n’roll, and Chuck’s appetite for easily
exploitable teenage girls — but as tempting as it would be to just forget all
about the music and turn this text into a moral judgement of corrupt Western
society, it is more important to note, at this particular juncture, that at
least half of the songs that make up Rockin’
At The Hops, had been recorded in mid-1959, at the peak of Chuck’s fame,
way before the Escalanti incident even happened (that was in December of the
same year), let alone went to trial. Just look at all those songs recorded at Chess
Studios on July
27–29, 1959: ‘Betty Jean’, ‘County Line’ (this outtake stayed unreleased
until the 1970s), ‘Childhood Sweetheart’, Count Basie’s ‘One O’Clock Jump’
(another outtake), ‘Broken Arrow’, ‘Let It Rock’, ‘Too Pooped To Pop’, ‘Say
You’ll Be Mine’, ‘Let Me Sleep Woman’. Any of these ring a bell? Well, maybe
‘Let It Rock’, which was resurrected by the Stones for their early 1970s
tours and has since then been covered by a variety of neo-rockabilly and
plain nostalgic artists. But even ‘Let It Rock’ ain’t no ‘Johnny B. Goode’...
oh, that’s right: ‘Let It Rock’ is
‘Johnny B. Goode’, only without the hooks. Considering that the previous Chess session, held in February of that same year, gave
us at least two quite memorable classics (‘Almost Grown’ and ‘Back In The
USA’), we can now safely identify the time period from February to July as the time frame in which Chuck Berry’s
personal muse, which had been so generous to him over the previous four
years, packed up her things and quietly left the apartment. Perhaps she got a
disturbing premonition that one of these days, her lover boy would decide to
traffick her, too, across state borders for the purpose of prostitution or
debauchery. But more likely, she simply decided that her mission with this
guy was done. They had a 4-year contract going on, and on May 21, 1959, the
4th anniversary of recording ‘Maybellene’ at Chess Studios, it just happened
to expire. I have no other explanation, but there you have it — a plain,
unadorned, transparent case of the «Fifties’ Curse» in action. Naturally, some things cannot be simply taken
away. The groove, the (sometimes working, sometimes not) humor, the ability
to play exciting lead guitar — all of that is evident on ‘Let It Rock’, and
Chuck’s little unfinished horror story of a bunch of railroad workers caught
by surprise by an off-schedule train nicely reminds you of his taste for
combining the mundane, the merry, and the macabre, except that the song is
called ‘Let It Rock’ for some reason, and that’s the only message that the absolute
majority of listeners shall ever get from it (particularly if you hear the Stones version, where it is
impossible to make out a single word of what Mick Jagger is singing). What is not
at all evident is what precisely motivated Chuck to take the verse melody of
‘Johnny B. Goode’, refill it with new lyrics, completely omit the chorus and
re-record the song as it is, replacing the chorus with a couple of off-kilter
guitar solos. Yes, some of his B-sides and LP filler tracks in the past might
have been like this, but this was the very first time he decided to release a
blatantly lazy re-write as an A-side — and although such was his glory at the
time that it still somehow managed to chart (in February 1960, one month
before the start of the trial), it would be his last entry in the Top 100
before the temporary «comeback» of 1964. The rest of the session brings no surprises — it
is quite consistently lacklustre. ‘Betty Jean’ is a blatant re-write of
‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ which turns an originally constructed and humorously
uplifting anthem to rock’n’roll into a simplistic love declaration, with
corny backing vocals ("sing the song Chuckie boy" is just gross)
and a half-baked guitar solo buried deep in the mix. ‘Childhood Sweetheart’
is a formulaic piece of uptempo 12-bar blues on which Chuck is so bored, he
even gets to playing the ‘Dust My Broom’ riff for a while. Meanwhile, ‘Broken
Arrow’ continues the tradition of ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’ in giving us
several humorous lyrical vignettes connected by a single theme... in this
case, the theme being «stupid behavior» where an Indian chief getting into
battle with a superior tribe is compared to the idea of sending your lady out
shopping and ending up having her spend all your money on "a mink stole
