News Archive
Happy
New Year
Monday,
31. December 2001 - 11:42
A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!!
The Webmaster
Source: Wolfgang Guhl
Concert
Reviews (Specials) section updated
Monday,
31. December 2001 - 11:42
We added one new concert review of the following Legends Of Rock'n'Roll show:
Source: Wolfgang Guhl
Rock
& Roll Music DVD to be re-released in January 2002
Saturday,
29. December 2001 - 11:57
DVD
January 2002
List Price: $19.98
Not Rated
Color
Closed Captioned
46 minutes
UPC 013023-16629-5
Catalog 11662
DVD description:
A
concert that is testament to the raw power that makes Chuck Berry the true king
of rock & roll.
Filmed at Toronto's Rock & Roll Revival in 1969, titles include "Johnny
B. Goode," "Maybelline,"
"Sweet Little Sixteen," "Hoochie Koochie Man," "Rock
& Roll Music" and "Carol".
Source: Wolfgang Guhl
London
Rock & Roll Show finally available on DVD
Saturday,
29. December 2001 - 11:28
London Rock & Roll Show
DVD
November 2001
List Price: $19.95
Not Rated
Color
Closed Captioned
84 minutes
UPC 022891-43989-9
Catalog 4398
DVD description:
This rock concert, filmed at London's famed
Wembley Arena, was made legendary through
word of mouth for decades. Unavailable on video for years after it was first
filmed, it was a
much discussed rarity. Thankfully, the amazing performance, which features such
rock luminaries
as Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Bill Haley and Chuck Berry, has
finally been
made available for home viewing. Filmed beautifully by director Peter Clifton,
the concert
contains inspired performances of more than 2 dozen rock classics.
Source: Wolfgang Guhl
Massive
update to the Picture Gallery
Wednesday,
26. December 2001 - 13:38
Source: Wolfgang Guhl
Various
updates
Wednesday,
26. December 2001 - 13:14
Source: Wolfgang Guhl
Duet
with Chuck Berry and Status Quo orginally planned in 1996
Tuesday,
25. December 2001 - 11:25
According to the booklet of the
new "Rockers Rollin'" box set, the world most
successful rock band Status Quo tried to get Chuck Berry for their cover version
of "You Never Can Tell" on the "Don't Stop" album (released
in 1996), but the
project was cancelled. Check out this text passage from the booklet:
"[...] In addition to the guests who had recorded with
the band, Quo had also hoped to work
with Rock'n'Roll legend Chuck Berry (on a cover of the maestro's You Never Can
Tell)
and Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie. Unfortunately for all concerned neither
collaboration proved possible. [...]"
Source: Wolfgang Guhl
Picture
Gallery updated
Tuesday,
25. December 2001 - 11:02
Pictures of the following shows have been added to the Picture Gallery:
Source: Wolfgang Guhl
Merry
Christmas
Monday,
24. December 2001 - 10:01
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!
The Webmaster
Source: Wolfgang Guhl
100.000
visitors since February 1999
Monday,
24. December 2001 - 10:01
CHUCK BERRY - MR. ROCK'N'ROLL, the largest
Chuck Berry website on the internet
celebrates 100.000 visitors since it was first published in February 1999.
Thanks for all your support!
Source: Wolfgang Guhl
Chuck
Berry's 1972 BBC TV show in scandinavian television, Dec 28
Monday,
24. December 2001 - 10:01
The english Chuck Berry BBC TV show from March
1972 will come up in swedish and
finish television, Dec 28th, 2001. The concert was recorded at BBC TV Theatre,
Shepherds
Bush Green, London, 29 March 1972. The show was brought out by BBC 2, at July
22th 1972
in the serie "Sounds For Saturday". A shorter version from the show
was brought out January
4th 1973. Also one song was brought out by BBC 2 at Berry's 70th birthday,
October 18th 1996.
A bootleg album with the title "Six Two Five" was brought out on the
market 1972 (Driving
Wheel LP 1001) or (Maybelline MBL 676). In the 90's the show also was transfered
to the CD
market on these three CD's: "Six Two Five" (Archivio ARC CD-001) Italy
/ "Our Little Rendez-Vous"
(Wolf 2010CD) Austria / "The Essential Collection" (Newsound
PYCD-260) UK. I don't know
if any of these records is official or legal. The show is fantastic and Mr.
Berry play great guitar
in songs like "Nadine", "Sweet Little Sixteen", "Let it
Rock" and "Carol". The show also include
humoristic numbers like "South of the Border" and "Beer Drinking
Woman"(Memphis Slim).
"South of the Border" was released on a Chess single (Chess 6145027)
together with "Bio" in 1973.
