Review: Chuck Berry - One Dozen Berrys (1958)
Tracks: 1) Sweet Little Sixteen; 2) Blue Feeling; 3) La Jaunda; 4) Rockin’ At The Philharmonic; 5) Oh Baby Doll; 6) Guitar Boogie; 7) Reelin’ And Rockin’; 8) Ingo; 9) Rock And Roll Music; 10) How You’ve Changed; 11) Low Feeling; 12) It Don’t Take But A Few Minutes.
REVIEW
In between May 1957 and March 1958, the period which separates Chuck’s first LP from his second one, Mr. Berry put out three singles. The first one was ‘Oh Baby Doll’, and it was a bit inauspicious: way too melodically close to ‘Maybellene’ for comfort, which was not good because people did not really expect Chuck to repeat himself — indeed, next to ‘Maybellene’ itself and such major hits as ‘School Day’ the single pretty much flopped. The speed of the track is great, and Johnnie Johnson’s sprinkling piano rolls are fantastic, and Willie Dixon slaps that bass like no tomorrow, and it is fun to hear Chuck pronounce things like "alma mater"... but still, the song failed to become a truly golden classic for obvious reasons: Mr. Rock’n’Roll could do better than rehash his melodies from three years ago.
Mr. Rock’n’Roll probably agreed with this, and just a few months later put out ‘Rock And Roll Music’. Now the trick of ‘Rock And Roll Music’, the way I see it, is that the song itself is not so much rock-and-roll, really, as it is sheer pop with a bit of rock’n’roll trimming. It is certainly pop in spirit, much more of a celebration than a rebellion; but it is also pop in form, ditching the trilinear blues stanza and replacing it with a vocal melody that sounds almost European (Spanish? Italian?) in origin... actually, I have not the least idea of how Chuck came up with that melody: the man’s mind did work in quite mysterious ways when he was on the level. In any case, it is interesting to note that the song would later be famously covered by the Beatles and still later infamously by the Beach Boys, but not by the Rolling Stones or the Animals or whoever else would do Chuck Berry covers in droves — for the true gritty aficionados of undiluted rhythm and blues, this alleged ode to rock’n’roll must have seemed a bit fruity. But while it does feel weird to me trying to imagine how the song would have sounded like if covered by the Stones, it does not sound one bit weird when performed by Chuck — because Chuck was, after all, first and foremost a good-vibe entertainer, trying to get his listeners to smile and have fun rather than rip their chairs out of the floor or beat up security staff.
He did, however, initiate a long-standing tradition of somewhat excessively pompous, self-conscious anthems to the sacral powers of rock’n’roll, completely devoid of any signs of rebelliousness or shock value — ‘Rock And Roll Music’ is a direct spiritual ancestor of KISS’ ‘Rock And Roll All Night’, Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock And Roll’, and even the Who’s somewhat sarcastic, but still pretty good-natured ‘Long Live Rock’. Yet Chuck’s song is still better than all those others combined, if only because it was clearly not designed with the idea of a million strong lifting it up in a stadium: not a pseudo-spiritual battle cry for the masses, but a fairly personal declaration of one man’s preference for rock and roll music over any other genre. If it comes across as anthemic, it is more by accident than on pretentious purpose.
On the other hand, it is hard to get rid of the feeling that Chuck was gradually growing quite full of himself — if only because ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’, the follow-up to ‘Rock And Roll Music’, was just as poppy, celebratory, and anthemic as its direct predecessor. "They’re really rockin’ in Boston, in Pittsburgh P.A., deep in the heart of Texas and ’round the Frisco Bay" is, after all, as rallying as could possibly be — and putting an imaginary teenage girl on top of that universal movement was essentially Chuck’s subtle trick to endear himself with the ladies, but the song was essentially another one of those "hail hail rock’n’roll" moments that presented the new music as a freshly organized empire, and its performer as the Supreme Emperor of his delirious realm. Not that there was anything wrong with that, of course, as long as the chorus kept on building up and up and up... and down like that, or as long as Chuck put that new stop-and-start trick to such seductive use. And yet again, it is funny how, of all the bands to cover the song, it was not some dangerous rhythm & blues combo, but the frickin’ Beach Boys who produced the most memorable rendition — though their reckless decision to steal away the song (as ‘Surfin’ USA’) rather than properly credit it actually cost them in the long run.