here and a chinchilla there". Uh... okay. It’s one thing to have Chuck
Berry recycling his own riffs, but when he starts recycling his own sense of
humor, that’s where the real
trouble begins. The last song from July 1959 that made it onto the
LP is one I’m rather conflicted about: on one hand, ‘Too Pooped To Pop’ at
least sounds a little different —
it is the first time, if I’m not mistaken, when a Chuck Berry song is driven
by sax rather than guitar and piano; it’s also got a moderately catchy
chorus, and the lyrics, about an old geezer («Casey» – not Casey Jones,
though!) trying to get hip with the kids, are at least funnier than the ones
on ‘Broken Arrow’. On the other hand, the song, written by Billy Davis
(mostly known at the time for co-writing hits for Jackie Wilson, and later —
for the Coca-Cola jingles), is a clear mismatch: its nonchalant attitude and
relaxed New Orleanian vibe rather makes it ideal for the likes of
warm-climate Huey "Piano" Smith than cold-climate Chuck Berry.
Toothless vaudeville like that works best with natural clowns, and while
Chuck did enjoy clowning, that’s
not quite the same as being a clown, if you get my drift — I’m sure somebody
like Pete Townshend would definitely get it, for instance. As we finally move into 1960, we find that things
start to get a little different. The piano on these later tracks is mostly
handled by Ellis "Lafayette" Leake instead of Johnnie Johnson;
whether this is in any way connected with Chuck’s sudden predilection towards
slow blues numbers is questionable (Leake did play on some of his slower
numbers earlier on, but he also played on ‘Rock And Roll Music’ and ‘Little
Queenie’, so no generalizations here) — but it is possible to assume that by early 1960 Chuck was in a more
somber mood than usual, for obvious reasons. Hence, ‘Driftin’ Blues’,
recorded on February 12, 1960 in an extremely
(for Chuck) self-pitying manner: "if my baby would only take me back
again / well you know I ain’t good for nothin’ and I haven’t got a
friend" sounds quite convincing under the circumstances. Ironically,
even though slow mournful blues is probably one of the last styles we’d ever
want to associate Chuck Berry with, at this point in his career he may be
doing it better than anything else — it’s definitely got more feeling than
the comparatively upbeat, horns-driven take on ‘I Got To Find My Baby’, a
song that hearkens back to the days of jump blues and slow Little
Richard-style R&B. From late March and early April of the same year
comes the last bunch of songs, spearheaded by ‘Bye Bye Johnny’ — at least
this time around, the song does not even pretend to be masquerading as
something other than a continuation of ‘Johnny B. Goode’. You could make a
case for ‘Bye Bye Johnny’ from the change-of-perspective angle, what with the
lyrics focusing on the mother
rather than the son this time
around ("she remembered taking
money out from gathering crop / and buying Johnny’s guitar at a broker shop"
— hey, if you’re not tearing up around this point, you got a heart of stone,
mister!), but problem A is that an emotional mother’s perspective does not
agree all too well with the rock’n’rolling rhythm, and problem B is — do we really give that much of a damn? ‘Bye
Bye Johnny’ is simply one of those sequels, like ‘Jim Dandy Got Married’ or
‘Peggy Sue Got Married’, whose only reason of existence is to remind us of
the frailty, predictability, and general weakness of the human mind. The covers are generally just as devoid of
interest as the self-rewrites: ‘Worried Life Blues’, on which Chuck struggles
to find a common language with Matt Murphy on lead guitar, is worthless next
to Ray Charles’ soulful version from the same year, and ‘Confessin’ The
Blues’ is equally worthless next to Little Walter’s soulful version from
1958. The best of these recordings is probably ‘Down The Road A Piece’, which
is also a cover of a pretty old tune (by Don Raye, from 1940) that Chuck most
likely adapted from the Amos Milburn boogie-woogie version
(he even adapts some of Amos’ piano licks for his guitar); it features
Berry’s best soloing on the entire album, although the tempo is a little
slovenly — something the Stones understood well enough when covering the song
in 1964 at Chess Studios, under Chuck’s very eyes. Come to think of it, it is quite telling that the
Stones played so many songs off this very album — ‘Bye Bye Johnny’, ‘Down The
Road Apiece’ and ‘Confessin’ The Blues’ ended up on their early studio
