Happy Birthday! Chuck Berry turns 90

As you know, this site is about the music of Chuck Berry. It is not about Chuck Berry as a person, his life, his family affairs or other gossip. So this blog entry is an exception. I have been asked by a German magazine to write a piece to honor Berry's 90th birthday and to cover his record releases in Germany. Courtesy of Rock'n'Roll Musikmagazin here's a translation of what I wrote.

On October 18, 2016, the first of the classic rock and rollers turns 90. This is amazing, because the music business is notoriously known not to be the healthiest living environment. But we can see from the example of Keith Richards (72) that some people survive almost any dose of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.
But for Berry, the music business was just that: a business. This may be because unlike Richards and most other colleagues he had long grown up when his first recordings emerged. At that time Berry had already completed training as a beautician, worked a few years as a janitor and spent his first sentence behind bars. He arose from a musical black middle class family. After work he played with local bands in St. Louis to earn some extra money for himself, his wife and his little children. It was about money and therefore they played what the audience wanted to hear: sometimes Blues, sometimes Jazz, often dance music, but also many standards, country and ballads. What was important was the show, so Berry was not only a stand-up comedian, he also hopped with his guitar duck-walking across the stage, did the splits and other gymnastics.
To increase his income, he thought records sales would be helpful. So he went to Chicago to audition for record companies, and ended up at Chess Records, where on 21 May 1955, the first single Maybellene (Chess 1604) originated. Leonard Chess, boss of the company and a tough businessman, managed to get Maybellene onto the radio and on the top spot of the Billboard Rhythm and Blues charts. Now the money could flow.
However, the money did not flow in Berry's hands. The majority of the royalties ended up at music publisher Arc Music, which belonged to Leonard Chess and the brothers Gene and Harry Goodman. From the author's portion Berry also got only one-third as Chess had registered two uninvolved business partners as co-authors, Russ Fratto and Alan Freed. And the check for record sales would not have been very high either, as Chess musicians were usually paid by the hour.
But Leonard Chess knew how to make money. Therefore Berry stayed with the label. He quickly enforced better conditions for himself. Inspired by the success of the first records he became his own manager and learned to read and to formulate contracts properly. By the late '50s Berry had achieved a dozen hits on the Billboard charts and also got a better share of the revenue.
But record sales were primarily a marketing tool. You earned the big money from performances, of which in excess of 200 were completed each year. Again Berry was quite a businessman. As early as 1956 he separated from his band-mates. On the one hand their alcohol escapades prevented him from retaining control. Secondly, the band had to be paid, and that amount was taken from his pay. So henceforth Berry went on tour alone. The guitar in hand luggage, the audio equipment provided by the organizers and any vagabond band as a rhythm machine. Payment to be made before the show in cash and off the stage after exactly 60 minutes. Encores? I'm not paid for encores. The scene in the "Rock'n'Roll All Star Jam" DVD featuring a TV concert from 1985 is characteristic. During the grand finale to Rock And Roll Music Ron Wood, guitar in hand, chases Berry, who persistently denies his participation.
So no drugs, no sex, only rock'n'roll and only as a business? Not quite. The sex bit shook the well-planned business model over and over again. Many female fans were willing but not always discreet. In 1959 a disgruntled employee brought a criminal charge against him for sex with a minor and he went to prison for one and a half years found guilty of child abuse. In later times pornographic photos and videos, whether real or not, were leaked and published in exposé type magazines. Even as late as in 1990, during a raid on Berry's house, the police found secretly recorded videotapes from the ladies room of his restaurant, which cost him a suspended sentence and a multi-million dollar out-of-court settlement with the victims. Not by chance Berry's biggest selling record is about how he plays around with his Ding-A-Ling. No wonder Queen Silvia of Sweden, an activist against child abuse, had no desire to hand over Berry the Polar Music Prize awarded to him in 2014 for his lifetime achievement.
Berry's prison stay in the early '60s virtually destroyed his career. Meanwhile at exactly this time, with the help of his music, many new rock careers started. The Stones, The Beatles, The Beach Boys and thousands of other groups played the Chuck Berry song book from start to finish and sold his compositions by millions. Johnny B. Goode alone was not only played on stages, but also issued on records by nearly 600 artists. There are nearly 400 cover versions of Memphis, Tennessee, with just under 300 covers for both Roll Over Beethoven and Sweet Little Sixteen.
Berry had a few hits himself such as Nadine and Promised Land during the mid-'60s, especially in England. But he quickly moved into playing oldies for the most part. This was true for both his concerts as well as his later records which often consisted of well known standards. Even his new songs, often not bad, were based on well-known melodies, supplemented by intelligent lyrics.
The lyrics in particular contribute in a large part to Berry's later success. While the music of his records has always been a mix of the familiar, blues, country, jazz, ballads, the lyrics were always original. Berry could easily tell in the two minutes of a single a complete, amusing and catchy story. Nowadays, it's not without reason that Berry is mainly praised by his colleagues for his lyrical poetry.
