Chuck Berry: C or D?

The next line always makes me think of this
https://makeagif.com/i/TftMzO

https://makeagif.com/i/TftMzO

It took me forever to hear the original version of "Promised Land" but I had loved Elvis's version for years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGULJTnV6QI

and it's kinda fascinating how different they are. Elvis omits some lines that make the song's hidden meaning clearer, but I don't get the feeling there's any sinister intent behind that — he just wants to turn it into a celebratory rock 'n' roll party.

Anyway, Chuck Berry was fucking incredible. Not only a brilliant lyricist like you said — like, every one of his big hits has a line in it that'll go off in your brain like sparklers (my favorites are "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" and "Thirty Days"), and the music has so much bite.

I reviewed The Great Twenty-Eight at the beginning of the year:

This is it, the Big Bang. Chuck Berry’s music was part jump blues, part R&B, part country and a tiny bit of jazz; you can hear the influence of Nat “King” Cole, Muddy Waters, Louis Jordan and T-Bone Walker, but it was his urbane-hillbilly personality and his wily lyrical brilliance that changed the world. “Too Much Monkey Business,” “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man,” “Maybellene,” “Thirty Days,” and “You Can’t Catch Me,” among others, were witty broadsides from a keen observer of American life, and when he began to aim explicitly at the teenage market with “School Day,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Johnny B. Goode,” and more, he created a global audience that was conscious of itself, which is how gods are made. What’s astonishing, nearly 70 years later, is how much bite this music has. Backed by pianist Johnnie Johnson, bassist Willie Dixon, and various drummers, Berry’s bluesy guitar leads slash at the listener like a switchblade. (Berry-indebted punk rock guitarists like Billy Zoom and Steve Jones actually sound cleaner than the man himself.) This is immortal music; it’ll leave you giddy and gaping at its power the first time you hear it, and the thousandth.

^A+

This Poison Ivy quote is really fascinating:

The Cramps guitar sound came naturally. “I had one thing as a kind of criteria,” she says. “We loved Chuck Berry, but we had a rule that we wouldn’t do Chuck Berry licks. All rock ’n’ roll from the '60s, going into the '70s, was based on Chuck Berry, at the exclusion of any other influence. So even though we loved Chuck, we decided to do all we could to not have that influence. There was too much, y’know?”

Even the Sex Pistols had Chuck Berry licks. “Yeah. And it’s astounding; you never would hear Link Wray influences or Duane Eddy. We couldn’t figure it out because it was pure rock ’n’ roll. It’s as monumental as Chuck Berry, and for it to be ignored seemed strange. So to this day, it’s a rule: we will not throw in a Chuck Berry riff.”

(from https://www.guitarworld.com/features/poison-ivy-the-cramps)

the way he purposely mispronounces a la carte "workin' on a t-bond steak alla cart-y flyin' over to the Golden State" is pure genuis

The verb "working" is perfect too, you can almost picture him with plastic utensils hacking a tough airline steak on his tray.

totally, also he's conscious of exactly how many syllables he needs to make the syncopation of the line work perfectly

Indeed

excellent revive!

Y’all should have been there when I did “Run Rudolph Run” at karaoke last week.

lily I love that song & your post

Seconded.

the way he purposely mispronounces a la carte "workin' on a t-bond steak alla cart-y flyin' over to the Golden State" is pure genuis

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, December 28, 2023 12:35 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

The verb "working" is perfect too, you can almost picture him with plastic utensils hacking a tough airline steak on his tray.

― BrianB, Thursday, December 28, 2023 12:43 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

totally, also he's conscious of exactly how many syllables he needs to make the syncopation of the line work perfectly

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, December 28, 2023 12:56 PM

Wait -- which version of "Promised Land"?

had never looked into the "bypassed Rock Hill" line!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_Nine

i agree that LD's post is great and that "Promised Land" is a towering masterpiece

just thinking about it gives me chills!

totally, also he's conscious of exactly how many syllables he needs to make the syncopation of the line work perfectly

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, December 28, 2023 11:56 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

his almost clipped delivery and the efficiency with which he gets out most of lyrics make it all the more rewarding when he lingers on "swing low chariot, come down eeeeee-asy"; one of many small details that really make the song

Elijah Wald with help from New York Rocker’s Andy Schwartz re Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land” and lyrical references to the civil rights Freedom Riders. As an aside ,Wald’s playing of song in his video there is too folky

https://www.elijahwald.com/songblog/promised-land/?fbclid=IwAR3kqa1tOdHzex-5FqpvtB9OM7ZJdvEKf0I37GA39mrvzyDpRQvuUqM8Xew_aem_AcqFkEBw7IEBpxkyPKgWQwhEwCrZ1BfFV6zIzmlZWyqKz300hnHydDMyRCfzgWaJwXg

damn. the video he posted of himself performing "promised land" is kind of brutal and has sort of altered how i see him fundamentally

Can you elaborate on that?

i just mean that it's terrible and makes me wonder why he'd post something like that. what the fuck is this shit

it's an older guy who enjoys a song playing it to boost engagement, and having a good time playing it. one can see how a person would get really aggro and weird about that, and how it would "alter how [they] see him fundamentally," I mean that's just really rational and sensible

You'll never earn yr top Grateful Dead fan badge if you keep on objecting to shitty Chuck Berry covers.

hi can we all just please calm down and have a rational and sensible discussion about chuck berry? thanks

lol, Ward

Also, “they’ll hear it the way Elijah Ward played it!”

(xp) Elijah or Fowler? Or both?

Heh, meant Fowler but realized the problem after posting

I feel like I am an outlier, but I have never totally bought or wanted to dig into EW’s übercontrarian shtick which from where I sit looks like endless iterations of “actually, Robert Johnson wasn’t a blues singer at all, and if he was, he was terrible, he was really just a creation of John Hammond’s febrile mind” or “actually Beatlemania wasn’t really a thing” shockas.

And then this Maxwell’s Demon of authenticity games goes and does a super-corny oldbro Chuck Berry cover without any Peter Stampfel Wollheim weirdness to skew it and add interest.

lol. that's interesting. he has always seemed okay to me, even astute, but on reflection i think that might just come down to the recommendations of others i esteem who have read and enjoyed EW, because i've never read one of his books.

but have read little things here and there, like the blog post linked about "promised land." which i think is great. the video's another story.