records (although the latter rather follows Little Walter’s version than
Chuck’s), while ‘Let It Rock’, as I already said, ended up in their live set
later on in the game. In addition, the Animals played ‘Worried Life Blues’
(though, again, they probably were more inspired by Ray Charles than Chuck),
and the Beatles covered ‘I Got To Find My Baby’ for their BBC sessions. One
might think that this was all due to Rockin’ At The Hops being such a
great album — but in reality, it was precisely because these songs were so relatively inferior that the white British
kids hoped to be better able to put their own stamp on them. And ‘Down The
Road Apiece’ is a classic example of that — with all due respect to Chuck,
the Stones’ version really flies where Chuck’s barely finds the strength to
get off the ground. Naturally, if you lower your expectations low
enough, Rockin’ At The Hops is still quite a classic Chuck Berry
experience, perhaps a little bit overloaded with slow blues songs, but still
featuring that inimitable late-Fifties Chicago sound in all of its
atmospheric glory. I’d be lying if I said that ‘Let It Rock’ and ‘Bye Bye
Johnny’ do not «rock». But all through the mid-1950s, Chuck Berry amazed the
world by constantly finding new
ways to make his stuff «rock» — different chord changes, different vocal
hooks, different theatrical approaches — and this here is the breaking point
when he simply ran out of those new ways, fair and square. I’d honestly trade
a couple of years of my current life for a chance to have been his roadie
from early to mid-1959, just to be able to see how exactly he «lost the way».
Too much money? Too many fast cars or young Apache girls? Too much pressure
from the industry? Too tired from touring? Too pooped to pop? Or was that simply
a case of, you know — creative exhaustion, when the pool of potential ideas
that your brain has been given at birth has been drained and there’s
absolutely no way to refill it from the outside?.. |
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Tracks: 1) I’m Talking About You; 2)
Diploma For Two; 3) Thirteen Question Method; 4) Away From You; 5) Don’t You
Lie To Me; 6) The Way It Was Before; 7) Little Star; 8) Route 66; 9) Sweet
Sixteen; 10) Run Around; 11) Stop And Listen; 12) Rip It Up. |
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REVIEW The
title of this LP is a downright lie, or, to put it more mildly, a classic
example of wishful thinking. Only one song on New Juke Box Hits could have really squeezed inside a juke box —
‘Little Star’, released as a single in early 1961 — and it was anything but a hit. In fact, even if Chuck’s
reputation had not plummeted because of the «Apache Trials», I have a hard
time imagining anybody getting particularly excited by this somnambulant
doo-wop waltz, replete with corny backing female vocals and an uninspired
guitar solo, lost somewhere deep in the mix. About the only thing here that
could raise some empathy are Chuck’s own vocals, unusually tender,
vulnerable, and pleading: "Although
you are so very far / Please help me, help me, little star". |
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As
we have already established with the previous review, Chuck’s slide from
creative genius to self-plagiarizing mediocrity started quite some time before his legal misfortunes; however,
there is still a fuzzy atmospheric line that separates New Juke Box Hits from Rockin’
At The Hops, namely, an all-pervading atmosphere of misery, depression,
and bitterness, and this is most
certainly due to the fact that all of these songs come from sessions extended
over the period of early 1960 to early 1961, all through which Chuck was busy
getting tried, convicted, and then waiting for his appeal, before finally
accepting his fate and heading to jail in early 1962. Admittedly, it would be
unreasonable to expect too many of those songs to even try to sound happy — and when they do, it would be reasonable to
expect that we wouldn’t be too convinced. Case in point: ‘Thirteen Question
Method’, a little romantic dance number with a tinge of bossa nova that feels
like a loose rewrite of ‘Thirty Days’. The lyrical challenge is amusing —
you’re supposed to guess the nature and intentions of the «thirteenth
question» yourself — but Chuck’s singing and playing feel totally off, as if
his mind was really elsewhere at the time. (And how could it not be? The
recording session was held exactly one month after his original conviction).