The musicans in the back up band is Dave Harrison (dr), Billy Kinsley (bs),
Jimmy Campbell (gtr) and
Michael Snow (piano). The show will coming in swedish television, Dec 28th,
10:40 pm and
finish television 11.15 pm.
Source: Johan Hasselberg
Multimedia section re-opened
Tuesday,
11. December 2001 - 13:54
The Multimedia section has been re-opened.
"You name it, we'll play it."
From now on YOU decide what song will be included next week
so please answer the Poll question in the Multimedia section.
Please vote only once!
Source: Wolfgang Guhl
"The Roots Of Chuck
Berry" now released
Tuesday,
11. December 2001 - 13:54
The Roots Of Chuck Berry
"The
Roots of Chuck Berry" is the title of a new CD with songs who is
influential on
Chuck Berry's music. Chuck Berry mention many artists and songs in his
autobiography (1987)
and now Catfish Records has brought out some of them on this CD (Catfish
KATCD204).
Chuck's influences include a variety of musicians from many different areas of
music.
There's the straight up Delta blues of Elmore James to the urbane jazz of Duke
Ellington
and the up-tempo rhythm and blues of Louis Jordan and Willie Dixon. Fred
Rothwell, author of
"Long Distance Information: Chuck Berry's Recorded Legacy" (Music
Mentor Books, 2001)
wrote the liner notes and not only collected all the information about the
recording (date, place, musicians)
but also describes how each song affected Chuck's work. The 20-track CD contains
original versions of
"Mean Old World", "Driftin' Blues", "Route 66",
"Don't You Lie To Me" etc. In addition there are
examples of the guitar playing by T-bone Walker, Charlie Christian, Carl Hogan
and Elmore James
who was some of Chuck Berry's favourite guitar players in the 40's and early
50's. Picture and info at:
www.catfishrecords.co.uk
Source: Johan Hasselberg
Chuck Berry on the cover on
new book from Rolling Stone authors
Sunday,
09. December 2001 - 08:59
Rolling Stone: The Decades of Rock & Roll
Rob Sheffield, Anthony DeCurtis etc.
Hardcover - 288 pages
Chronicle Books / ISBN 0811829782
List price: $29.95 (USA)
Publication date: October / 2001
Book description:
Rock & roll has been around for almost 50
years, and since 1967 Rolling Stone has
been following the circus, reporting with wit and insight on its antics. Now
Rolling
Stone and Chronicle Books join forces to deliver the first five decades of rock
& roll
as it's never been read before. The Decades of Rock & Roll delves into
Rolling Stone's
vast archive and pulls out the most interesting, insightful, and seminal essays
and
interviews written in the history of music journalism. Full of the funny stories
and
vivid details that bring history to life, the pieces are organized decade by
decade along
with newly written retrospectives from crack writers like Rob Sheffield and
Anthony DeCurtis.
Stars like Little Richard, Bob Dylan, and Robert Plant are revealed in
incredible interviews.
Paul McCartney gives his top ten songs of the '60s as does Moby for the '90s.
Black-and-white
photos capture Otis Redding on his knees, screaming into the microphone, or
Donna Summer
wreathed in '70s glitz. From R&B to punk rock to rap to grunge, The Decades
of Rock & Roll
gives fans of all ages the lowdown on the way it was, and the way it is today.
Source: Johan Hasselberg
New book about Chuck
Berry's grow up neighborhood, The Ville
Saturday,
08. December 2001 - 08:26
The Ville: St. Louis (Black America Series)
John
A. Wright, Sr
Paperback - 128 pages
Arcadia Publishing / ISBN 0738508152
List price: $19.99 (USA)
Mail order email:
sales@arcadiapublishing.com (all over the world)
Publication date: December / 2001
Book description:
The Ville (Elleardsville),
encompassing less than a square mile in St. Louis, was the heart
of black culture and commerce during segregation. John A. Wright Sr. of
University City
collected photos, wrote detailed captions and took some photos for the book.
Wright, 62,
is an assistant superintendent of personnel for the Ferguson-Florissant School
District.
He's formative years came in The Ville. He attended Marshall and Simmons
elementary
schools and graduated from Sumner High School. He said he wrote the book because
"I wanted people to know what took place in less than one square mile. I
felt it was a
story that needed to be told". The Ville contained a college, an
internationally known
medical school, a law school, a nationally known and black-owned manufacturer of
hair
products. The hair-care firm, the Poro College, had an auditorium at which
gospel and
opera singer Marian Anderson performed. The neighborhood's first black
institution,
Elleardsville Colored School No. 8, later renamed Simmons, opened in 1873. The
school
is still open. The book contains 234 photos from churches, residents and
libraries.
