Category Archives: Rock’n Roll

Today: Chuck Berry is 86

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 “Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news.”

Keith Richards Inducts Chuck Berry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986):

“Chuck was my man. He was the one who made me say ‘I want to play guitar, Jesus Christ!’…Suddenly I knew what I wanted to do.”
~Keith Richards (1992)

“..if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.”
~John Lennon

“Well, now, Chuck Berry was a rock & roll songwriter. So I never tried to write rock &
roll songs, ‘cause I figured he had just done it.”
~Bob Dylan (to Kurt Loder October 1987)

From Wikipedia:

Birth name Charles Edward Anderson Berry
Born October 18, 1926 (age 86)
St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Genres Rock and roll, blues,rhythm and blues
Occupations Musician, songwriter
Instruments Guitar, vocals
Years active 1955–present
Labels Chess, Mercury, Atco
Website www.chuckberry.com

Charles Edward Anderson “Chuck” Berry (born 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), Chuck 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.

From allmusic – Cub Koda:

Of all the early breakthrough rock & roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers. Quite simply, without him there would be no Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, nor a myriad others. There would be no standard “Chuck Berry guitar intro,” the instrument’s clarion call to get the joint rockin’ in any setting. The clippety-clop rhythms of rockabilly would not have been mainstreamed into the now standard 4/4 rock & roll beat. There would be no obsessive wordplay by modern-day tunesmiths; in fact, the whole history (and artistic level) of rock & roll songwriting would have been much poorer without him.

  “he wrote all of the great songs and came up with all the rock & roll beats.”
~Brian Wilson

Those who do not claim him as a seminal influence or profess a liking for his music and showmanship show their ignorance of rock’s development as well as his place as the music’s first great creator. Elvis may have fueled rock & roll’s imagery, but Chuck Berry was its heartbeat and original mindset.
….read more over @ allmusic.com 

Johnny B Goode:

While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together. It was his particular genius to graft country & western guitar licks onto a rhythm & blues chassis in his very first single, “Maybellene.”
-Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

 

Legacy:

  • Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984
  • Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986, with the comment that he “laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance.”
  • The Kennedy Center Honors in 2000
  • being named seventh on Time magazine’s 2009 list of the 10 best electric guitar players of all-time
  • On May 14, 2002, Chuck Berry was honored as one of the first BMI Icons at the 50th annual BMI Pop Awards. He was presented the award along with BMI affiliates Bo Diddley and Little Richard.
  • Berry is included in several Rolling Stone “Greatest of All Time” lists. In September 2003, the magazine named him number 6 in their list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”.
  • This was followed in November of the same year by his compilation album The Great Twenty-Eight being ranked 21st in the Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
  • The following year, in March 2004, Berry was ranked fifth out of “The Immortals – The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time”.
  • In December 2004, six of his songs were included in the “Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”, namely “Johnny B. Goode” (#7), “Maybellene” (#18), “Roll Over Beethoven” (#97), “Rock and Roll Music” (#128), “Sweet Little Sixteen” (#272) and “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” (#374).
  • In June 2008, his song “Johnny B. Goode” ranked first place in the “100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time”.
  • Berry’s recording of “Johnny B. Goode” was included on the Voyager Golden Record, attached to the Voyager spacecraft as representing rock and roll, one of four American songs included among many cultural achievements of humanity.
  • Berry was honored alongside Leonard Cohen as the recipients of the first annual Pen Awards for songwriting excellence at the JFK Presidential Library, Boston, Mass. on February 26, 2012
  • Today, at the age of 86, Berry continues to play live.

Album of the day – The Ultimate Chuck Berry (2007)

 

Other October 18:

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Today: Sam Moore is 77 he was born in 1935

Samuel David Moore aka Sam Moore (born October 12, 1935) is an American Southern soul and rhythm & blues (R&B) singer, who was the tenor vocalist for the soul vocal duo Sam & Dave from 1961 to 1981.

Sam Moore is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Grammy Hall of Fame (for “Soul Man”), the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, and a Grammy Award and a multi-Gold Record award-winning recording artist. Sam & Dave were the most successful and critically acclaimed duo in soul music history. Moore has also achieved a distinguished 25-year career as a solo performing and recording artist.

In 2008, based on a poll of other musicians, Rolling Stone named Sam Moore one of the 100 greatest singers of the rock era (1950s-2008).

Sam & Dave:

Sam Moore and Dave Prater were both experienced gospel music singers, having performed individually with groups the Sensational Hummingbirds and The Melionaires. They met in The King of Hearts Club in Miami in 1961, where they were discovered by regional producer Henry Stone, who signed them to Roulette Records. After modest success at Roulette,they were signed by Jerry Wexler to Atlantic Records in 1964, then being ‘loaned’ out to Stax Records to produce, record and release their records.

The duo’s November 1965 single, “You Don’t Know Like I Know,” started a series of ten straight top twenty Billboard R&B hits that included “Hold On! I’m Comin'” (1966), “You Got Me Hummin’ (1966), “When Something Is Wrong with My Baby” (1967), “Soul Man” (1967), and “I Thank You” (1968). Most of their hits were penned by Isaac Hayes and David Porter. In most recordings, they were also backed by Hayes on piano with Booker T and the MGs and The Memphis Horns. The ending of their association with the Stax record label and their frequently volatile relationship contributed to their first break-up in 1970. Their last performance together was on December 31, 1981, at the Old Waldorf in San Francisco. On 9 April 1988, Prater died in a car crash in Sycamore, Georgia.
(Wikipedia)

Oslo 1967:

Moore and Prater (posthumously) were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on January 15, 1992. Shortly after the induction, Moore announced plans to record a solo LP, featuring duets with Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins and others.
On August 29, 2006, Moore released his first solo album, Overnight Sensational.

