RIP Chuck

Discussion in 'Music and Recordings' started by TwoEars, Mar 18, 2017.

  1. TwoEars

    TwoEars Friend

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    Last edited: Mar 18, 2017
  2. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    90 is pretty good for a rock musician.

    Though he did steal the idea for Johnny B. Goode from Marty McFly, he was still very good.
     
  3. Dino

    Dino Friend

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    Sitting here thinking about what possessed me to buy (and enjoy) a Chuck Berry album. It was 1973 and I was 15 years old. At that time when I thought of 50s Rock n' Roll, I would get an image of Sha Na Na at Woodstock and feel irritated by that. There was plenty of current Rock artists (and other forms of music) I was into and 50s R&R was not on my radar at all. Yet I bought this album (in all of it's "Reprocessed for Stereo" glory):

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    What got me to that point:

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    I loved this album, but it wasn't "real" 50s. It was Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention doing Doo-Wop!
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    This was like nothing I had heard before. It was Hard Rock, Experimental and 50s Rock & Roll inspired on most songs. This was/is intense musically and sonically (on LP, the CDs I have heard suck). This one got me interested in 50s R&R long enough to buy the Chuck Berry album.

    Moving forward in time, I started thinking about Little Richard and bought this CD:
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    This is a great sounding CD. Very crankable and intense. And to my surprise Little Richard's voice sounds remarkably like Roy Wood's voice on Wizzard's Brew (really vice versa, but in my personal experience chronological order...) right down to the huge "size" of the vocals due to the wonderful microphone overload.

    Which brings me to today. I don't usually feel like buying music when an artist dies. But I started thinking that I don't have any Chuck Berry in my collection and would like a good one. I searched on the Steve Hoffman forum but did not turn up anything in particular. I decided to get Chuck Berry - The Great Twenty-Eight CD. It is from 1984 and on MCA records. MCA usually put out good sounding CDs back then. People are starting to raise prices, as usual upon an artist's death, but I got one that hadn't been raised yet. The LP version is already up there on Ebay. If I like the CD well enough I may get the LP after the inflated price thing is over.
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
  4. zonto

    zonto Friend

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    What I know of Chuck Berry has mostly come of me reading about his influence on The Beatles. See http://www.aaronkrerowicz.com/beatles-blog/the-influence-of-chuck-berry-on-the-beatles. I wanted to share a couple experiences.

    #1: One of my best friends was an avid fan of The Simpsons when we were younger and would occasionally sing this song from one of the episodes:



    We thought it was hilarious for obvious reasons. Well fast-forward 15+ years when I started looking into some old Chuck Berry recordings after reading about his influence on The Beatles. Much to my surprise, I came across this gem:



    We had no idea the song originally came from him.

    #2: During that same exploration exercise into Chuck Berry's repertoire, I came across his classic Sweet Little Sixteen. It sounded very familiar, and only took a minute to piece together it sounded like a rip-off of The Beach Boys' Surfin' U.S.A. Turns out that Brian Wilson copied Sweet Little Sixteen when writing Surfin', despite denying such copyright infringement as recently as 2015. Fortunately, Berry was given the copyright to avoid a lawsuit, which he surely would have won, and he was credited and received royalties for the song. See http://mentalfloss.com/article/93432/when-chuck-berry-became-beach-boy.
    __________

    Chuck had his failings of course (tax evasion and sex with a minor being among them), but it's hard to argue against his influence and importance as a musician and early champion of rock'n'roll. RIP Chuck.

     
  5. Deep Funk

    Deep Funk Deep thoughts - Friend

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    I am a bit late with this post. I feel this song voices my sentiments the best...



    P.S. One of my old favourites. Garland Jeffreys does not skip the cultural discord early Rock & Roll created until Elvis came around. Elvis will never be the icon of Rock & Roll for me. "Johnny B. Goode" had "No Particular Place To Go" but he sure was "A Brown Eyed Handsome Man."
     

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