The First Black President, President Of Rock And Rock- Chuck Berry: The Great Twenty-Eight- A CD Review

CD Review

By Associate Music Critic Lance Lawrence

The Great Twenty-Eight: Chuck Berry, Chess Records 

Today I want to talk about presidential politics. No, not that lame excuse for an election process that occurred in 2016. That Hillary and Donald battle royal for who is in charge of being in charge. Forget that stuff. I want to talk today about is who was, who is, the person who has qualified to be the leading candidate for the title of the president of rock and roll (small letter ‘p” signifying the truly democratic process of selection in this important matter). Of course when you talk about who was who in rock and roll you have to go back to what is now called in the promos and ads, the demographically targeted promos and ads, the “classic age” of rock. The period roughly from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. That said, the passing earlier in 2017 year of the legendary rocker Chuck Berry has placed this question once again on the front burner, at least in my circles.

As usual in such matters the controversy has come to the fore in reaction to the various tributes and obituaries on the life of Chuck Berry and his place in the history of rock and roll. During that period I made so bold to suggest that in the long run Chuck Berry’s influence on the development of rock and roll as it came out of that very special black-centered rhythm and blues of the late 1940s and early 1950s stuff that, truthfully most whites except a few hipsters around café society New York and on the fringes of North Beach and slinky LA on the Coast had no clue even existed. That despite the fact that many of the songs that we have come to associate with classic rock and roll like Hound Dog, One Night With You and Shake, Rattle and Roll  burned the trail during that period.

Naturally when names are named in culturati circles, especially academic circles, somebody is always ready almost by reflex or by some overweening desire to make a name for his or her self at the expense of some tribal bigwig to throw mud at your finely tuned and reasoned premises. Needless to say that happened here in discussing the influence of Chuck Berry as well except from an unexpected source. Zack James, a fellow music critic in this space and at the American Music Gazette, decided he could hold his tongue no longer and sent me an e-mail basically challenging my sanity for believing that anybody but Elvis, and I do not believe that I need to add a last name for everybody to know of whom I speak, was the leading figure in that magical moment called 1950s rock. Of course I could have dismissed Zack’s idea out of hand since he got his knowledge about rock and roll second-hand, hell for all I know third-hand or from reading the liner notes, from listening to his older brother Alex’s records in the mid-1960s well after the heyday of the movement I am talking about. I decided though that I couldn’t let that notion about who was who stand without a response.

I am one who, belatedly, has come to recognize that Elvis (again I don’t think I need to mention a last name but if you need one just ask your parents or grandparents and you will get your answer in two seconds flat) was indeed the “king” of rock and roll. He took, as Sam Phillips the legendary founder of Sun Records and first finder of Elvis in old Memphis town who has been quoted many, many times as saying, the old black rhythm and blues songs and put a white, a white rockabilly, face on the genre and made the crossover in a big way. So I will not argue that point with Zack. Will not argue either that his act, those swirling rotating off their axis hips make all the girls, hell, all the women sweat. Point Zack.                          

But see I am a good republican (with a very purposeful small ‘r”) and as such I believe that the “divine right of kings,” the theory that Zack is apparently working under was discredited a few hundred years ago when Oliver Cromwell and his crowd took old Charles I’s head off his shoulders. And while I would have wished no such fate for the “king” his influence other than for purely sentimental reasons these days is pretty limited.

A look at this CD selection will tell a more persuasive tale. Sure early Elvis, Good Rockin’ Tonight, Jailhouse Rock, It Alright, Mama spoke to 1950s teenage angst and alienation read: lovesickness, but beyond that he kind of missed the boat of what teenagers, teenagers around my way and around Zack’s older brother’s way, wanted to hear about. Guys wanted to hear about anyway. Cars, getting girls in cars, and hanging out at places like drive-in theaters and drive-in restaurants looking for girls. In short thoughts of sex and sexual adventure. This may seem kind of strange today. Not the sex and sexual adventure part but the car and drive-ins part.

Those were the days of the “golden age” of the automobile when every guy, girls too, wanted to learn how to drive and get a car, or at least use the family car for those Friday and Saturday night cruising expeditions for which we lived. (I hear anecdotally all the time about 20 somethings who don’t have their driver’s license and are not worried by that horrendous fact. Could care less about car ownership in the age of Uber and Lift. Madness, sheer madness).  Cars for running to the drive-in to check out who was at the refreshment stand, cars for hitting “lovers’ lane if you got lucky. For that kind of adventure you needed something more than safe Elvis, safe Elvis who made your own mother secretly sweat so you know where he was at. Say you found some sweet sixteen, found some sweet little rock and roller, say you found that your parents’ music that was driving you out of the house in search of, say you were in search of something and you really did want to tell Mister Beethoven to hit the road. Needed some help to figure out why that ever-loving gal was driving you crazy when all you really wanted to worry about was filling the gas tank and making sure that heap of your was running without major repairs to cramp your style.             

Take a look at the lyrics in the selections in this CD: Maybelline, Sweet Little Sixteen, Sweet Little Rock and Roller, Nadine, Johnny B. Goode, Roll over Beethoven. Then try to tell me that the man with the duck walk, the man with the guitar from hell, the man who dared to mess with Mister’s women (hell we have all been beaten down on that one since Adam’s time, maybe before) one Chuck Berry didn’t speak to us from the depth of the 1950s. Hail to the Chief.