The Blues Muse: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781518621147: Books
Back to Chicago
It didn’t take too long for the deprivation of the South to send me back to Chicago. The money to be made on those production lines was like a magnet. I’d grown to like my own bed and there was nothing quite like those steamy clubs. Chicago jumped like no other place on Earth. The white guys in the north might have their Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby. The white guys in the south might have their Hank Williams, Bill Monroe and Louvin Brothers but nothing shook the planet like the sound that pounded out of those underground cellars they called clubs. Nothing smelt, felt or rocked like them. Chicago rocked and I wanted to Rock with it.
The tempo was picking up, and there was change in the air. Muddy, Elmore and the Wolf were at their peak but a new phenomenon was starting up and the kids were getting hip to it.
Blues had spawned a new child with an even louder voice, even more insistent beat, and something faster. It was the stirrings of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Like all new things it was full of vibrant energy.
It came ready formed straight out of Chess, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.
I was there when it happened. I was right there at the front of the stage. If the Blues thundered along with all the power of a steam locomotive then Rock took off with the roar of a space rocket. Charles Edward Berry, better known as Chuck had stood in the wings for twenty seven years, hiding away, biding his time, honing his skills and sizing things up. When the time was right he exploded on the scene with the nascent force of a hydrogen bomb. There was no pause for breathe, no brief period to learn his trade. He simply headed into Chess Records straight from St Louis and never looked back. This was no kid. He already had that analytical mind. He’d kept his eye on the market.
Chuck had a multitude of skills and among them was a keen business mind. He was twenty seven but he had a mind that was years older when it came to analysing the scene. Chuck had been quick to realise the cross-over potential. He weighed it up and saw that the white kids were boiling like magma under a dormant volcano. The pressure was building. Chuck wanted to be the crater through which that lava erupted, the lava of adolescent fury, the pent-up sexuality of all that angst driven, hormone fuelled repression. All it needed was ignition.
From where Chuck stood it was clear to see. This was post-war USA. The economy was in overdrive and the kids were a new market. There were new fashions, new interests, sex, cars, speed and wild days. There was Marlon Brando, James Dean and rebellion. The establishment was sitting on a powder keg and Chuck was wanting to set the fuse.
Chuck took the beat, speeded it up, and gave it a back-beat. Taking Johnny Johnson’s piano he translated the notes into a string of guitar riffs that stung like a swarm of hornets. Fast cars, poetry, dancing, young love, daring the establishment, there was no monkey business for Chuck.
He was rehearsing for fame in those Chicago clubs and I was there to witness it all, the inauguration of the hurricane that was Chuck Berry, the tsunami that was Rock ‘n’ Roll. I was carried right up there to the roof and rode the crest of that wave. Chuck blew the lid off the Blues and roared off with it in his speedster without a backward glance. We followed in his wake but never did catch him.
I thought I’d seen everything with Tommy Johnson, Charley Patton and then Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and Elmore James. I thought that Robert Johnson had played like no other could but I was unprepared for the excitement of Chuck Berry in those early days. Chuck was getting his moves together and man did they work. I couldn’t believe that one man could hold it all together. Johnny Johnson was a brilliant pianist and the band were tight but they were invisible when Chuck hit the stage. He duck-walked out, head jerking back and forth, knees bent and guitar pointing forward, streaming out a distinctive burst of notes in what was to become the most recognisable music in Rock ‘n’ Roll. He’d come to a halt in the centre of the stage , legs splayed into the splits, guitar pointing out showering the audience with notes that went off like cherry bombs. His vocals were fast, diction perfect so’s you’d catch every word, and words sounding off like poetry striking bells. Chuck said it was all merely a case of rhyming words and maths but it was more than that; this was genius. When the verses were over it was back to the jerky walks, machine gun stance – peppering the audience with steel-tipped notes and visual magic.
Chuck had it all – the looks, the moves, the words and the bravado. He captured the excitement that the kids didn’t even know they were looking for.