Ours wasn’t really a rock ‘n’ roll household when I was a toddler. The earliest songs familiar to my ears are the soft orchestrated tunes that my Mom favored – things like Pat Boone’s “Love letters In The Sand,” Johnny Mathis’ “It’s Not For Me To Say,” and The Platters’ “Twilight Time.” My Dad leaned towards the country side of things – usually with a doleful outlook on things – Don Gibson’s “Oh Lonesome Me,” Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “16 Tons,” Guy Mitchell’s version of “Singing The Blues.” I suppose my Dad, who spent his youth in Catholic Schools, connected with the idea that this world wasn’t supposed to be a kind one. My Mom? A converted Catholic who HAD to believe in whatever fantasy world the Church was offering up – no matter how unfounded - and with all the fervor of a Donald Trump supporter.
But those aren’t the songs that connected with me at the time. I liked things like Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat Song,” Frank Sinatra’s “High Hopes” and Patti Page’s “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window.” “See You Later Alligator.” “The Purple People Eater.” The Chipmunks’ “Witch Doctor.” Fun songs that were fun to sing along with.
My Dad was in the military and in 1959 we moved to England for 3 years. I don’t remember a radio in the household and those were pretty barren years for my personal music consumption. Towards the end of our stay, my folks won a stereo console at Bingo and soon brought a batch of new records into the home. Mom catered to fluff like The Jackie Gleason Orchestra (white bread soft classical for the new sophisticated working class) while my Dad started branching out. British Elvis Presley Eps. A Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen album (a side of each – I liked the Buddy Knox side). But most of the music I remember from England came from my Dad. Dad could always sing a talking blues called “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette” – do it word for word start to finish. It had been a hit in 1947 for Tex Williams and I'm sure that's where my Dad first heard it.
It probably meant something to him, coming out the same year he left home and probably the same year he started smoking. And one thing Dad always retained was a sense of humor. But when he returned home from a temporary duty assignment in Germany, Hohner Chromatic in hand, it was an Elvis Presley tune he loved to play the best. Sticking true to his already doleful mindset, it was “Wooden Heart.” But still. It was Elvis! Dad’s worldview would expand dramatically over the years, as would his musical tastes. Mom’s, not so much (Percy Faith Orchestra – yech!). But even Mom would expand a little, latching eventually onto Willie Nelson – so much so that she can now even overlook his pot smoking.
The first song for me that would extend beyond entertainment into one that “spoke to me” was Johnny Rivers version of “Memphis.”
When that song came out we were living in Florence, SC. There were two local radio stations – one country and one Top 40. There was one TV station (CBS affiliate) Being Florence, a hotbed of anti-integration sentiment, Chuck Berry was NOT going to make it onto either radio station’s playlist. With no “race music” station within earshot (no WDIA for example), the only place you might hear black artists was on the Ed Sullivan Show. There was no national Top 40 on the “Top 40” radio station. The weekly countdown was decided by local listener requests and local DJs. And maybe a little Payola in there somewhere.
But if you have to hear Chuck Berry through the voice of a white man, Johnny Rivers is the one - a genuinely effective voice who introduced the (white) world to a much looser approach to recorded music. Probably the fact that it was recorded live, as were 3 out of the first 4 Rivers albums, had a lot to do with my appreciation of live music – something that would eventually lead to my publishing and editing a magazine called Live! Music Review. But it was the words to the song that made the biggest connect. After 3 years of rare once-a-year trans-Atlantic phone calls from my grandparents, a costly and difficult connection at the time (you had to go to the military base NCO Club to receive the call), the emphatic importance Berry placed on a long-distance call meant something. Kids mattered. Add the hand claps and audience response, clearly visible on the Rivers recording, and it was an epiphany – Pentecostal in nature. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones may have been active in the revival of Chuck Berry tunes, but it was Johnny Rivers that made the introduction for me. So I continued to follow Rivers just as closely - through the hits “Mountain of Love” and “Secret Agent Man” - and when I was old enough to get a paper route, I joined a record club and bought all those Whiskey A Go-Go albums. And the feast of Chuck Berry tunes they contained.
Fast forward to 1969. Chuck Berry isn’t in the charts anymore but The Stones are on tour. I’d had my fill of Catholic indoctrination and Catholic school. Especially the year previous, where the nuns - certainly aware that most of the students in 8th grade were experiencing or soon-to-be experiencing puberty - took it as their mission in life to beat the hell out of their students. Both psychologically and physically, to rid them of the concept that any human being deserved a pleasurable or sexual life here on earth. And with no chance of the latter in the aftermath either. That didn’t sound like heaven to me. It sounded like hell.
Now located in Trenton, NJ and back in public school, my Father having left the military in late 1967, I had a new friend named Ray Smith, who’s grandparents lived across the street from us. So he was a frequent visitor to our neighborhood and lived up the road closer to the Trenton Reservoir. He had been a fan of Ten Years After for several years, and that band had recently made an impact on FM radio programmers after Woodstock (and would make an even bigger one once the film came out). One day we decided to walk to his parents house to check out his albums. I saw Ray for the first time in decades last April and we both clearly remembered that day. Besides the Tens Years After records, Ray introduced me to his parents’ Chuck Berry records. And they spoke! The sexual anguish resulting from an seat-belt that just wouldn’t cooperate in “No Particular Place To Go.” “You Can’t Catch Me.” (Bye-bye New Jersey, I’ve become airborne) The girl songs – “Little Queenie,” Carol.” And a jet to the Promised Land. Which just happened to be here on earth. Screw Catholicism.
Late in 1969, the first live bootleg was released – a set by the Rolling Stones recorded a month earlier called Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be. Harkening back to those Johnny Rivers records, the audience participation nature of the recording had a special attraction to me. And the Chuck Berry tunes, “Carol,” and “Little Queenie,” were the highlights of the album.
I had a lot of backtracking to do - a lot of new additions to the record collection. Lots of Chuck Berry.
Equal amounts of Bo Diddley. (introduced to me through the music of Quicksilver Messenger Service)
A new interest in Mississippi John Hurt and early acoustic Blues. By 1971-72 when I first started singing in bands, Chuck Berry tunes always seemed to make up half the setlist.
or “Candy Man,” can make me feel all the comforts of what heaven’s supposed to be, it’s Chuck Berry who comes to me as the very voice of God.
Thanks, Bill. Very much enjoyed peering into the canyons of your mind and your memories.
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