Many are of graduating classes. On the cover is the Simmons School eighth grade
graduating
class of 1937. Some photos contradict stereotypes. The Sumner High Golf Club,
young men
and women, pose in 1938. Some hold their golf clubs. There are photos of Dick
Gregory,
Chuck Berry, Tina Turner and Arthur Ashe, all of whom attended school in The
Ville. In
another photo, opera star Grace Bumbry is singing solo with the Sumner a
cappella choir.
Wright also documents The Ville's decline. As desegregation knocked down
restrictions on
the places blacks could live, go to school and shop, the area lost people and
businesses.
Source: Johan Hasselberg
Chuck Berry in Rolling Stone
Magazine
Tuesday,
04. December 2001 - 14:37
Chuck Berry Turns 75
Still doing whatever he pleases, the inventor of rock
& roll is in need of nothing
more than some able musicians and a Lincoln
Town car
The house lights went up at the Frederick Brown Jr.
Amphitheater in Peachtree City, Georgia, As he finished the short drive to his dressing room, the final strains of the
singing faded into the Well, they should have known. It's not that Chuck was ungrateful - it's
always nice to receive a kind But this would be no big deal, he assured Chuck: "All you'll have to do
is stand there and smile."
"Stand there and smile?" Chuck replied, peering up from beneath the
brim of his commodore's cap. "But Mr. Berry," said the man, "we'd never ask you to do
anything out of character."
Chuck narrowed the brown eyes of his still-handsome face.
"You're not going to try and tell me what my character is, now are you?"
he said.
And they went ahead and did it anyway! Why would they do that, Chuck wondered
as he peeled his sweaty Standing there, the venue manager seemed chastened, and yet he had another
request.
"Mr. Berry?" he began. It seemed the mayor of Peachtree City, and
the chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, "Meet and what?" Chuck said. He threw his head back and smiled. It
was a kindly smile, because as long as But there had been no discussion of meets or greets, not with the
mayor, not with the judge, not with any "No, sorry," he said. "No time now. Just tell them I am in the
midst of justifying this elderly frame of mine. Which means: When you're Chuck Berry, and you're seventy-five years old, and
you invented rock & roll, In the pantheon of outsize personalities who came together in the 1950s to
invent the miscegenation music No teen sensation, he was twenty-six before he made a nickel playing music.
Leonard Chess, master of the He dropped out of St. Louis' Sumner High after the tenth grade, but still,
Chuck is snobby in his way. He's been This is how it is with Chuck Berry, a big topic who arrives with enough
skittish race discourse and cool-breeze Case in deeply nuanced point is the story of how Chuck came to write "Sweet
Little Sixteen" - Number One The song came out of an incident after a show up in Ottawa, Canada, Chuck
writes in his Victorian-hipster prose: By the time he got around to writing the song's lyrics, Chuck recalls now,
"I was playing in Kansas City, staying So there you have a peek into the petri dish of the alchemical Dr. Berry:
"Sweet Little Sixteen" and many more It is kinky, but then again, anyone who ever heard of that possibly
apocryphal home video of Chuck banging a Yet somehow, after all these years and all we know of Chuck, and through many,
many cursory performances, I confess to schizophrenia," he has said. "There is me, Charles
Berry, and there is me, Chuck Berry. Sometimes Sort of, he is. For years, Chuck swore straight-facedly, even defiantly, that
he had never served a single day of "Nothing really came of it," Chuck told Patrick William Salvo in a
1972 Rolling Stone interview. "You see, But, of course, Chuck Berry did go to jail. It is true that Chuck's first
conviction was appealed after it was found The last paragraph of the Post-Dispatch article said simply, "Berry is a
negro."
In his 1987 memoir, Chuck wrote movingly of his bus ride to Federal Medical
Facility in Springfield, Missouri, Today, Chuck maintains his innocence - he says people were out to get him
because the nightspot he owned, "Some trio," Chuck says, and yet he will not abide hearing his
prosecution referred to as him being "railroaded."
"This is the greatest country on earth," he says, suddenly
irritated. "I was in Australia, and I found out they wouldn't This is how it is with Chuck Berry: You put him up there with Jack Johnson
and Charlie Chaplin, and he looks at you Chuck remains steadfastly aloof from any talk of his own cultural importance.
For example, his song "Promised Land" But if you tell him that, Chuck only rolls his eyes. "People think up
all kinds of things," he says.
Or mention that Russell Simmons, the hip-hop impresario, sees an unbroken
line connecting Johnny B. Goode "All those m- words and f- words, don't blame me for that," he says.
