Children still need to be watched, at least occasionally. With one eye. So they handed out all kinds of things in heaven, and little curly-haired Chuck defended his turn honestly, and he hesitated at the baskets with heavenly gifts, grabbed, like at a sale, "everything on a cent", and along with the guitar, fame and duck-walk he grabbed three prison terms (why the devil did he need them?), passion for not entirely legal adventures and not his date of birth - October 18, 1926. Consider, eight or nine years before the opening of the rock and roll parachute fell out of the nest.
Parents were glad to him, as well as to the whole horde of beloved children.
Dad is a Baptist deacon, Mom is a school principal.
The middle black class is almost a lottery ticket for those born in St. Louis, Missouri (nicknamed the state "Show Me!").
Berry all his life, all 90 years allotted to him, and showed who he was and what kind of dough he was involved in.
Roller coaster - his biography.
Slides without insurance and seat belts - several times he hung upside down, thinking without a shadow of dissatisfaction or rejection of life: “Shouldn't I unclench my hands this time?
Should I let go of the handrails? "
We are all shaken and whirled in Berry's frenziedly spinning nickel-plated shaker - Thirty Days, Maybellene (1955), Roll Over Beethoven, Brown Eyed Handsome Man, Too Much Monkey Business (1956), Rock and Roll Music (1957), Johnny B. Goode. Sweet Little Sixteen (1958), Memphis, Tennessee (1959).
What are his hands!
As on the canvases of the old Dutch masters!
How he manages on stage and in the frame with his body and our floating heads!
How he holds the guitar!
- as a beloved girl in a passionate embrace?
Oh no.
What are you ...
Like a heavy machine gun, this is how he holds ... a guitar.
We all know (do you - don’t you know?) - Chuck was pushed to an internal decision to win or perish in obscurity by T-Bone Walker, the same one - he allegedly played almost an electric guitar back in 1935, and Mr.B.B. King, having heard his punches and chords, he said so directly (eyewitnesses say, but what can we know for sure ...) - Jesus himself, they say, came down to earth, filling T-Bon's guitar with the sounds of the blues and our pain! ..
Faith.
Into the supernatural possible.
That was what moved, pushed snow-white cotton in the backs of dark-skinned children.
Contrary to democracy and brotherhood of all with all, but better - through the partition for "here only one", "here only another."
It was not without the old Muddy Waters, the legendary "dad of the Chicago blues", who personally directed Berry into the strong, grasping hands of Leonard Chess - co-owner and co-founder of Chess Records, where the single Maybellene was recorded on May 21, 1955, instantly sold in 1 million copies and took the first line in the American rhythm and blues charts.
It was then, having personally caught a blue bird flying past by the tail, Berry uttered: It came out at the right time when Afro-American music was spilling over into the mainstream pop!
And golden tokens were poured into the trays of the slot machine of fate.
And it spun and spun everything around in the rhythm you know what.
And how could it not have gone crazy, in fact, and even such a thin and restless kid from Missouri?
Just first explain to me why the hell, while still in school, in 1944, when he was only 18, Berry, along with two of the same "notorious thugs" like himself, wielding a broken, probably straight from the garbage, a pistol , robbed three shops and hijacked the wheelbarrow of a neglected citizen of the country of equal opportunities ?!
Why?!
He's from a decent middle black class family!
A fracture of fate?
Three idiots got a top ten, but Berry was lucky - in prison he behaved with dignity, strummed his guitar and was released three years later.
I always used to call him Duke - the Duke.
I don’t know, maybe because he was among the southern bogeymen, who had become kings, a little out of place.
Such ... You know ... Older.
Refined nervous.
In a suit and tie.
Elegant and slim.
Duke in exile - you need to keep the brand, but the cats scratch their souls, no one knows what ...
Once he passed me by.
I didn't get sick with it, but my whole drive since the age of fourteen is largely on his songs, sung by literally everyone, and Elvis in the first place.
One of my favorite videos of Chuck is his half-hour television show Chuck Berry's 1965 Belgium TV Appearance.
Here he is like a tiger with good intentions and a pure heart in the middle of an open cage - the bars have collapsed, good citizens of all ages are sitting around with amazement on their faces, and he, very weakly supported by a strange audience, gives all his best, sings and continuously moves - and with a duck step, and almost unfolding into a twine - and in response to him - a polite European grimace.
And he wasn't even going to bite off their head.
And they ... Of course.
Chuck was released from prison for a year and a half.
Having bravely served three.
For a bizarre affair with a 14-year-old waitress from Berry's Club Bandstand.
Why the hell did he need her?
What did he find in her?
A man with money, his own house and other real estate as an investment, the owner of a bunch of hits and titles, who survived the early experience of "not being friends" with the law - again flies into adventures at a speed of 100 miles ...