Once ‘Rock And Roll Music’ and ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ firmly restored Chuck to the top positions on the charts (he would never again rise quite that high), it looked like it was time for another LP — which, understandably, included all three of his latest singles. Unfortunately, the overall results this time around were not nearly as satisfactory as with After School Session. Although this album, too, tries diligently to present Chuck as a diverse and experimental songwriter and performer, the non-hit singles are largely disappointing — at the very least, there are certainly no neglected gems like ‘Down Bound Train’ to be found. Arguably the only other classic number is ‘Reelin’ And Rockin’, the B-side to ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ which probably needs no introduction — it is simply the funniest kickass number Chuck ever wrote, and it would become even funnier and more kick-ass when he extended it with tons of improvised smutty verses during live shows.
But other than that, at least half a dozen of these particular «Berrys» aren’t all that delightful. First and foremost, five of them are purely instrumental, and while it is generally fun to hear Chuck jam with his pals, most of these jams are forgettable and really sound like dress rehearsal versions for vocal classics. ‘Guitar Boogie’, for instance, is pretty much ‘Reelin’ And Rockin’ without the words; ‘Blue Feeling’ is the slow blues of ‘Wee Wee Hours’ with Johnnie Johnson playing a much larger role than Chuck himself; and only ‘Rockin’ At The Philharmonic’ stands out as a relatively self-sufficient jam, but still not nearly as memorable as ‘Deep Feeling’ or ‘Berry Pickin’ from the previous album. The weirdest thing of all is ‘Low Feeling’, which is actually nothing but a slowed down version of ‘Blue Feeling’ (!), for some reason placed on the same album with the untampered tape — as if the word «filler» needed a definition update.
To make matters worse, One Dozen Berrys is also home to one of the silliest, if not to say stupidest, tracks in Chuck’s early repertoire — ‘La Juanda’ (often misspelled as ‘La Jaunda’, including the track listing on the original album). It follows in the steps of ‘Havana Moon’, reflecting Chuck’s strange passion for bad foreign accents, and this time gives us a spoof of Mexican balladry, which Chuck for some reason delivers with a pseudo-Spanish accent despite admitting that "hablo solo en Ingles y no comprendo Español". It is not particularly catchy, and absolutely inauthentic, and, most importantly, not at all funny. See, Chuck Berry does have a fine sense of humor, but honestly, he never was no Gene Ween, and that humor largely failed him when he tried to get into some particularly distant character. Well... sometimes he does, then again I think he don’t. Or something like that.
Two more vocal numbers do not manage to patch things up too well. The slow, moody blues of ‘How You’ve Changed’ feels underrehearsed and underproduced (the song would later be picked up and polished to dark and creepy perfection by the Animals); and the fast country-rock of ‘It Don’t Take But A Few Minutes’ sounds like something Chuck could have improvised in said few minutes with a bunch of friends on his front porch (though it’s at least entertaining). In the end, it all seems very hastily thrown together — and indeed I do believe that most of these album-only tracks were recorded during a two-day session in December 1957, most likely with no proper songwriting process involved at all. Maybe there is a certain amount of goofy charm in the spontaneous, off-the-wall nature of the whole thing, but, personally, I am not a big fan of the mish-mash approach where spontaneous throwaways are mixed with well-polished gems of genius songcraft — it would have been much better to save that stuff for a special fan-oriented release called One Dozen Raspberries. Three or four classics aside, the rest is certainly not worth any sort of special hunt.
Only Solitaire: Chuck Berry reviews