"I'd rather hear Tommy Dorsey or Finally, he exclaims, "Look, I ain't no big shit, all right?" In
Chuck's book, he has always fallen short of true greatness: So you take chuck berry as he comes, and how he comes is alone, a solitary
traveling salesman/cowboy of rock & roll, "I require two things," says Chuck. "A Lincoln Town Car at the
airport and a Fender Bassman amp." If the One more item he asks for is "to be provided with able musicians, that
is, musicians able to play Chuck Berry songs." On a recent evening, hanging out in a dressing room with the night's group of
able musicians - able to play Chuck Berry songs - "He always does," says Dick Alen, who has been Chuck's agent (also
Little Richard's) for nearly fifty years. "If the Nowadays, Chuck gets something like $35,000 for a decent-size gig, and sure
enough, here he comes, tearing into Then, after smacking forearms with the band, his usual greeting, Chuck
suddenly remembers something. Pivoting on Rolling through traffic on 1-170, west of the St. Louis neighborhood where he
was born, you'd figure Chuck to Sure, he had a fleet of vehicles out at Berry Park, Chuck acknowledged. There
was also a Mercedes at his house "In a Toyota, the cops don't think about stopping you so much,"
says America's leading poet of things automotive.
A few minutes later, Chuck is inside the Four Seasons recording studio. It is
a momentous day. Chuck Berry, Today that is supposed to change, and Chuck is - totally out of character - a
little nervous about the prospect.
"For many years," he says, "I've been reluctant to make new
songs. There has been a great laziness in my soul. Chuck arrives at the studio with six cardboard boxes full of half-inch tapes
containing various demos, stuff he's done A moment later, Chuck, the pearl buttons of his billowy white cowboy shirt
and his string-tie clasp shining in the "I am not going to be paranoid," he announces to Dave Torretta, his
engineer, and Joe Edwards, a St. Louis This said, Chuck begins to record the vocal track for "Dutchman,"
an expressionistic hip-hop campfire Chuck's light-timbred tenor is as sly and nimble as
ever. It is no great leap
to imagine yourself back in Leonard After another couple of numbers, some new, some old, Chuck is ready to call
it quits. He's been working through One more take and Chuck stops, looks through the
glass. "You know,"
he says, "maybe it is true what they say, that playing That's not the only discontent troubling Chuck's old age. Last
year, Johnnie
Johnson, Chuck's famous piano player, Back home in ol' St. Loo, where the faces of both men adorn the University
Loop Walk of Fame, the dispute Pointing out that the suit was announced only days before Chuck was due to be
honored at the Kennedy Chuck seems unperturbed by the suit, even by news that his friend and
collaborator now calls him "two-faced."
"The lawyers are handling that," Chuck says with a shrug. "The
judge already dismissed something like Certainly it's not on his mind tonight, at Edwards' Blueberry Hill. It has
been a long day, with the morning "And maybe more!" he shouts, pointing at the ceiling. "Hey,
Elvis! Still here, man!"
Blueberry Hill, something of a Chuck shrine, with old show posters, mounted
guitars and framed Alan Freed "Can't beat this," Chuck says, picking at the wings in the tiny
dressing room beneath a black-and-white photo For Chuck, however, the best thing about the Hill gig is that he gets to play
with his children, the fabulous Ingrid, "It's been wonderful, really," says Ingrid, herself a mother, about
life as Chuck Berry's kid. "It's true, there were hard times, The show - as they always are at Blueberry Hill - is tremendous. Chuck even
duck-walks across the stage during And so it goes, on and on, because at Blueberry Hill, the timer inside
Chuck's head, the one that buzzes after "You don't know how good this makes me feel!" Chuck shouts to the
crowd, unguarded at last.
After the show, Chuck gladly does a meet-and-greet for the line of fans
snaking away from his dressing-room door. "Saw you in '57 and again in '58, in Philly," says a retired
plumber. "Saw you open for the Dead at the Fillmore," "Got every single you ever made," says someone who drove in from
Kansas City, handing Chuck a 45 of "Nadine."
"When did I record this? 1844?" Chuck asks with a grin, affixing
his flamboyant autograph to the disc, "You're the best," somebody says.
"Lies!" Chuck replies.
"You're the handsomest man in the world," a middle-aged woman in
lime-colored polyester pants says, "Finally, a bit of truth," he says, bouncing her on his knee.
MARK JACOBSON
and 2,500 souls rose as one, held
flaming candles aloft and commenced singing "Happy Birthday"
to the
inventor of rock & roll. But Chuck Berry was nowhere to be seen. The stage
was empty.
Only moments before, he'd been duck-walking and crashing through his
old hits - or as many of
them as could be played in precisely fifty-five minutes
- but now Chuck was speeding through the
backstage area behind the wheel of a
golf cart.
Georgia night. Chuck shook his head and said,
"Man!"
gesture, especially when you're seventy-five years
of age. But this business with the singing and the
giant cake on wheels - that
had all been settled earlier in the night, when the manager of the amphitheater
gingerly approached Chuck with their plans for a nice little onstage birthday
tribute. The man seemed
well aware of Chuck's fearsome reputation. He knew that
Keith Richards had called Chuck, his all-time hero,
"a bitch sometimes.
