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Posted on 03/18/2017 8:00:49 PM PDT by SamAdams76
He nearly outlived them all. Even Keith Richards. I thought it might just happen. Imagine Chuck Berry outliving Keith Richards. Alas, it was not to be. Keith Richards survived yet another rock icon.
Yes, Chuck Berry, rock pioneer who was already THIRTY YEARS old when Elvis Presley made the national scene went ahead and died earlier today. Many people under the age of 50 might not even remember him. But he was a great one.
George Thorogood made a whole career out of covering his songs. Chuck Berry's music was featured in the time travel movie "Back To The Future" which itself is over 30 years old. In the movie Pulp Fiction, John Travolta and that girl with the short hair who did those karate movies danced to a Chuck Berry song with a Marilyn Monroe and an Ed Sullivan look-alike. Even that was back in 1994 - now over two decades ago. And the song "You Never Can Tell" was a golden oldie even back then.
Hundreds and hundreds of rock artists died during the rock era but Chuck Berry was always hanging in there. Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, all long dead. Half the Beatles are dead. George Jones is dead as is Hank Williams. Patsy Cline, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, dead, dead, dead. And Chuck Berry lived on.
Jim Morrison of the Doors is now dead. Keith Moon, Brian Jones and Little Walter too. Laura Branigan, Juice Newton and John Bonham of Led Zeppelin. All dead.
So many rock artists dead that I can't even begin to name them all here. Those dudes that played in Lynyrd Synyrd - some of them died too. That one guy who played the guitar for that band that I can't remember, he's also dead. I just can't keep up with all the deaths in rock music. Soon, we will have nobody playing rock music anymore.
And that's a shame.
Actually John Lee Hooker complained to me one afternoon while we were sitting in his living room that that George would come over and rummage through the box (pointing to a box in the living room) and steal all his songs. George Thorogood did do a lot of Hooker covers
RIP, Chuck.
He was still going strong in 1972
My Ding-a-ling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaEC-lWSlmI
Richards hasn’t really “outlived” Berry. He is almost 20 years younger.
He just looks like crap.
Come on guys.
In the “rock” age, no one seriously does anything past a decade. They becime has-beens regrdless of consistent talent. In fact, I think the very essence of r&r - youth - requires that everything becomes passe quickly.
He covered some McFly tunes too :)
“Hey, George Thorough and the Destroyers made “Move It On Over” (1978) and “Bad to the Bone””
Bad to the Bone is one of the songs they mean.
And Move it on Over is a Hank Williams song from 1947.
Don’t get me wrong, George and the Delaware Destroyers are great.
I get the impression this show was done somewhere in Scandinavia, but I could be wrong. I actually heard this song the (I’m pretty sure) FIRST .maybe second, time it was performed in front of a live audience. Through most of 1971 I was in the original production of the musical GREASE in Chicago. A few months after the show closed, my roommate and I got a call from two students at Washington U. in St. Louis. asking us if we would like to get together an opening act for Chuck Berry, who was featured at the Homecoming Concert—this had to be October 1971. We had literally 48 hours to get a complete group together, rehearse 4 or 5 tunes, get down to St. Louis from Chicago. Wasn’t easy. My roommate/highschool friend played lead guitar in the Grease band, another guy from the show came in with his bass guitar, our drummer came, one girl from the cast, me, and another vocalist,a friend of ours who was a 30 year old practicing attorney in Chicago, originally from Flatbush, who had sung with some minor doo-wop groups as a kid. He was a bit of a prima donna, but he knew his stuff. He told our “producers” he would do it if they paid his air fare. They did, and we rehearse in St. Louis that afternoon, on very little sleep. We did “Daddy’s Home”,” What’s Your Name?”, Little Darlin’, and a few others. I don’t know how we did it, I vaguely remember sleeping on someone’s water bed the night previous, some friend of the student producer’s who offered to put us up, and tossing around as this bed sloshed back and forth beneath me. Maybe got an hour’s sleep. ANYWAY, there was also a boy-girl dance duo who came onstage after us, named Tulana and Annie, and did some very energetic period show-”jitterbugging”. All the while we were performing, the audience grew more restless and we ducked a number of empty beer cans. “We want Chuck!” could be heard every 30 seconds or so.So Berry came out and right off the bat, or soon enough, did MY DING A LING, which he led us to believe was the first time he was performing it. I do believe it was the same shirt he was wearing that night that you see in the video, and his suggestive patter was almost word for word at Washington U. as it was in the video. Good times!!!
BTT
BTT
He’ll be forever playing with his Ding-a-ling with no particular place to go. RIP Rock and Roll legend.
He put out the greatest album of 1979 IMHO, ROCKIT
https://youtu.be/p5mrS3YWZHA
But Juice is a hideous screecher! “I yell, therefore I’m soulful. Or something.” She should have made a duet with Ronnie Milsap. Two over singing peas in a pod.
But let’s hope her career is.
George Jones, (Who the F is that?) Hank Williams, at least one of them I have heard of, enough to know they are totally irrelevant to Chuck Berry.
Ouch! harsh, dude!
She certainly wasn’t the worst thing on the radio in the early 80’s. In the parlace of FR she’s “not guilty”. That’s gotta help a little.
CC
Not if you only had to listen to her! She just needed to calm down.
Roll over Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news. And I mean the news.
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