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| Foam-O-Graph© from Stevie Wonder's private collection |
Famed rock n' roller Chuck Berry swung by th' IoF© yestiddy on his World Tour of Mythical Destination Resorts, and we chatted poolside while Kreemé [19 my ass - Ed.] served nourishing and delicious slaw shakes.
FT3 Yo Chuckbaby! You're looking great!
CB [eyeing Kreemé] Uhh ...
FT3 [laughs] I'll get her to spin a record. What type music would you like to hear?
CB Just let me hear some of that rock and roll music, Farq.
FT3 Any special request?
CB [shrugs] Any old way you choose it.
[Kreemé drops K-Tel Golden Hour Of Rock N' Roll onto th' Dansette]
FT3 So! Tell us why you dig rock n' roll, Chuckster!
CB It's got a backbeat, you can't lose it, any old time you use it.
FT3 Nail, head interface right there! What about dancing? Line dance much? Polka?
CB [shakes head] It's gotta be rock and roll music, if you wanna dance with me.
FT3 What about other type music, such as, say, modern jazz?
CB I have no kick against modern jazz, unless they try to play it too darn fast.
FT3 Right! The fuck they do with the tune?!
CB They change the beauty of the melody, until they sound just like a symphony.
FT3 Hmm. Interesting. I don't know many symphonies that sound like modern jazz ... I guess it's a metaphor ... [glances at card] Hey! You must have some great stories about the old times?
CB I took my loved one over cross the tracks, so she can hear my man a-wailin' sax. I must admit they have a rockin' band, man, they were blowin' like a hurricane!
FT3 Wow! Ever get down to Dixieland?
CB Way down South they gave a jubilee. Them country folks they had a jamboree - they're drinkin' homebrew from a wooden cup - the folks dancin' got all shook up!
FT3 I think I can see where this is going ... they started playin' that rock and roll music?
CB Don't care to hear 'em play a tango. I'm in the mood to dig a mambo. It's way too early for a congo-
FT3 [coughs into fist] Congo?
CB So keep a-rockin' that piano!
FT3 Ri-ight! Listen, Chuck, I really have to let you go? I got to, uh, go in the house and help Kreemé with her, with her ... jigsaw. It's been swell! Please, finish your drink before you leave! Take some towels! You want a robe? Kreemé! Fetch my man a robe!
Any suggestions for further interviews along these lines very welcome. David Bowie's execrable ("Perhaps one of the best album openers of all time") Five Years seems a likely candidate ...
ReplyDeleteI used to attend an insurance seminar (yeah, as boring as it sounds) every winter in NYC at the Waldorf Astoria. By coincidence, one year it happened at the same time that they were also hosting the induction ceremonies for the Rock n Roll HOF (prior to the hall being built in Cleveland). One night as we were making our way back to the elevators, we saw Mr. Berry, drunk off his ass, with a beautiful, statueque, blonde under each arm, struggling to hold him up. I gazed admirably his way and he managed to croak out, "Rock and Roll, baby!!!"
ReplyDeleteIsolating the lines helps to demonstrates the his great skills as a lyricist. "Workin' on a t-bone steak a la carty, flyin' over to the Golden State..."
ReplyDeleteHe is a great lyricist, or can be. Johnny G Goode is as goode as rock n'roll (or rock) writing gets. Rock n' Roll Music, sounding great to the ear, looks a little less on the page. But he never considered he was writing poetry, just hits.
Deletedarftervoi, you beat me to it...that song along is worth the price of admission. As for a nearly picture perfect vignette:
ReplyDelete"They furnished off an apartment
With a two room Roebuck sale
The coolerator was crammed
With TV dinners and ginger ale"
C'est La Vie, say the old folx, it goes to show you never can tell.
When I was 15 (so mid-1970s) I was dating a bona fide cajun queen (before that term had come to be associated with NOLA men in drag) who was a cheerleader at a rival high school with blue-black hair and flashy, mean, green eyes, and her daddy did in fact call the refrigerator a coolerator ...then one evening as I waited for her while he was casually cleaning his 30-30, he mentioned how precious his daughter was to him and I had a helluva time explaining to her later why were no longer gonna be dating...with some embarrassment, I confess I blamed it on my mother's view of Catholics...
"Coolerator" is a much better word than refrigerator. What's the "re" there for? I must have missed the frigeration stage.
DeleteA lesser hit by him, but a hell of a song: Havana Moon.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55zs53gMdRc
Well, the author in question surely did start out trying to make
ReplyDeletea dollar, but he still ended up creating some bona fide literature.