Play it next to ‘Reelin’ And Rockin’ and feel the difference — this here is
the sound of a man who has no strength to simulate vivaciousness. It is telling that two more «rockers» here date
from a special recording session held in January ’61: my guess is that either
Chuck himself, or the people at Chess, were so alarmed at the overall morose
nature of most of the stuff he’d recorded in 1960 that at least a couple more
«classic Chuck Berry-style» rock’n’roll songs were required to make the next
LP a viable commercial proposition. By then, however, he’d completely run out
of inspiration, so both numbers are covers — and ‘Rip It Up’, at the very
least, ends up being Chuck at his least convincing. Next to Little Richard,
Elvis, or even Bill Haley, all of whom produced rip-roaring versions of this
Saturday night anthem, Chuck’s performance is sluggish, lazy, and showing
minimal interest. Rarely do you get to hear a "Saturday night and I’m feelin’ fine" that is less believable
than this one. Bobby Troup’s old travelogue ‘Route 66’ fares a
little better, because the song is essentially just a love letter to American
toponymics, not necessarily requiring the artist to be jubilant about it;
still, next to something like ‘Back In The USA’, Chuck’s one and only true love letter to his home country,
there is something monotonously perfunctory in the way he checks off those
names one by one — Amarillo, Flagstaff, Barstow — and his piano player,
Lafayette Leake, seems to be infected with the same languidness as he plays
the keys without any serious emotions. Consequently, the best thing about
this recording is that it would be later picked on by the Rolling Stones — to
whom all of these mysterious town names were probably like Middle-earth back
in early 1964, and who transformed Chuck’s insipid cover into one of the most
snappy, tight, killer pieces of nascent British rhythm’n’blues. Not surprisingly, Chuck fares here a little better
with those rockers that trade in his most common stuffing — giddiness and
happiness — for anger and bitterness, emotions that he tended to use much
more sparingly while being «on top». ‘Don’t You Lie To Me’, a cover of an old
blues song, may be understood as a secret message to Janice Escalanti: "You know there’s two kinds of people that
I just can’t stand / That’s a lying woman and a cheating man".
