Chuck Berry  (born Charles Edward Anderson Berry on October 18, 1926) is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music.  With songs such as “Maybellene” (1955), “Roll Over Beethoven” (1956), “Rock and Roll Music” (1957) and “Johnny B. Goode” (1958), Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.   (More from Wikipedia)

You can talk about your pioneers of rock and roll – Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, James Brown, just to name a few – and you can even bring up your British Invasion greats – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Kinks, just to name another few.  All of them are already in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and deservedly so.  However, you can play a lot of more modern rock records all day long and not really discern more than a hint of their direct influence; no question it’s in the DNA, but actual Elvis Presley-style vocals or Chuck Berry guitar licks or James Brown wails are elusive. 

That is not so with Link Wray:  His influence is front and center on a good 50% of the records that I play, because he is credited with introducing the “power chord” on electric guitar to rock and roll, a technique whose effect is often enhanced by distortion. 

Pat Boone hit the top of the charts with his second single, “Ain’t That a Shame”, which came out in July 1955 – yeah, a little earlier than you expected I’ll bet.  For context, that was just two months after Chuck Berry’s first single, “Maybellene” was released; and Elvis Presley wouldn’t hit #1 until early 1956. 

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Ritchie Valens released just two 45’s but still showed incredible versatility.  His first, “Come On, Let’s Go” is now regarded as a straight-up rock and roll classic, but it failed to chart.  Writing in 1998, Billy Vera recalls “first hearing [“Come On, Let’s Go”] on Alan Freed’s TV Dance Party, a local New York equivalent of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.  It was a record which really grabbed my teenaged ears.  I had never heard anything quite like it.  It had a much ‘thicker’ sound than anything by Elvis, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent or even Eddie Cochran.  For thickness, the only thing that came close was Bo Diddley.” 

(June 2013/1)

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“Train Kept A-Rollin’” is a jump blues song that was originally recorded by Tiny Bradshaw in 1951; the 1956 rockabilly recording of “Train Kept A-Rollin’” by the Johnny Burnette Trio is said to be the first rock and roll record to deliberately use distorted guitar.  (The trio is also known as the Rock and Roll Trio but are not to be confused with the Johnny Johnson Trio, where Chuck Berry started out).  This song even predates Link Wray’s “Rumble” in this regard (that instrumental came out in 1958), though Wray is still the man credited with bringing power chords to rock guitar.

(July 2013)

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David Gates had been in various local bands in Tulsa, and his high school band backed Chuck Berry for a concert in 1957.  David Gates also wrote “Saturday’s Child”, and the Monkees included this song on their first album, The Monkees.  Writing for Allmusic, critic Matthew Greenwald says that “Saturday’s Child” has a “proto-heavy metal guitar riff” and is “one of the more interesting curios of the early Monkees catalog”. 

(January 2015/1)

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In June 1963, the Rolling Stones released their debut single, a cover of a Chuck Berry song called “Come On” which reached #21 on the UK charts.  The flip side was Willie Dixon’s “I Want to be Loved”.  Wikipedia reports about “Come On”:  “During the June 6, 2013 concert in Toronto, Canada, as part of the 50 & Counting Tour, Mick Jagger sang a few bars (with Charlie Watts drumming the beat) after mentioning the single being released exactly 50 years ago that day.  It was the first time the song was heard in any capacity during a Rolling Stones concert since 1965.” 

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Ron Silva and Steve Potterf of the Crawdaddys grew up as neighbors in Point Loma, California and began listening to records together in the ninth grade.  Silva recalls of those early days:  “After a while Steve started getting into the music I liked – Beatles, early Stones.  I remember sitting in his room playing guitars along to my dad’s Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley 45’s.”   

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Jeff Scott phoned Ron Silva, and they patched things up over Silva’s leaving the Hitmakers.  Scott was about to go to L.A. to play their band’s demo tape for Greg Shaw at Bomp! Records, and he offered to bring him and Steve Potterf along if they could lay down some tracks first.  The Crawdaddys assembled in the Silva garage and recorded two original songs plus Chuck Berry’s “Oh Baby Doll” and Bo Diddley’s “Tiger in Your Tank”. 

As described above, the resulting debut album, Crawdaddy Express by the Crawdaddys was comprised mostly of covers of R&B classics by Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry, and John Lee Hooker; plus a few from other sources, such as the old Hank Snow tune “I’m Movin’ On” and the magnificent Van Morrison song “Mystic Eyes” that opened the first album by Them.  Only a few familiar songs were included on the album, such as “You Can’t Judge a Book” and “Down the Road a Piece”.  Just two original recordings were included on the album, the title song “Crawdaddy Express” and “Got You in My Soul” (both written by Ron Silva and Steve Potterf). 

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Anyway, it is hard for me to complain about what the Crawdaddys have included on Here ’Tis:  The CD starts off with a blistering rendition of a rockin’ Chuck Berry song, “Thirty Days”, followed by an Allen Toussaint song called “Why Wait Until Tomorrow” that had been recorded by Lee Dorsey – best known for two charming hits, “Ya Ya” and “Working in the Coalmine”.  Also on hand is a criminally obscure Leiber/Stoller song called “That Is Rock and Roll”, the flip side of the Coasters’ hit “Along Came Jones”.  The Coasters, one of my favorite American R&B bands, had emerged in the 1960’s essentially as a showcase band for the best songs by this dynamite songwriting duo. 

(January 2015/2)

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