Is this also such a kink of fate?
The psychological trauma of age, lagging behind the kings of the South?
Those are 25, and he is already 40 in five years?
And so he travels around Europe, earns very decently, although there is no former fireworks in the hall, and even in his eyes.
Unclear.
Nothing about him is clear - a gloomy duke with a curse on his brow.
And he hides his gloom behind the stage quirks, but all the same - no one calls him, like, say, Jerry Lee Lewis, a guitar killer, or whatever else there may be ...
By the way, while Chuck was serving his second term, Chess Records regularly printed his records, keeping Maestro Berry on the surface of the water.
This is because Leonard Chess was called Leyzor Chyz at birth, came from a moderately enterprising Polish-Jewish family that happily emigrated in 1928 to New York (approximately from the territory of present-day Belarus), and then to Chicago, where the head of the family and opened a liquor store.
In Chicago.
In the thirties.
For an impresario from such a family, Chuck Berry could not be lost.
Although he moved in 1966 to Mercury Records, in order to return to his native "chess" club in 1970.
Wherever you throw, completely restless personalities.
Each is a universe with its own laws.
The Seventies weren't particularly successful for Chuck, the CD's creator, but for Chuck, the star of the scene, more than that.
I must say, it was he, Chuck Berry, who was one of the first to pick up Elvis's cry - the golden fifties should return in all their splendor, for they were and are - the Era of Energy and Excessiveness!
In a sense, it all started (and continued) in Madison Square Garden, where and when the extraordinarily entrepreneurial disc jockey Richard Nader, who turned on the idea of selling "rock antiques" to the general public, put on a comeback show for the first time - Rock and Roll Revival concert on October 18, 1969 with fiery live participation of Chuck Berry, Bill Haley with Comets, The Platters and many others.
Where and how Richard Nader got the money to organize the first concert is a mystery.
Having worked for several years at the Premier Talent Agency, a young talent agency, one day he went almost nowhere - wide open the door with no job prospects and with only one desire that burned him from the inside - to kick ass on the British invasion of the United States. returning to the stage the old people he adored, and for the British - rubbing their battered ass with a mixture of pepper and vinegar in equal parts.
According to Nayder, or, say, "according to legend", he had no money at all and was supported by his beloved girlfriend, providing a couple of money for about ten months of careful preparation for the triumph.
Richard Nider just came to Madison Square Garden.
And he said that he "literally everything is ready, all that is needed is dates and ticket sales."
They listened to him, looked at the track record from the previous place of work and ... believed that everything was completely ready.
To the gallery page
Old men Naider convinced with all the forces of his soul.
Hayley chuckled and hesitated, and Berry agreed immediately and unconditionally.
And this is what is purely true - they all, each of the artists and groups, all agreed with Naider about fees, but not one asked for money in advance - perhaps because they simply did not believe in the success of the idea and felt sorry for the lonely madman, to be maybe because they did not want to frighten off the fearful bird of luck.
Nayder's calculation worked, because it was initially correct - in the summer of 1969, Elvis, who returned to the stage from oblivion, crushed the charts with a resounding success, playing 57 concerts in Las Vegas in a row from July 31 to August 28 inclusive - cleared the way for those Pentecostals who could and was ready to go on stage.
Naider's concerts were held with constant success almost until 1974.
Chuck Berry, our dark duke, has shone on many of them, invariably driving the audience and himself into a frenzy.
Kissing the guitar neck at the very end of the performance, offering up a prayer to the gods of rock, who mercifully looked at their confused and lost children ...
For the third time, Berry thundered into prison in 1979 for tax evasion - four months in prison and 1,000 hours of community service.
He did not shine in recent years, endlessly touring, but also endlessly losing the gloss, intensity and drive of previous performances.
He was here and not here, he was used to the fact that the view of the ocean periodically gives way to the view of the trellis.
He burned.
Down to the ground.
And we sing his songs as usual and we will sing forever.
Is his life good?
Should we ask such a question?
And to whom - to ourselves?
And why do I like the most ridiculous in terms of audience response and ideal in stage skill, the television show Chuck Berry's 1965 Belgium TV Appearance? ..
You know ...
There he is the real, living cry of the South.
There are more and more mannequins in the hall.
This happened motley, from rags, life.
Such a lucky unlucky ticket from heaven fell to him - just enough and mixed.
And from Johnny B. Goode, my feet are still dancing on their own.
Just like in a movie, where the harp was self-humored, magical ...
Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play a guitar just like ringin 'a bell
Go go
Go johnny go go
Go johnny go go
Go johnny go go
Go johnny go go
Johnny B. Goode !!!
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.