More headaches than Jagger."
"No, no. That would be out of character for me."
shirt off his still exceedingly fit body back in the
dressing room.
and one of former President
Jimmy Carter's sons, all huge fans, were outside. Might Chuck do a quick
meet-and-greet with them?
the rules are clear and spelled out in
advance, Chuck Berry can be as welcoming and gracious as anyone.
Sweetest guy
you'll ever meet, in spots.
president's son, especially not the
president who was in office when the feds stuck Chuck in Lompoc Prison
and made
him play 1,000 hours of benefit shows due to a small income-tax oversight. From
outside the
dressing-room door came the sound of Southern voices, loud,
boisterous, full of privilege. Chuck sat
there a moment, fanning himself,
listening.
That ought to explain it."
you can do - or not do - anything you want. Now go
tell Tchaikovsky the news.
that Alan Freed named rock & roll, Elvis, the
mythic white boy who could sing black, might have been the
Zeus King, Little
Richard the flaming Afro-dite, Jerry Lee Lewis the twice-born-again redneck
Dionysus.
But Charles Edward Anderson Berry, autodidactic Homerian chronicler,
out-of-left-field Orphic-Yoruban
poet-trickster, was and remains the music's key
dropper of science, the intellectual of the bunch. Combining
the common touch of
a former auto-assembly-line worker and a hairdresser's flair with pomade (with a
diploma from St. Louis Poro School of Cosmetology to prove it), Chuck was the
slick-pattered everyman,
undermining the "up in the morning and off to
school" workaday humdrum with the musical thrill of
"hearing something
that's really hot."
Chicago blues label where Chuck's schoolroom sagas
formed frothy, lucrative counterpoint to the Muddy
Waters/Howlin Wolf primal
roar, used to speed up Chuck's tapes to make him sound younger on records,
more
of a heartthrob. Jerry Lee and Little Richard were wild men, standing on their
pianos one minute and
falling down in prayer the next. Chuck, a stone secularist
- "My twelfth year was the most Christian and
most boring of my life,"
he says - was always cooler, cannier, closer to the vest.
known to carry Albert Einstein's
autobiography on the road, and he makes sure you appreciate the distinction
between him and his fellow old-timers: "It's not like I'm on the phone
talking over world events with
Little Richard and Bo Diddley every day." He
rails about interviewers who misquote him using words like lawdy,
a rank
"Southernism" that his schoolteacher mother taught him to rise above.
In his way, Chuck is in the mold of a
Ralph Ellison, or an early Chester Himes
character, never losing sight of his unalterable place in the nation's
racial
divide yet forever playing footsie on the color line. "That black hillbilly"
(as he was described in his early career),
Chuck has spent his life playing
almost exclusively for whites. In the right light, he remarks, "people say
I even look white."
codes to keep whole American-studies
departments knee-deep in subtext for semesters on end. If the story of
this
country is one of crossover, Chuck's epic-length Behind the Music episode
bears retelling.
on the R&B charts, Number Two on the pop -
one of the hallowed Great Twenty-eight, the name of Chuck's
most comprehensive
greatest-hits package, which includes such iconic fare as "Johnny B. Goode,"
"You Can't Catch Me,"
"Brown Eyed Handsome Man,"
"Memphis," "Rock and Roll Music," "Nadine" and
"Havana Moon." These are the songs,
perhaps more than any others, that
configured rock's template. Chuck talks about "Sweet Little Sixteen"
in his endlessly
entertaining, fabulously dirty autobiography (among musician
tell-alls, only Charles Mingus' sexed-up Beneath the Underdog
comes close),
published in 1987.
"A small German doll was in flight,
mainly interested in getting autographs in her fat little Mickey Mouse wallet
that she held like the torch on the Statue of Liberty." There were other
autograph hounds, but it was this "pretty
little tot" who was "actually
around seven or eight" who "molded" in his memory, says Chuck,
who was "one
year past thirty at the time."
in a four-story brick-faced hotel.
It wasn't high-class. I was a star, but still this was the sort of place we had
no
choice but to stay in those days. You had to strain to throw open the windows.
