Chuck Berry – Still Got the Blues
Chuck Berry – Still Got the Blues
Charles Edward Anderson Berry (Chuck Berry) was born, on October 18, 1926, in St. Louis, Missouri.
It is impossible to overstate Berry’s importance and influence on early rock ’n roll and its subsequent development into “rock”.
Berry’s musicianship, his showmanship, his clever wordplay, and the topics he wrote about mark him as one of the prime architects of rock ‘n roll.
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys brought Berry’s music to larger and more diversified audiences than Berry could ever have reached and in turn, influenced future generations, but always, it all comes back to Berry and his guitar –
When Berry was going to do a more blues-oriented material session, the Chess brothers would arrange for their best blues players to back him.
Nine songs were cut at this April 1960 session, including covers such as ‘Down the Road A-piece’, ‘Confessin’ the Blues’, and Big Joe Turner’s ‘Sweet Sixteen’.
Backing Berry here is Matt “Guitar” Murphy, a rhythm section of Willie Dixon and Odie Payne and Lafayette Leake on piano (sitting in for Berry’s regular piano man, Johnnie Johnson).
This number first saw release (with overdubbed audience noise) on the 1960 Chess LP “Chuck Berry On Stage”.
It would be another thirty-three years before the un-dubbed version (above) was released on the U.K. Ace label’s “On the Blues Side”
