Still Reelin' And Rockin'

I would be truly remiss if I didn’t recognize the 80th birthday of someone who is perhaps the founding father of rock n’ roll (one of them anyway, along with Elvis); before there were the Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Jimi, Clapton and the whole bunch, there was Charles Edward Anderson Berry of St. Louis.

As I noted here some time ago, I read Bruce Pegg’s great unauthorized (but scrupulously fair and thoroughly researched) biography “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” and there are a few themes that emerge about Berry over and over again: 1) the role that racism played in his life, made worse by an early attempted burglary conviction which led to a legendary series of legal trouble, in particular his conviction under the Mann Act – as racist a piece of legislation as anything that has ever existed in this country – for what he was alleged to have done with Janice Escalanti, a one-time hat check girl at Berry’s Club Bandstand; 2) the fact that every single aspect of Berry’s professional life was governed by how much he got paid for what he did, which is partly understandable given what he had to do to make a name for himself; and 3) his relentless, almost psychotic need to control every single aspect of his performance, often to the point where he wouldn’t let other musicians playing with him know what he was doing and expected them merely to follow his lead.

Still, though, Berry commands respect among the vast legion of musicians who were inspired by him, including Steve Miller, Bruce Springsteen, Keith Richards, and many others. The clever lyrics and accomplished musicianship of his songs (for which a large measure is owed also to the late, great piano player Johnnie Johnson) created the standard by which all rock n’ roll music was based primarily throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and the romanticizing of that period in Berry’s songs (specifically concerning cars, women, and adolescent life in general) created a sort of mythology unto itself.

But enough of my verbosity on this subject - here's "You Can't Catch Me" from 1956 (introduced by Alan Freed and featuring Berry's trademark "duck walk" at the end)...



...and the scene with John Travolta and Uma Thurman dancing in "Pulp Fiction" to Berry's "You Never Can Tell."