When something is wrong with my baby:

What a fantastic singer! Happy birthday Sam!

Solo discography:

Plenty Good Lovin’ : The Lost Solo Album 2002
Sam Moore recorded this album in 1970 with R&B great King Curtis, who produced eight of the ten tracks. The album was originally intended to be Moore’s solo debut, but it was shelved for a variety of reasons (including the murder of King Curtis shortly after the album was recorded).

Overnight Sensational 2006

Other 12 October:

Bob Mould was born in 1960:

Guitarist/singer/songwriter Bob Mould was a member of Hüsker Dü, one of the most influential American bands of the ’80s.

He has released several great albums as a soloartist and as a member/leader of the group Sugar. We had the great fortune of seeing him perform Copper Blue at this years Oyafestival.

Happy birthday Bob! You also get the album of the day spot with Sugar’s Copper Blue:

 

Continue reading Today: Sam Moore is 77 he was born in 1935

Today: “Great Balls of Fire” was recorded in 1957 – 55 years ago

Well kiss me baba, woo-oooooo….it feels good
Hold me baba
I want to love you like a lover should
Your fine, so kind
I got this world that your mine mine mine mine-ine

From Wikipedia:

Released November 11, 1957
Recorded October 8, 1957Sun Studio, Memphis, Tennessee
Genre Rock and roll, Rockabilly, Country
Label Sun 281
Writer(s) Otis Blackwell (under the pseudonym Jack Hammer)

Great Balls of Fire” is a 1957 song recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis on Sun Records and featured in the 1957 movie Jamboree. It was written by Otis Blackwell (under the pseudonym Jack Hammer). The Jerry Lee Lewis 1957 recording was ranked as the 96th greatest song ever by Rolling Stone. The song is in AABA form.

From Rollingstone.com (500 greatest songs):
With Lewis pounding the piano and leering, “Great Balls of Fire” was full of Southern Baptist hellfire turned into a near-blasphemous ode to pure lust. Lewis, a Bible-college dropout and cousin to Jimmy Swaggart, refused to sing it at first and got into a theological argument with Phillips that concluded with Lewis asking, “How can the devil save souls?” But as the session wore on and the liquor kept flowing, Lewis’ mood changed considerably — on bootleg tapes he can be heard saying, “I would like to eat a little pussy if I had some.” Goodness gracious, great balls of fire, indeed.

From allmusic.com – Cub Koda:
Written by African-American songwriter Otis Blackwell under the pseudonym of Jack Hammer, this was Jerry Lee Lewis’ third release and second consecutive hit. There are only two instruments on this recording, Lewis’ piano and J.M. Van Eaton’s drumming, with the echo from the Sun studios working as a third instrument. The song is over in a little more than a minute and a half and yet is perfectly realized with probably Jerry Lee’s best solo to recommend it and a vocal that borders on lascivious. You can do many things with “Great Balls of Fire” but most covers stick damn close to the original Jerry Lee strut and arrangement, so perfectly realized and empathetically played.

The song is best known for Jerry Lee Lewis’s original recording, which was recorded in the Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, on October 8, 1957, and released as a 45rpm single on Sun 281 in November 1957.

The song title is derived from a Southern expression, which some Christians consider blasphemous, that refers to the Pentecost’s defining moment when the Holy Spirit manifested itself as “cloven tongues as of fire” and the Apostles spoke in tongues.

and another (newer) version:

Other October 08:

Continue reading Today: “Great Balls of Fire” was recorded in 1957 – 55 years ago

New official Rolling Stones bootleg: Live at Tokyo Dome 1990!

In their excellent series of official bootlegs the Rolling Stones has released an album of tracks from their run at the Tokyo Dome in february in 1990 (10 concerts!).

Japanese authorities wouldn’t allow the Rolling Stones into the country until 1990’s Steel Wheels tour, so by the time Tokyo fans got to see them the danger of the ’60s, the decadence of the ’70s, and the acrimony of the ’80s were all well behind the band. On their first tour in seven years (and their last with original bassist Bill Wyman), the Stones were in what Keith Richards describes as a “joyous” mood.

About the release:

That sense of glee is palpable on the many new numbers (“Sad, Sad, Sad” features some particularly fiery riffing from Keith), but it also infuses many of the old hits, as you can hear on the track “Miss You.” The massive stage and global tour set the template for the next two decades of live Stones.

Miss You, Tokyo Dome 1990:

From The Rolling Stones Archive:

Denied permission to play in Japan in 1973, the band were finally welcomed with open arms in 1990, when they played a ten night residency at the 55,000 capacity Tokyo Dome. This album was recorded at the show on 26th February, and features Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood and Bill Wyman, who in August of that year, would play his last ever show with the Rolling Stones. The touring band included Bobby Keys, Chuck Leavell, Lisa Fischer, Cindy Mizelle, Bernard Fowler, Matt Clifford and the Uptown Horns. The Steel Wheels/ Urban Jungle tour became the highest grossing tour of all time. But it’s not just the figures that set this show apart from others, the Rolling Stones revisited songs from their psychedelic period such as “2000 Light Years From Home” and “Ruby Tuesday”, with cosmic results. In 2012 Bob Clearmountain applied the mix.

 

Happy, Tokyo Dome 1990:

Continue reading New official Rolling Stones bootleg: Live at Tokyo Dome 1990!