I sat there on the bed and wrote
out the verses: 'Sweet little sixteen, just got
to have about half a million framed autographs. . . . Sweet little sixteen,
tight dresses and lipstick, sportin' high-heel shoes? Sweet little sixteen, with
the grown-up blues.' "
of the founding tropes of the
Great (White) American Teenager, as synthesized in a Jim Crow hotel room by a
thirty-one-year-old black man. A thirty-one-year-old black ex-con, it might be
added, because back when he
was eighteen, a self-described "downbound
trainee in bandido-ism," Chuck helped rob a bakery, a barber shop
and a
clothing store, for which he received a three-year term in Missouri's Algoa
Reformatory. A singular ex-con
he was, too, with a well-developed Nabokovian
sex/race fantasy in which a little eight-year-old was transmuted
into a
spike-heeled American Bandstand rump-shaker whom "all the cats want
to dance with."
groupie suspects his kinkiness. Chuck
may not drink or do drugs, but he does, in his autobiography, jokingly
(or is
it?) admit to "have had a desire since childhood to be houseboy on a
Southern plantation, preferably
during the Civil War." Nastier are the
tales about how he reputedly installed video cameras in the women's
bathrooms of
his Southern Air restaurant, in Wentzville, thirty miles west of St. Louis, home
to Berry Park,
the 100-acre erstwhile amusement-park/campgrounds where Chuck
once hosted picnics for 50,000 hippies
at a time and imagined a rock & roll
Disneyland.
"Sweet Little Sixteen" has never ceased to
imbue a mystic, sweet, sock-hop innocence, a dreamworld of
adolescent longing,
both roused and doomed by "the grown-up blues." Which, of course, is
the essence of
Chuck Berry's unassailable achievement. The world may be a big
place and full of strange trips, but there's
hardly a sentient being alive, then
or now, who doesn't get a little bit happy when a Chuck Berry song comes on the
radio.
you get the overlap, sometimes
not. It is a controlled kind of schizophrenia, and I'm controlling it."
jail time after his infamous 1959 arrest
under the Mann Act, for supposedly transporting Janice Escalante,
a
fourteen-year-old Apache prostitute, across state lines for "immoral
purposes."
there was two or three different
trials, and one was thrown out of the courts because the judge was fairly biased,
and finally I was acquitted, you see. That's the misconceptions that people have,
that Chuck Berry went to jail."
that U.S. District Judge George H.
Moore "intended to disparage the defendant by repeated questions about race
during the trial." But a year later, on October 28th, 1961, the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch reported the affirmation of
"the conviction of
Charles E. (Chuck) Berry, rock & roll singer and former nightclub owner"
for violating the
infamous Mann Act. Escalante testified that Chuck "had
been intimate" with her "in each of four states." Judge
Roy W.
Harper sentenced him to three years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
an address he describes as "somewhere
near the Ozarks of Misery. . . . I was thirty-five years old, really set back,
feeling more black but still intact." As he waited to be handed his prison
clothes, he wrote a poem: "Down from
stardom, then I fell, to this lowly
prison cell/Far from fortune, far from fame, where a number quotes my name."
He'd stay inside until October 18th, 1963, his thirty-seventh birthday, when his
wife, Themetta; father, Henry;
and brother Hank picked him up in his Cadillac,
which he drove home.
Club Bandstand, catered to an interracial crowd.
Still, he doesn't want to discuss the case. No jail stuff, no sex stuff -
these
were the ground rules of our conversation. But Chuck rubs his newly grown goatee
in pleased surprise when
he hears that others who ran afoul of the notorious
Mann Act include the great black heavyweight champion
Jack Johnson (who had to
leave the country) and Charlie Chaplin, whose prosecution was personally
instigated
by commie-hating FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover.
even let a
black man become a citizen there. That's why I wrote that song. You know 'Back
in the USA,' don't you?"
like you're some kind of terrorist,
insufficiently loyal to the long freeways and those hamburgers sizzling on the
grill night and day.
is praised in W.T. Lhamon's book
Deliberate Speed - The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s,
as being "as apocalyptic as Martin Luther King Jr.'s last speech,
improvised in Memphis at the Mason Temple . . .
the night before he was killed."
and crossover avatars such as Jimi Hendrix,
P-Funker George Clinton (also a hairdresser) and "street talk of
a hundred
rappers," and Chuck is not pleased.
Artie Shaw any day."
"Nat King
Cole's diction, Maya Angelou's poetry, Duke Ellington's elegance . . . My music,
it is very simple stuff.
I told you all this before. I wanted to play blues. But
I wasn't blue enough. I wasn't like Muddy Waters, people
who really had it hard.
In our house, we had food on the table. We were doing well compared to many. So
I concentrated
on this fun and frolic, these novelties. I wrote about cars
because half the people had cars, or wanted them. I wrote
about love, because
everyone wants that. I wrote songs white people could buy, because that's nine
pennies out of
every dime. That was my goal: to look at my bankbook and see a
million dollars there. That satisfy you?"
arriving in one city after another
with nothing more than his guitar and his contract, one of the shortest and most
ironclad
in the music business.
promoter sends a stretch limo, or
even a fifty-foot Mercedes with UFO running lights, and says, "Chuck,
forget the Lincoln, this is much better," Chuck sends it back. "I
didn't say better, I said a Lincoln. If they do not
provide the proper amp,
there is a $2,000 fine, paid in advance."
