Monday 20th March

I first heard Chuck Berry songs without realizing they were Chuck Berry songs.  No-one did.  No-one even thought about who wrote the songs; they were just songs.  It wasn’t until I started buying Beatles albums and reading, (devouring) the cover information that I kept seeing this name Berry as a songwriter.  And then it clicked, Chuck Berry.  I had probably heard Chuck himself in the late 50’s along with little Richard and Jerry Lee and Bill Haley, and Elvis of course.  But I wasn’t excited by rock and roll; it was my parent’s music.  But the Beatles and the Stones were excited, and sang them with that little touch of English sensibility for us, the next generation.

Chuck Berry did not invent Rock and Roll.  Nobody did.  It emerged out of Big Band Swing and Blues and Country.  It was also made possible by the inclusion of drum-kits and rhythm into the Dance bands of the late Forties, and the invention (thankyou Les Paul) of the electric guitar.  But also the expansion of radio stations in America and the invention of the tape machine.  At last, live performances could be recorded and duplicated and new sounds and music be heard by millions.

But Chuck Berry was one of the first to write his own songs.  And what songs…who else could have written “Roll Over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news” or “Memphis Tennessee” or “Johnny B. Goode.”

I don’t have a single Chuck Berry album, just a few songs scattered here and there on compilations, but he will live on forever in cover versions by Elvis, the Stones and The Beatles and even ELO. “Just let me hear some more of that rock and roll music, any old way you use it” and “Go Johnny go, Johnny be good.”

And now that I am in my Sixties more and more we listen to Chuck Berry songs, sixty years after they were written as Geoff and Rob still sing them on a Friday night at the Gambetta.  And we all sing along…”Go Johnny, Go Go Go. ”