With Chuck Berry, what comes straight to thoughts are the pulsating rock’n’roll hits of the 50s, reminiscent of “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Johnny B. Goode,” and “Maybellene.” Nevertheless, Berry’s prodigious output for Chess Data additionally gave the revered songwriter the prospect to discover his appreciable skills as a guitar participant and vocalist deciphering the songs of different composers. A number of those covers, together with six of his personal originals, had been gathered collectively and launched on August 13, 1983, for the intriguing compilation album referred to as Blues.
The gathering opens with “House Of Blue Lights,” a fast-tempo track from the 40s related to Texan singer Ella Mae Morse. Lots of the songs on Blues, recorded by Chess for numerous single and album releases from 1958 to 1964, function the music that St Louis-born Berry loved as a teen. “Driftin’ Blues,” for instance, was a track he knew from Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers’ membership repertoire.
“Down The Road Apiece” was a boogie-woogie track from 1940, and Berry significantly loved the model by Amos Milburn. Berry’s replace breathed new life into the track and it was revived once more within the 60s by The Rolling Stones. The track was written by Don Raye, who additionally co-composed “House Of Blue Lights.” Raye, by the way, made an enduring contribution to American songwriting along with his work for The Andrews Sisters, particularly the American favourite “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”
One of many delights of Blues is the beautiful piano enjoying of Johnnie Johnson, a extremely embellished ex-marine, who options on 14 of the 16 songs, with Bob Scrivens and Lafayette Leake enjoying keyboard on the remaining two songs. Johnson’s fluent enjoying and swirling notes are the proper foil to Berry’s singing and relentless rhythm. The pianist excels on “Wee Wee Hours,” a track that had lengthy been one among his staples when enjoying as a solo instrumentalist.
It might have appeared counterintuitive to get somebody nearly as good a songwriter as Berry to cowl songs by different writers, however he was steered in direction of lyrics by different extraordinarily gifted writers. The compositions of Willie Dixon have graced quite a few Chess albums, and although Berry’s model of “I Just Want to Make Love To You” lacks the pressure and efficiency of Muddy Waters’ variations, Berry’s one is helped by some candy backing vocals from The Ecuadors, the assumed title of a gaggle of Chess singers that included Etta James and Harvey Fuqua of The Moonglows fame.
Berry does an honest job of overlaying requirements by WC Useful (“St Louis Blues”), Jay McShann (“Confessin’ The Blues”) and Massive Maceo Merriweather (“Worried Life Blues”), but one of many shock highlights of the album is his personal instrumental composition “Deep Feeling.” Berry borrowed from the melody of a 1939 instrumental by Andy Kirk And His Clouds Of Pleasure referred to as “Floyd’s Guitar Blues” however turned it into his personal with some adroit metal guitar. The observe influenced guitarist Mike Bloomfield, who praised Berry’s “spidery guitar licks.” The instrumental is helped by the musical abilities of different common Chess musicians Dixon (who performs bass on 11 of the album’s tracks), guitarist Hubert Sumlin and Fred Beneath on drums.
“Sweet Sixteen” – to not be confused with the well-known Chuck Berry rocker “Sweet Little Sixteen” – is a blues track by Ahmet Ertegun that had been a minor hit for Joe Turner in 1952. Ertegun’s diverse profession included establishing Atlantic Data and co-founding The New York Cosmos soccer crew. He believed that Berry was good at singing the blues and was proud of the consequence. Berry described his blues songs as “playing for the neighborhood,” whereas including that rock’n’roll was “shooting for the whole population.” However he confirmed his personal innate understanding of the blues style along with his track “Still Got The Blues.”
No Berry album could be full with out songs about automobiles and journey, and Berry places his personal stamp on the musical track journey about America’s most iconic freeway, “Route 66,” written by Julie London’s husband Bobby Troup. Berry’s model remained a favourite of Mick Jagger.
Berry branched out in journey songs with the little-known prepare track “All Aboard,” which had beforehand been issued on the album Chuck Berry On Stage. In that incarnation, it included barely jarring faux viewers results, nevertheless it appeared on Blues within the authentic studio type. The sunshine-hearted track, which options LC Davis on tenor saxophone, even has imitation locomotive noises from Berry, who lists a sequence of railroad locations, together with Utica, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Topeka.
Chuck Berry’s Blues is a portrait of a gifted idiosyncratic musician. As Leonard Chess mentioned: “Chuck Berry does things his way and doesn’t care what other people think. That’s why his music is so original.”
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