Back in the day, at the St.
Louis Cosmopolitan Club, when he was the newest member of Johnnie Johnson's
Sir
John Trio (which would become the Chuck Berry Trio), Chuck often traveled with
his own band. Once
he even led an orchestra, twenty-nine pieces, on a tour of
Canada. But he hated dealing with the drummers
who got drunk, the saxophone
players asking for meal money on off-days. So now Chuck almost never brings
his
own band. Besides saving money, the rationale is this: Any band in any garage in
America knows how to
play Chuck Berry songs. After all, how can you play any
rock & roll song unless you can play a Chuck Berry song?
it was half an hour to
showtime, but Chuck was nowhere to be seen. The concert promoter was beginning
to pace,
but the band, which had played with Chuck before, knew he'd show.
money's up, Chuck will be
there," says Alen, who clearly loves his difficult client. "Once,
Chuck was booked to
play Philadelphia. But there was a blizzard. The town was
under ten feet of snow. The airport is closed. So Chuck
flies to Pittsburgh,
rents a car, drives 300 miles. He gets to the Philly theater, and the place is
closed. The whole
town is shut down. But Chuck demands to be paid. He is ready
to sue to get paid. And why not? He was there."
the parking lot in his rented Lincoln,
looking extra fine in his white slacks, blue blazer and captain's hat. Yes, he
is
cutting it a bit close, but he took a later flight because his sister needed
a tree removed from her back yard in St. Louis,
so Chuck spent the morning
pulling the thing out with his backhoe. And anyway, the show isn't due to start
until nine,
and it's hardly past 8:40.
the heel of his patent-leather shoe,
he goes back out the door and walks across the parking lot. It's raining lightly
now,
with streaks of lightning high in the sky. Through the half-drawn blinds,
the vision can take your breath away:
watching Chuck Berry stride through the
slanting rain, pop open the Lincoln's trunk and take out his guitar.
be in a brand-new De Ville, something low and
sleek with "jet off-take" and "a Murphy bed in the back seat,"
like in his song "No Money Down." Or at least something American with
a V-8. Instead, Chuck was behind the
wheel of a Toyota Avalon with the radio
tuned to NPR.
in St. Louis' posh Ladue section, in case he
was of a mind to burn a little rubber. But as for driving around town,
the
Toyota was best.
rock & roll inventor, has not been in a studio
in seventeen years. He hasn't recorded an album of original material
in more
than twenty. In fact, not counting the stirring fugitive narrative "Tulane,"
released in 1970, and the fluke
toiletry item called "My Ding-a-Ling"
two years after that (the ironies of the sexually rococo Chuck finally getting
to Number One with a high school jack-off song are too dense to cut through here),
Chuck hasn't put out any sides
of artistic or commercial significance since the
middle 1960s, adding to the theory that the Mann Act imprisonment
did much to
take the heart out of what had been one of America's greatest songwriting
careers.
Lots of days I could write
songs, but I could also take my $400 and play the slot machines at the
riverfront casino.
In a way, I feel it might be ill-mannered to try and top
myself. You see, I am not an oldies act. The music I play,
it is a ritual.
Something that matters to people in a special way. I wouldn't want to interfere
with that.
So, yes, it is a little risky. Because I have been so educated in the
past, and now it is so far in the future."
on his own in the past few years.
There are also piles of sheet music, stacks of loose-leaf paper. A page slips
out and
flutters to the floor. Dog-eared, it is the original lyric sheet of
"Havana Moon," Chuck's languorous three-minute rock
opera of lost love
("Me watch the tide easin' in/Is low the moon, but high the wind").
The song, one of Chuck's greatest,
hasn't generated much in royalties, a fact
Chuck attributes to "Fidel Castro, the whole communist-Cuba thing."
Noting
that he's been thinking of rewriting the tune as a less-controversial
"Jamaica Moon" for inclusion on the new record,
Chuck takes the lyric
sheet and tosses it back in the box.
vaporous light, is behind the studio
glass making a speech.
cultural patron and owner of the nearby
Blueberry Hill club, where Chuck plays once a month. "I am not
going to be
pushy or bossy or use the f- word," Chuck says. "I am an employee here
just like anyone."
tale/talking blues about a bunch of guys
sitting in a bar "half the day, telling jokes, lies and fairy tales to
pass
the time away" when the Dutchman, "this huge, dark dude, cracks the
barroom door" and tells the story
of his life. From there, Chuck runs
through bits and pieces of "Lady Be Goode," not quite a remake of the
old hit; "The Big Boys," a rocker; and "Loco Joe," a rewrite
of "Jo Jo Gunne," a story set "way back in
evolution, 4,000 B.C./Back
in the jungle, up a coconut tree."