In the '50s with Leonard Chess, Berry had a business partner with whom he could work well for their mutual benefit. After the end of the beat wave he lost his business acumen. He had always given quick money preference over artistic performance in concerts and so a large check lured him in 1966 to Mercury Records. Five albums with poor sales and four unsuccessful singles later, the planned fifth single was sent only to DJs and Berry remorsefully rejoined Chess. However, Leonard Chess had died and the company had become part in a large business group. Although Berry now had professional musical partners, the Woolies and the Billy Peek Band, who accompanied him both on records as well as tours, there was only a short period in 1972 when he scored a few hits again. Live and on these records, he played his oldies. The latest Chess record appeared in 1975. A brief new start in 1979 at Atlantic was unsuccessful. As soon as the Atlantic album was finished, Berry spent another six months behind bars, this time for tax evasion.
Until a few years ago from time to time Chuck Berry could be seen on a stage, assuming a Russian oligarch wagged enough cash. Since his 70th birthday and up to October 2014 he performed once a month at the Blueberry Hill in St. Louis together with his children. For Ingrid and Charles Jr. these appearances were likely to be considered as elder-care, for Chuck Sr. they were perhaps the only concerts he played for love rather than money.
Unlike the US and many European countries, in Germany the number of Berry records published during the 1950s was pretty low. There have been just five, maybe even only four singles on Deutsche London. It is questionable whether You Can't Catch Me (DL-20085, 1957) was ever released; at least I don't know of anybody who ever saw this record. If you know better, contact me! Even Johnny B. Goode was unissued in this country. During the '60s you could only get Berry's music in Germany on import records, mostly from Funckler in Holland, where from 1963 to 1965 a total of 17 singles called the "Chuck Berry Song Series" were released. Likewise the Funckler LPs were available in this country only as import copies.
In 1966 German Vogue tried the single Lonely School Days (DV-14547). There were hints that Vogue also wanted to release some English albums licensed from Pye Records and was probably hoping for additional new releases. However, due to Berry's change to Mercury it seems that this project was abandoned. On the other hand Mercury released no Berry singles onto the German market at all, just some of the LPs. It was only in 1972 that Mercury jumped on the oldies train and published some Berry oldies, though re-recordings from the late '60s.
From 1970 on Berry's work was marketed in Germany through Bellaphon. The people from Frankfurt were very active, publishing all the new American albums, but also oldies and rarities. This included seven Chuck Berry singles that Bellaphon brought to the German market between 1972 and 1976, of which My Ding-A-Ling (Bellaphon BF-18138) even got into the lower ranks of the Musikmarkt single charts.
Even in the GDR there was an album: Chuck Berry (Amiga 8.55.835, 1981) containing 16 Mercury recordings.
Chuck Berry's musical oeuvre is pretty much fully documented. The 16-CD collection Rock And Roll Music - Any Old Way You Choose It (Bear Family BCD 17273 PL), published two years ago, contains virtually every note ever issued on album or single. If you like it even more detailed, HIP-O-Select as part of the Universal Music Group between 2008 and 2010 released three sets of 4 CDs each containing Berry's Chess material, including a lot of alternate takes and outtakes.
For the true collector among Berry fans even this is not enough, though. While there are discount samplers almost monthly, in which the same material is released in ever new combinations, sometimes there are also interesting segments to discover. There might be a Oldies Collection enhanced with old interviews, or there is an unknown recording on a bootleg. Recently a CD gave us an old radio spot and a security announcement, which Berry had recorded for an airline.
A workgroup of international Berry collectors at irregular intervals write on my website http://www.crlf.de/ChuckBerry about newly issued old recordings, new cover versions or new live CDs containing mostly acoustically or artistically uninspiring, but often historically interesting concert recordings.
Collectors are primarily concerned with ancient rarities, such as Alan Freed's private publishing of a soundtrack LP or record covers never seen in stores. Of particular interest is the research about who played what on which Berry song. Here new information arises month after month. Even the two year old discography from the Bear Family Box is already outdated, because in the course of an old court case recording contracts with names and data became known. This case, of course, was also about money. Berry was sued by Johnnie Johnson, who died in 2005, for a share of the royalties because as a partner and pianist Johnson said he not only provided the piano accompaniment for many hits but also the melodies themselves. The case was decided and completed in 2002 in Berry's favor. Private documents submitted by the parties could be recently forensically evaluated. So now we know, for example, that Johnnie Johnson did indeed played the piano on Johnny B. Goode and that on Roll Over Beethoven there really is a trumpet to be heard.
Chuck Berry's musical heritage remains exciting, even 90 years after his birth. In 1978 Berry was given a big Birthday cake on the stage of the Düsseldorf Philipshalle, by a topless blonde. Today we do well to wish him health. Happy Birthday, Crazy Legs Berry!
The author would like to thank Joe Edwards, the owner of Blueberry Hill Restaurant & Music Club, and his daughter Hope Edwards, photographer and designer, for kindly providing the images [to the original article].