Regardless of who was in the right and who was in the wrong here, there is no
denying, I think, that on this
track, at least, Chuck’s singing is far more spirited and infectious than on
any of the «happy» rockers. The grumbly «brass farts» that echo each of his
lines reinforce the pissed-off feeling, and you can feel some real snap
coming out of his fingers for the guitar solo. Somewhere in the middle stands ‘I’m Talking About
You’, another «middling» Chuck original later tried on by the Stones: not
exactly an «angry» one, but not exactly «happy», either. The lyrics deal with
a story of communication breakdown — Chuck’s protagonist is desperately
courting a girl without too much luck — and it is possible that the
atmosphere of nervous tension and irritated waiting that permeates the song
indirectly correlates with Chuck’s own waiting for the fate of his appeal. In
any case, next to ‘Rip It Up’ and ‘Route 66’, recorded at the same session,
‘Talking About You’ is a stand-out, with Chuck’s nervous and irritated "come on and give me a cue, so I can get a
message to you!" checking the right emotional box and the guitar
solo, again, showing signs of life (although musically, I think, it is Reggie
Boyd on bass who is the real hero here — it was a real cool touch to not have
him stop along with the rest of the band for the last line of each verse, so
that the bass tension of the song could be continuous). Alas, apart from the small bunch of failed «happy»
rockers and the even smaller bunch of semi-successful «pissed-off» rockers, New
Juke Box Hits is crammed from top to bottom with slow, dreary,
atmospheric blues ballads. And the problem here is that, as much as you might
like to disagree with me, Chuck Berry can’t really do «sad». Being moody,
pensive, and melancholic simply does not come to him naturally — not in the
recording studio, at least. I have already mentioned the disappointing effect
of ‘Little Star’; but other broken-hearted ballads like ‘Away From You’ or
‘Stop And Listen’ sound every bit as amateurish. If I want truly crushing
soul-blues like that, I just go all the way to Otis Rush, whose voice and
guitar are God’s true gift to every broken-hearted loner; Chuck Berry sounds
about as natural being Otis Rush as Meatloaf covering J. J. Cale. Nobody
remembers any of those ballads and for a damn good reason. And what’s up with
those awful backing vocals all over the place? They sound like they’re taken
from some old Andrews Sisters recordings. A particularly silly decision was to cover Big Joe
Turner’s (and B. B. King’s) ‘Sweet Sixteen’ — perhaps triggered by the
title’s proximity to ‘Sweet Little
Sixteen’, in which case it’s a bit of a manipulative trick; Chuck tries to
put his own stamp on the song by playing it in a more quiet, hush-hush way
than the big, soulful belts of his predecessors, but his attempts at sounding
«subtle» are too generic to raise interest. He might not be hitting any bum
notes, and his subdued guitar soloing may be technically OK, but how exactly
is he going to outplay B. B. King at his own game? And how exactly would his
singing here be distinguishable from a veritable horde of plaintive blues
crooners who came before him? Many are the famous cases in the history of rock
music when people were able to convert their personal temporary troubles into
beautiful and timeless art; New Juke Box Hits should not be included
on that list — honestly, it should be locked up in the archives along with
Chuck’s court protocols, as little more than a historical document reflecting
a particular state of mood at a particular time. With the exception of
‘Talking About You’ and ‘Don’t You Lie To Me’, there is really nothing here
worth salvaging, and what else there is only betrays Chuck’s artistic
limitations: he is not a natural crooner, not an outstanding bluesman, not a
particularly good interpreter of other people’s songs, and not the kind of
artist who works well under heavy pressure. Curiously, Chuck’s last gift to us before heading
off to serve his sentence was not half-bad. ‘Come On’, released as a single
in October 1961, is both melodically more interesting and emotionally more
satisfying than any one tune on New Juke Box Hits. It’s almost
unusually poppy for Chuck (a bit influenced by the ongoing twist craze,
probably), it features an unusually «colorful» guitar tone (as compared to
the more typical ragged and distorted vibe), it has his sister Martha
supporting him on backing vocals, and it resonates pretty damn well with his
then-current situation: "Everything
is wrong since me and my baby parted / All day long I’m walking ’cause I
couldn’t get my car started / Laid off from my job and I can’t afford to
check it / I wish somebody’d come along and run into and wreck it"
feels pretty personal, and the nervous tension feels pretty palpable. When,
two years later, the Stones selected the song for their first single, they
did a good job with it, but Mick Jagger would deliver the lyrics in the
intonation of a dissatisfied mama’s boy — Chuck here sings it with all the
heavy load of a grown-up man who’s getting a little tired from being kicked
around by life. Unlike the album, ‘Come On’ is a decent enough farewell to
the first phase of Chuck Berry’s musical career, brought to an abrupt end by
his prison term — from which Mr. Berry would already be emerging into a
completely different musical world, one that would, at the very least, want
to think twice before deciding to re-embrace the father of rock’n’roll with
the same degree of warm welcome as it did before the «Apache Trials». |
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