Actually, I think of "Promised Land" as a contender for, obviously
not The Great American Novel, but at least The Great American
Song. In any case, I love Chuck Berry's way of inserting
neurotically specific details into the midst of batshit
crazy storytelling:
Flyin' 'cross the desert in a T-Dubya-A
I saw a woman walkin' cross the sand
She'd been walkin' thirty miles en route to Bombay
To meet a brown-eyed handsome man
(Her destination was a brown-eyed handsome man)
Yeah...some "specific details" "Workin' in the fillin' station, too many tasks
DeleteWipe the windows, check the tires, check the oil, dollar gas" "I saw her from the corner when she turned and doubled back And started walkin' toward a coffee colored Cadillac" And "No Money Down..." a song that is NOTHING but details: ""I want four carburetors
And two straight exhausts
I'm burnin' aviation fuel
No matter what the cost
I want railroad air horns
And a military spot
And I want a five - year guarantee
On everything I got"
Brilliant. And likely inspired this -
DeleteJust a little deuce coupe with a flathead mill
But she'll walk a Thunderbird like she's standin' still
She's ported and relieved and she's stroked and bored.
She'll do a hundred and forty with the top end floored
She's got a competition clutch with the four on the floor
And she purrs like a kitten till the lake pipes roar
And if that ain't enough to make you flip your lid
There's one more thing, I got the pink slip daddy
And comin' off the line when the light turns green
Well she blows 'em outta the water like you never seen
I get pushed out of shape and it's hard to steer
When I get rubber in all four gears
His autobiography is much more readable than most:
ReplyDeleteDeep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play a guitar just like a ringing a bell
He used to carry his guitar in a gunny sack
Go sit beneath the tree by the railroad track
Oh, the engineers would see him sitting in the shade
Strumming with the rhythm that the drivers made
People passing by they would stop and say
Oh my, but that little country boy could play
His mother told him "Someday you will be a man
And you will be the leader of a big old band
Many people coming from miles around
To hear you play your music when the sun go down
Maybe someday your name will be in lights
Saying 'Johnny B. Goode Tonight'"
Here's The Great Twenty-Eight.
ReplyDelete"Memphis" is another fine composition, a strong enough tune to hit the charts multiple times, with and without the lyrics.
ReplyDelete"Promised Land" is so good, it gave Elvis his last flash of rock and roll greatness in 1974. This video is a mixture of the odd and irrelevant, but it's something to rest your eyes on while soaking in the King's delivery, pushed along by James Burton, David Briggs, Norbert Putnam, and Ron Tutt.
In the class I've mentioned before, before talking about Greil Marcus' claim that "Johnny B. Goode" is the best beginning in rock'n'roll--hard to to argue with, I'd venture--we discuss "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" and what got it banned at some deep south (& not so deep, ie, Indiana) radio stations....
ReplyDeletetbh, best song beginnings could be a fun riff, as it were. The first few seconds that if you're in the car cause you to turn it up. Endings too--Marcus opts for the Modern Lovers's "Roadrunner," another hard to argue?
The song beginnings that stick with me and thrill every time are instrumental - Berry's Johnny B., Byrds Tambourine Man, Hendrix Watchtower, Monkees Believer, La Grange, Layla, Born To Run, California Girls, Satisfaction, Brown Sugar, Reelin' In The Years, Like A Rolling Stone ... so many. Endings are tricker, mainly I think because of the radio's requirement for a fade.
DeleteBy the way...at the Four or Five Guys are smart fellers, I wanna mention that the antecedent of that opening riff was on a Louis Jordan record from 1948, "Ain't That Just Like A Woman (They'll Do It Every Time). The main diff I hear is that Chuck's doing it with double-stops instead of single notes, plus overdriving his amp a bit. It's not turned up to 11, but wait until the English kids get ahold of it...
Delete1982: I'm taking a class from a protege of Noam Chomsky. It's WAY over my head, for the most part..but I perk up when the professor, in an off the cuff moment, chose to use the word "bother" to demonstrate a form that could not be generated from that word, "...and that is why a construction like "botheration" would be impossible..." Oh, hell yeah, I raised my hand and said, "But there IS such a word. As the immortal Chuck Berry said, "I don't want your botheration, go away, leave me be." Yeah, take that, Noam Chomsky. Chuck Berry did the impossible before breakfast....
ReplyDeleteChomsky was famous for his denial of "coolerator" as a word during his acceptance speech for Honorary Doctorate at Yale in '68.
Deleteevening made; thank you and good night.
DeleteOn words: If Chuck says "the Congo" should not be played too early in the evening, I'm taking his advice. Whether it exists or not, there will be NO Congo-ing until Chuck tells me it's an appropriate time for the Congo. And now I will go to the coolerator and have a chilled beverage.
DeleteChuck is The Man, forget about Elvis, period!
ReplyDeleteThe lyric examples given above say it all!
To be fair, Elvis never put lyric-writing on his resumé?
DeleteAgreed!
DeleteAnd Chuck's biggest hit was My Ding-a-ling, painful indeed.
Not to mention that it was originally written by Dave Bartholomew...
Johnny went to the stars
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FboXO1FtbvE
but "No Money down" is missing ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNQTbqzZaHc
Thanks for your contributions