Chess' Chicago studio, with Chuck running
through "Maybellene" one last time. Some aging has taken place,
however. "Darling," a slow ballad, contains the lines "Your
father is getting older, each year strands of gray
are showing bolder/Here been
fame and fortune, heartache combined/Hear me now as I cry: Oh! Good times
come
but not to stay, they'll go fast away."
a version of "Downbound Train,"
originally called "Hellbound Train." It goes, "Ninety addicts
blow the whistle/Only three
could ring the bell/They got off to change for heaven/And the rest rode into hell."
these Chuck Berry
songs is easy. But try singing them. The words come out hard, like bullets."
filed suit against his old boss,
contesting the authorship of many of Chuck's best-known songs, including
"Roll Over Beethoven," "Rock and Roll Music" and "No
Particular Place to Go." The suit alleges that
Chuck "took advantage"
of Johnson's chronic alcoholism and good nature to cheat the pianist out of his
"rightful share" of royalties.
is a hot topic. Most people side with Chuck,
pointing out that Johnson, while quite beloved, never wrote any
hits prior to
his association with Chuck and hasn't written any since. There's widespread
feeling that Johnson,
who has recently been touring under the outrageous billing
"Father of Rock & Roll" (despite the fact that he
does not even
play on Chuck's supposed tribute to him, "Johnny B. Goode"), has
uncharacteristically overstepped his bounds.
Center as a great American (along with Clint Eastwood,
Angela Lansbury and Mikhail Baryshnikov),
Joe Edwards, who has booked both men
at his club, says, "This is a shame. I'm all for Johnnie getting
whatever
credit is due him, but he shouldn't do it at Chuck's expense. I think we know
who created that sound,
and it wasn't Johnnie Johnson."
twenty-nine of the ones he claimed he
wrote. I like Johnnie. He was a friend of mine. I hired him to come
play on some
things for this new record. He played, got paid. This is just more dirt tossed
on what I've done.
I can't spend time thinking about that."
spent at the former site of Berry Park,
working alongside his good buddy James Williams (they were partners
in crime
before going to the Algoa reform school fifty years ago), digging a drainage
ditch. But Chuck says
he's "feeling fine, ready to rock." Seventy-five
might be a minor milestone in Chuck's life, considering how
longevity runs in
his family. His maternal grandfather lived to be 104, "and he smoked,"
says Chuck, who quit
years ago and now figures he's good for at least 105.
contracts, is "a sweet job," says Chuck,
who loves to play for the hometown crowd and the sprinkling of Euro
tourists
stopping in to see the American master at twilight. Chuck even gets there half
an hour early, to chow
down on a couple of chicken wings.
of him in his prime, duck-walking
in a silk suit.
a singer and schoolteacher, slinkily
attired in the manner of Billie Holiday, and Chuck Jr., a systems analyst/guitar
player
in a George Clinton T-shirt. Chuck Jr., outgoing and regular, sports
studious-looking horn-rim glasses, which prompts
his father to say, "Who
you think you are, Malcolm X?"
and a lot of
traveling. But he was still Father. We still felt watched, we still felt loved,
we still obeyed."
"Johnny B. Goode." The first time
he duck-walked, which he calls "scooting," was under the dining room
table
of his youth: "I was about nine. I guess I did it to get
attention." It wasn't until nearly twenty years later, while
playing the
Brooklyn Paramount, that he scooted in public. "I just did it," he
says. "It wasn't planned. People
liked it, so I kept it."
exactly fifty-five minutes, has been
turned off. At one point, Chuck, Chuck Jr. and Ingrid (on the harp) step
forward
and wail away.
One by one they enter for autographs,
and to get their picture taken with the first man ever inducted into the
Rock
& Roll Hall of Fame.
says a
ponytailed pet-store owner.
then adding a happy face.
sitting on Chuck's lap.
(RS 883/884 - Dec. 6-13 2001)
Source: Johan Hasselberg
Chuck Berry's neues Album
Sunday,
02. December 2001 - 15:49
Donnerstag 25. Oktober 2001, 14:08 Uhr
Chuck Berry arbeitet an neuem
Studioalbum
http://www.shortnews.de/id/316547/Chuck-Berry-arbeitet-an-neuem-Studioalbum
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25.10.01. Chuck Berry neues Album! Snoop unterschreibt bei MCA. MC Hammer rock US-Representatives.
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Chuck Berry legt wieder los
Source: Wolfgang Guhl
Pics and Reviews of Chuck
Berry's show in Chicago in June 2001 added / new section opened
Saturday,
01. December 2001 -
11:13
We added pictures (Picture Gallery) and concert
reviews (Specials/Concert Reviews)
of the following Chuck Berry show:
Furthermore we opened two new Specials sections:
Source: Wolfgang Guhl